The Wizard Of Westwood Passes

I will confess that I was never a fan of UCLA basketball growing up in Miami. John Wooden was just some college basketball coach that was spoken about by the national media in hallowed terms. In Miami, basketball was largely off the radar as the “U” did not have a team back then and the Heat was what hit you when you stepped outside. The only coach that was venerated was Don Shula, he the author of the only perfect season in professional sports.

So it was not until I moved to Los Angeles that I gained an appreciation for the Wizard of Westwood. Years later, my wife and I began having breakfast at a small restaurant in Tarzana called Vips. Without fail, John Wooden would be there. We marveled at his eloquence and equanimity. Not a breakfast went by without adoring fans interrupting his breakfast to have a word, seek an autograph or pose for a picture. Yet never once did we ever witness from him anything but kindness and a willingness to share a moment of his time, even as his food got cold. It is easy to understand why this man was adored.

John Wooden died yesterday at 99. There were two particularly moving articles in today’s Los Angeles Times written by T.J. Simers and Bill Plaschke that show another side of John Wooden that shouldn’t be missed.

From Bill Plaschke’s tribute:

When I think today of the greatest sportsman who walked a sideline, I think, instead, of where John Wooden lay his head. It was a tiny bed in a cluttered room in the dark Encino condo where he lived for the last three decades. He showed it to me once, without a trace of discomfort or embarrassment, led me inside and pointed to the threadbare white bedspread, Coach still coaching. “That’s Nell,” he said.

It was, indeed, a smiling picture of his beloved late wife of 53 years, propped up above the pillow where he slept. In the space next to the pillow, where Nell used to sleep, there was another propped-up photo of her. Below that photo, in the middle of the bed, was a bundle of carefully scripted letters, all in the same intricate handwriting. “Fan mail?” I asked. “You might say that,” he said.

The letters had been written by Wooden to Nell. They contained humble descriptions of his day, gentle laughs over private jokes, eternal promises of his affection. They had been written once a month, every month, since 1985. They had been written after she died.

“I obviously don’t have anywhere to send them,” he said. “But I had to write them anyway.” He said he had talked to his wife every day for more than half a century, and it still wasn’t enough. He wondered, when you are best friends, can it ever be enough? “I miss telling her things,” he said.

As he led me out of the bedroom in that darkened apartment, I realized he taught me again, only this time it was something that cannot be found in a pyramid or a rolled-up program. I realized that I had just been given a glimpse into a lifetime of simple devotion, from Nell to UCLA, from a sport that didn’t deserve it to children who will never understand it. Coach had just shown me the meaning of undying love, and, as he led me out of the darkened room, I quietly wept at its power.

This, though, is why I will not weep today, in the wake of John Wooden’s death at age 99. Our loss will be his gain. He will no longer have to sleep with a photo. He will no longer have to pick up a pen. The light of our lives can finally be with the light of his life. All these things he’s wanted to share with Nell, he can finally tell her himself. “I haven’t been afraid of death since I lost Nell,” Wooden told me that day. “I tell myself, this is the only chance I’ll have to be with her again.” Heaven knows, he’s earned it….

But we are comforted in knowing that he is reunited with his inspiration while leaving us with plenty.

“Be quick,” we wanted to tell Coach before he set off for Nell and immortality, “But don’t hurry.”

T. J. Simers eulogy:

To say it is a sad day would be to risk meeting him again, and getting that look from John Wooden. To say it is a time to be happy might not sound right, but you could hear the anticipation in his voice about this very day whenever he spoke about the chance to reunite with Nellie Riley, the love of his life.

He meant so much to so many, but it was the only girl he ever dated and then married who meant the most to him — a love letter written from husband to wife on the 21st of every month to mark her death. On the table in his condo is a stack of inspirational sayings, which are designed to reveal a new passage every day. But it has been 25 years since anyone turned the page, Nellie the last to do so before going to the hospital and never returning. “It says, ‘Oh Lord, make me beautiful within,”’ Wooden said in recounting the inspirational reading that still sits there today. “She was beautiful within.”

And so was he, a marvel late into life until losing his independence — his 1989 Taurus disabled so he would not be tempted to drive it, and then requiring 24-hour help at home. Two years ago this month, his tireless caretaker, Tony Spino, wheeled him onto the Nokia Theatre stage, Wooden none too happy because he wanted to walk out with Vin Scully. Billed as “Scully & Wooden For the Kids” to raise money for sick children, it was also a night for many in Los Angeles to say goodbye to Wooden between the laughs and his countless words of inspiration.

He was 97 at the time, sharp, witty, and to the surprise of some who may not have known him beyond his public persona, eager to tease as he had done his whole life. At one point he scooted forward and almost out of his wheelchair to teach Robert, a 12-year-old cancer survivor, how to put his socks and shoes on. At one point, it was as if everyone in the audience was leaning forward with him as he tried to tie the youngster’s shoes. He talked that evening about courting Nellie while they were together in high school, although his coach had a rule that no dating was allowed during the season. When asked about religiously breaking that rule, Wooden said, “I’d hardly call it religiously.” And what would he have done as a coach if one of his players had done the same thing? “Depends on what kind of player he was, of course” he said with a twinkle.

Ten months shy of turning 100, “ninety-nine is a long time too,” he rasped with a hint of exasperation between Wooden Classic basketball games this past December, he’s no longer with us. In the next few days there will be all kinds of stories about the legendary basketball coach, the games, players, and great memories. Someone will refer to him as the “Wizard of Westwood,” and he just hated being called that — a little dismayed upon the dedication two years ago to find it prominently noted on his plaque in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

“A life not lived for others is not a life,” he would often say in repeating something said by Mother Teresa, the person in his lifetime he admired the most. He was a student of Abraham Lincoln and worshipped his own father, suggesting everyone’s mother and father should be first on the list to be revered. All his life he carried his father’s seven-point creed with him in his wallet, one of his father’s maxims best explaining John Wooden’s entire life: “Make each day your masterpiece.”

Wooden lived what he preached, as sound a road map as anyone might want to follow, and while obviously in no hurry to die, he did so at peace with the prospect of even happier days ahead with the woman he loved. A few years back, moved by such devotion, one of his former players, Swen Nater, put it in a poem, “Yonder,” which Wooden recited from memory near the end of Scully & Wooden.

Once I was afraid of dying.

Terrified of ever-lying.

Petrified of leaving family, home and friends.

Thoughts of absence from my dear ones,

Drew a melancholy tear once.

And a lonely, dreadful fear of when life ends.

But those days are long behind me;

Fear of leaving does not bind me.

And departure does not host a single care.

Peace does comfort as I ponder,

A reunion in the Yonder,

With my dearest who is waiting for me there.

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