Hoop Crazy: The Lives of Clair Bee and Chip Hilton

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In the last few years of his life and as he was coping with failing eyesight, Clair Bee began getting notes and papers together to write his autobiography. It is a shame he was never able to finish the book because there is little doubt that the creator of Chip Hilton would have done a better job than I have. Unfortunately, Bee’s papers, now in the possession of his daughter, Cynthia Bee Farley, are said to be in such disarray that even Bob Knight gave up on trying to put them in some sort of order, and Cynthia Farley felt unable to allow me to look through them. I did, however, examine a variety of other sources and received the cooperation of many people in the process of researching and writing this biography. Clair F. Bee Jr. and Michael Farley, Bee’s grandson, gave as much help as they were able. Some of Bee’s former players at Long Island University, namely, Col. Bob Smith, Vince “Jim” D’Agostino, Darwin Gilchrist, and especially the late Hal Uplinger, were enormously helpful and generous with their time and memories. Also from LIU, I would like to thank the inestimable Mary Lai, Dan Kopacz, and Jeff Mead for their assistance, as well as Dr. Michael Hittman for inviting me to participate in a day-long symposium at LIU, “BeeBall : The Legacy of Clair Bee.” Tristram Walker Metcalfe III, the grandson of LIU’s president during Bee’s time there, went above and beyond to unearth material from his grandfather’s papers. ix Dale Comey and Glenn Markman, both of whom attended Bee’s summer camps as boys, graciously provided me with recollections of those days; and Ned Barry, who played three sports at Amherst College from 1948 to 1950 and who ventured to New York City for playground basketball games with some of the top players in the city in those years, eagerly shared his memories. West Virginians could not have been nicer or more helpful. Joyce M. Freeman, director of the Taylor County Public Library in Grafton, Bee’s hometown, proved to be an absolute treasure and a delightful, intelligent person. Rich Bord, a coach and director of athletics at Grafton High School and a Clair Bee scholar in his own right, was generous with his time and information and unfailingly enthusiastic on the topic of Clair Bee. Grafton historians Wayne McDevitt and Paul Loar and the staff at West Virginia University’s West Virginia and Regional Historical Collection, which houses the Bee collection compiled by the late Dr. Rogers McAvoy, were a pleasure to work with. Michele Schiavone, an associate professor of English at Marshall University, an LIU alumna, and a friend from the Sport Literature Association, deserves a great deal of credit for her help with information on the LIU-Marshall basketball game in 1938. My thanks go also to John Thompson, archivist at the Eberly Library at Waynesburg University; Julia Telonidis, archivist at the Moore Library at Rider University; Dr. Joyce Conroy, director of the Roscoe, New York, Public Library; and the helpful staff at the Ohio State Historical Society in Columbus. Susan J. Bandy of the sport humanities faculty at Ohio State University gave me the opportunity to discuss my research and writing with her graduate students. Jack McCallum of Sports Illustrated never hesitated in sending me the more than 130 letters he received following the publication of his 1980 profile of Bee in the magazine. From Springfield College I must thank Lynn Martin, the wizard of interlibrary loans at Babson Library; archivist Jeff x Acknowledgments Monseau; educational technologist and computer savior Tom Sweeney; reference librarian Rachael Naismith, the greatgranddaughter of Dr. James Naismith, who invented basketball on the Springfield campus in 1891; and my colleagues Kyle Belanger, Marty Dobrow, Jody Santos, and Bob Price, who read and commented on parts of the book. Springfield College also granted me a sabbatical that allowed me to write much of the book and a research grant for travel.Anne Herzog, dean of the School of Arts, Sciences, and Professional Studies, was especially encouraging over the course of the writing. Any number of students over the years in my Literature of Sports and Gambling course rate a vote of thanks for their comments on Bee and Chip. I should offer special thanks to my friend the late Ed Sims, a professor emeritus of English at Springfield College...