There Will Never Be Another Jerry West

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Yesterday started like all typical sunny, lazy day within the summertime. 
 
Present up for work at 9 am, scan your social media pages to investigate cross-check your mates, after which start interested by an early afternoon exit to stroll your canine. No less than that was what was going by way of my thoughts when my boss, Michael Fragale, walked into the workplace to inform me that Jerry West had simply died.
 
“Higher get to work,” he mentioned.
 
Speak about having a basketball fly by way of your entrance window!
 
As somebody chargeable for writing obituaries for the division, oftentimes you may have some issues ready in case one of many college’s residing legends passes. That was the case with Sizzling Rod Hundley and Sam Huff, each of whom had been experiencing declining well being previous to their deaths. 
 
However Jerry West, the person who all the time exhibited such power, vitality and vigor? 
 
Peter Pans simply do not die, till they do.
 
The place to start out with a person who completed a lot? What do you embrace and what do you permit out?
 
It is unattainable in a brief period of time to put in writing about all of Jerry West’s achievements from his 86 well-lived years on Earth.
 
How are you going to encapsulate all that he has meant to the individuals of this nice state and people who love and adore West Virginia College?
 
Who do you speak to when he meant a lot to everyone?
 
When you do not know the place you’re going, the perfect place to start out is all the time at first, and for me the start is a file cupboard of interviews that I’ve saved by way of the years, together with some conversations with West. My interviews with him quantity to a few half-dozen transcribed phone calls spanning in size from roughly 20 minutes to a half hour.
 
Some individuals provides you with 10 or quarter-hour of their time earlier than their consideration wanes and so they need to finish the interview and get on to extra necessary issues of their day. I’ve had individuals a lot farther down the pecking order try this to me.
 
However not Jerry.
 
He was all the time keen to spend as a lot time as wanted to reply any questions I had, significantly relating to West Virginia, West Virginia College and his Mountaineer basketball teammates. I instantly realized the simplest approach for me to get fascinating responses from Jerry was to get him speaking about his expensive pal Willie Akers or his fellow classmates.
 

I recall as soon as asking him why there have been so many excellent basketball gamers within the state within the mid-Fifties when he was taking part in at East Financial institution Excessive. 
 
I repeated to him the story the late Eddie Barrett had instructed me about Virginia Tech coach Chuck Noe trying on the field scores of the highschool video games in Virginia and the scores being within the 40s and 50s, after which trying on the West Virginia field scores and seeing the scores within the 80s and 90s and Noe deciding that he wished these West Virginia gamers.
 
That naturally obtained Jerry going.
 
“We performed the Kentucky all-star crew, and so they have been imagined to have the perfect gamers in America,” he recalled. “Effectively, because it turned out we had the higher gamers. We performed them twice and beat them twice. It was only a very high-caliber group of fellows that we had in West Virginia at the moment.
 
“Model of play was an enormous a part of it,” West defined. “I believe coaches have been a bit of bit restrictive than some coaches in sure areas. Most coaches most likely inherit their teaching philosophy from coaches that they performed for. In that time limit, after I was being recruited for faculty, Maryland performed a really slowed-down recreation, and I form of preferred that college a bit of bit, however I simply could not go there and play that approach. It simply did not appear like it will have been enjoyable for me to play like that.”
 
On the time, West Virginia coach Fred Schaus had just lately retired from the skilled ranks, and with first-time assistant coach George King, they have been nonetheless younger and athletic sufficient to get out on the ground and provides the blokes some pointers and tips that the majority different coaches could not.
 
King performed on an NBA championship crew with the Syracuse Nationals and West recalled going up towards him many instances within the outdated Area Home.
 
“Possibly the place I developed a bit of little bit of confidence was as a result of George King was there, and I used to play towards him,” he famous. “He was very skilled and really good, and I discovered that I might play towards him okay, and that it wasn’t going to be embarrassing for me.
 
“It was an awesome surroundings for any of us who wished to study, and extra importantly, to interact two those who had performed basketball at a unique degree than any of us had ever performed.”
 
Crew constructing was the key to Schaus’ and King’s successes in teaching, one thing Jerry clearly realized throughout his profession.
 
The nice issues West completed later with the Los Angeles Lakers, Memphis Grizzlies, Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers as an govt had their roots in these well-rounded West Virginia basketball groups of the late Fifties. 
 
Schaus was capable of persuade Akers that he was higher off being a supporting participant to Jerry West at West Virginia College than he was being the main scorer at Virginia Tech or Wake Forest, the place a number of the different high gamers within the state on the time have been going.
 
Willie had one easy want when he selected to signal at WVU and play basketball together with his buddy Jerry West.
 
“I wished to win,” he mentioned.
 
So, he got here to WVU and teamed with Lloyd Sharrar, Bobby Joe Smith and Jim Ritchie to seize the rebounds and play protection whereas guards Joedy Gardner, Don Vincent, Bucky Bolyard, Ronnie Retton and Lee Patrone dealt with the basketball. It was Jerry who made the powerful pictures and rose to the event at any time when it was required.
 
Each single participant on the crew would knock over their grandfather to get a free basketball, that is how pushed they have been.
 
“We have been very, very aggressive children,” West recalled. “Simply because a few of them have been fun-loving does not imply they weren’t aggressive. They have been nice individuals and for somebody as quiet and shy and backward as me, it made for a very totally different state of affairs by way of form of getting out of my shell and making me snicker a bit of bit as a result of I wasn’t going to alter my demeanor. I used to be far more severe.”
 
I witnessed that Jerry West seriousness first-hand after I was as soon as requested to be part of a talking program that included West in Lewisburg, West Virginia.
 
Jerry was selling his new e book and I had simply written “Roll Out the Carpet,” so the thought was for me to go on beforehand and heat up the gang for a half hour earlier than West took the stage.
 
After telling some humorous Sizzling Rod Hundley, Wil Robinson and Levi Phillips tales, it was time for me to exit and head again to the Inexperienced Room. It was there the place I crossed paths with West, shook his hand, and mentioned howdy in a considerably flippant method.
 
He checked out me, shook my hand and nodded, however his consideration was already on the duty at hand. He had the main focus of a prize fighter about to enter the sector, partly as a result of his e book was so private and revealing and he was about to reply some very uncomfortable questions. It was then after I realized that there are frequent human beings and there are elite human beings.
 
Jerry West was an elite human being. He was the one individual we West Virginians aspired to be, and he understood the heavy obligations that entailed.
 
For everybody on the market within the Mountain State (and past) studying this, do your self a favor and examine Jerry West’s life. Examine how he handled others with empathy, dignity and respect. Examine how he all the time honored his commitments and performed himself professionally.
 
The blueprint to a profitable life is contained inside Jerry West’s private story – the successes, the failures, the nice instances and the heartaches, all wrapped up into one.
 
He epitomized all of the values we West Virginians maintain so expensive to our hearts, which is why it is so troublesome for us to say goodbye.
 
Within the meantime, decrease your West Virginia flags till after West Virginia Day on June twentieth in honor of West’s reminiscence as a result of there’ll by no means be one other Jerry West – ever.