Wooden: A Coach's Life (85 page)

Over the next few months, Wooden continued to have periodic hospitalizations. A do-not-resuscitate order was posted on the refrigerator. “I thought the guy was going to die a dozen times,” Hill said. “He was just so damn tough.” As Wooden’s friends and family steeled themselves for what they all knew was coming, UCLA did the same. Dan Guerrero, who had been hired as athletic director in 2002, asked Bob Field to talk to Wooden about the public memorial the school would hold after he died. It was a delicate conversation, but Field picked his moment one night when he was staying over at the condo. “Coach, there’s going to be a time where you’re going to be with your Nellie,” he said. “I know there’s going to be a private family service, but there will also be a memorial service at UCLA, and I’d like to talk to you about what you’d like that to be.” At first, Wooden demurred that he didn’t need a public memorial. Field responded that he might not need it, but his friends and former players would want to come together and celebrate his life. “He looked at me for about fifteen seconds and got misty-eyed,” Field said. “Then he said, okay, let’s talk about it.”

The parade of visitors continued throughout the spring. Johnny Green came by with his granddaughter and a camcorder. Dick Enberg sat with some friends in Wooden’s living room. (As he got up to leave, Wooden pointed to his own forehead, and Enberg planted a soft kiss on that spot.) In April, Pete Blackman, Jamaal Wilkes, and Mike Warren visited the condo together. “Wooden had all three of us to poke fun at. He was very much himself,” Blackman said. “He remembered all kinds of things that each one of us had done. He was sharp and completely together, but you could see the handwriting. The mind was as clear as could be, but his body was gradually checking out.”

Marques Johnson stopped in the Friday before Mother’s Day. Wooden slept for an hour, and when he woke up, Johnson mentioned that he was going to conduct a coaching clinic out of the country. Suddenly, Wooden came to life, rattling off details about his favorite drills. Johnson asked him to pause so he could get a pen and paper.

Larry Farmer continued to call Wooden several times a week, even though he usually ended up just talking to Spino. One day in May, Spino told Wooden who was calling, and the coach came to the phone. “He had just gotten back from a doctor’s appointment, and his speech was a little bit muffled,” Farmer said. “Before I could ask him how he was doing, he said to me, ‘How’s your family?’ I said, ‘Coach, they’re fine, but I’m calling to find out about you.’ He said something to the effect that he was struggling but doing well for a man his age. When Tony came back on the phone, he said Coach had not been that clear in his speech for quite some time.”

Doug Erickson and Bill Bennett visited every few weeks. Jim Harrick, who had lost his wife in 2009, tried to do the same. “He was in pretty good shape until about the last three or four months,” Harrick said. “Then he got to a point where he didn’t want anybody to see him in that condition.” Gary Cunningham also brought his wife that May. “I saw an incredible decline,” he said. “He was in his recliner. When my wife would talk, he just kept looking at me. I didn’t sense an alertness, honestly, and I couldn’t understand most of the things he said.”

As Wooden continued to deteriorate, there was some hope that he would live long enough to see two landmarks—his one hundredth birthday on October 14, 2010, and the birth of his first great-great-grandchild that fall. Alas, his body could not hold up. He was so uncomfortable at home that his doctors suggested that his family check him back into UCLA’s medical center the last week of May. The official reason for his admission was dehydration. Nan and Jim made clear that they did not want anyone taking extreme measures to prolong their father’s life.

Wooden was heavily medicated while lying in his hospital bed, but his mind remained lucid, defying science to the end. His face was uncharacteristically shaggy when Ben Howland, the current UCLA basketball coach, came to see him. Looking up at Howland from his bed, Wooden caressed his whiskers and said weakly, “I feel like Bill Walton.”

On Wednesday, June 2, news broke of Wooden’s condition. A group of UCLA students gathered to hold a vigil outside the hospital. Wooden’s favorite local pastor, Dudley Rutherford, was a constant presence in his room. At one point, Rutherford asked Wooden if he loved the Lord. “I’m working on it,” Wooden replied. Valorie Kondos Field was also there a lot. During one of the rare moments when Wooden was awake, she asked if there was anything she could do for him. “Move my leg,” he said. She moved it twice, and both times he winced in agony.

“I’m hurting you,” Kondos Field complained.

“I told you to move my leg,” Wooden replied. “I never said it wouldn’t hurt.”

When Gary Cunningham learned of Wooden’s condition, he cut short a vacation and visited the hospital room on the evening of June 3. “We got there about six o’clock. He was drifting in and out of consciousness,” Cunningham said. “I went up to him and said, ‘Coach, I love you. Thank you for all you’ve done for me.’” Another former assistant, Ed Powell, an old man himself at eighty-nine, also made it that day. So did Jim Harrick, Lucius Allen, Henry Bibby, Kenny Washington, and Andy Hill. Bill Walton was having back issues that were so severe he could barely get out of bed, so he never saw Wooden in the hospital. But he didn’t have to. “He knew that I knew, and I knew that he knew,” Walton said. “We had said our good-byes.”

On the morning of Friday, June 4, 2010, Doug Erickson went to see Wooden along with Bill and Joanne Bennett, just as they had done every morning that week. Wooden was unconscious. As they were leaving, Joanne asked Jim Wooden if she could give his dad a kiss. “Give him two,” Jim said. Keith Erickson also stopped by for about a half hour that morning. “He had lost a lot of weight,” Erickson said. “He was weak, his head was back, and his mouth was open. His hair was disheveled. Jim was there. Coach Val was there. Tony was there. They were all fine. They knew he didn’t want to be like that.”

Marques Johnson had been reluctant to visit Wooden in the hospital because he didn’t want to see his coach in that state. On Friday afternoon, however, he was overcome by a strong urge to see him. Johnson got dressed quickly and called Nan as he was riding up the 405 freeway. “There’s no need to come now,” Nan said. “It’s pretty much over.” So he turned around and went home.

When th’inevitable hour arrived in the early evening, the circle of people around Wooden was small, just a few immediate family members, Pastor Rutherford, and Spino. As Wooden’s family, friends, and former players learned the news, they felt sadness, of course, maybe even a little surprise that he had actually died. But there was also joy because they knew he was no longer in pain, that he was finally where he wanted to be. There was even some relief that he had, in fact, not made it to his hundredth birthday. “It would have been a spectacle,” Hill said. “He would have hated it.” Better to avoid that peak.

After nearly a century on Earth, John Wooden died much as he had lived. His pillow was softened by a clear conscience. He had scant money but a peaceful mind. Most of all, he was prepared for his death—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. He was not a perfect man and he did not live a perfect life, but he left this world in perfect balance, a success by any definition of the word.

When the ordeal was finally over, Nan called Bill Bennett and gave permission for UCLA to put out the official word. Bennett dialed a sportswriter friend and delivered the news the only way he knew how.

“Coach is with Nell,” he said.

EPILOGUE

The Poet

I can’t be certain that John Wooden was reciting poetry at the moment he died, but I have reason to believe he was. On September 5, 2006, I was sitting alone with Wooden in his den when he told me that he liked to recite poems in order to help him fall asleep. He had a rotation of a half dozen or so that he used. When I asked Wooden if he spoke them aloud, he replied, “Sometimes out loud and sometimes in my head. But I’ll never know. I may go to sleep in the second or third, or maybe the fourth. When I wake, I think, ‘I wonder which one I fell asleep to.’”

So I like to think that Wooden was whispering rhymes when he left this world on the evening of June 4, 2010. Like many sports fans of my generation, I have no recollection of Wooden as a basketball coach; I was not quite five years old when he claimed his last NCAA title. I didn’t know the fiery guy who ran his players ragged and rode referees until their ears burned. I only knew the sweet old fella who liked to read poetry in his den.

I had three lengthy visits with Wooden in that den between 2003 and 2009, the last of which occurred ten months before he died. Our sessions were memorable, but hardly unusual. During the last decade of his life, Wooden loved sitting for interviews. He enjoyed telling all the old stories, even the ones he had repeated more times than he could count. The appointments also allowed Wooden to keep his calendar full and his mind engaged.

Like many writers who cover college basketball, I had always carried a natural curiosity about Wooden, so I finally came up with an excuse to fulfill it. In the spring of 2003, when UCLA fired yet another basketball coach, Steve Lavin, and replaced him with Ben Howland, I hatched an idea for a column: I knew that Wooden ate breakfast at the same restaurant each morning, so I decided to invite Wooden and Howland to breakfast and write about what they talked about. My angle would show that when a man gets the UCLA coaching job, he also gets John Wooden, for better and worse. Yes, he has to deal with the shadow of the Wooden legacy, but he also gains access to one of the greatest coaching minds in the history of American sports.

I called Bill Bennett, UCLA’s sports information director for basketball, and asked him to set up the interview. When the appointed day arrived, I walked into Vip’s cafe in Tarzana, just a mile or so from where Wooden lived in Encino. Wooden and Howland were already seated when I arrived, but they hadn’t ordered yet. When the waitress came over, Wooden asked for the No. 2 special without looking at the menu. That’s what you do when you eat breakfast every morning at the same restaurant for over ten years.

“Usually, I sit at a booth on the other side of the room,” Wooden told me. He then rattled off the names of the other regular customers, most of whom were elderly like him. “Ed and Margaret sit over there. Next to them will be Millie. Louis will be at the end, next to Barbara, Gene, and Scottie. Jackie used to sit there, too, but not anymore for some reason.” Not for nothing did Wooden’s son, Jim, refer to Vip’s as “Cheers without beer.”

Howland was just as happy to be there as I was. He talked about how he used to stay up late as a boy so he could watch the replays of Wooden’s games on KTLA. Lots of people in Los Angeles had those memories—which was part of Howland’s new problem. “I think, after twenty-eight years, people around here are finally realizing that there will never be another one like Coach Wooden, so let’s get past it.” Wooden, however, interjected. “I say he’s completely wrong,” he said. “Someone else always comes along. I never thought someone would break Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games record, least of all a shortstop. So never say never.”

Wooden then leaned toward me and added with a smile, “Of course, some things are a little more difficult than others.”

His wit was disarming. It was easy to be in his presence. Wooden may have been ninety-two years old, but he still had every marble, not to mention a full head of hair. (Even Howland couldn’t say that, and he was just forty-six.) Wooden told us that when he wanted to go somewhere, he usually got a ride from his son-in-law or from Tony Spino. When he couldn’t find a chauffeur, he simply drove himself. “I get upset because my children don’t want me to drive,” he said. “But I can drive better than they can.”

Howland asked Wooden about some of his methods, and he also talked about his current players. When Howland told Wooden that his six-foot-six junior forward Cedric Bozeman had the potential to be an excellent defender, Wooden replied, “Absolutely. One of the things I used to say is there is absolutely no excuse for a good offensive man to not be a good defensive man. You have to be committed to it.”

Howland also told Wooden that he had recently seen Paul Westphal, the former USC guard and NBA coach who was now the head coach at Pepperdine. “I told him, ‘Coach Wooden still says you’re the only guy he wanted but didn’t get,’” Howland said. Wooden smiled and nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “He’d have been competing with Bibby and those guys. We had good guards, but he would have been the best.”

Breakfast lasted about an hour. When the check came, I figured that was the end of the interview. To my surprise, Wooden invited us back to his apartment to continue the conversation. He told Howland he would ride with me so he could show me the way. It was pretty cool to drive in a car with John Wooden, but it was also nerve-racking. God forbid anything happened to him on my watch, I thought. The world would never forgive me.

Fortunately, the drive was short. After guiding me through a few turns on a winding route out of the parking lot behind Vip’s, Wooden said, “Now I want you to go as far as you can from here. Those will be your only instructions. Let’s see how you do.”

“So I’m being coached by John Wooden?” I asked.

“Oh, I love to teach,” he said. “I would have been happy being an English teacher my whole life.” Thankfully, Wooden had set me up to succeed, because the road we were on led straight to his condominium. As I pulled into the parking space, he told me, “You’ve done well.”

The apartment was comfortable but modest. It hosted an impressive array of memorabilia, including several trophies, framed magazine covers, and letters from numerous U.S. presidents. Wooden showed me his signed Derek Jeter baseball cap and pulled the rusted, dark 1932 Big Ten Academic medal from a box. “This,” he said, “is what I’m most proud of.”

Wooden, Howland, and I sat in his den and talked for another couple of hours. We talked about everything and nothing, but mostly we talked about basketball. I asked Wooden what trend bothered him the most in recent years. “Showmanship,” he answered, without hesitation.