The Remarkable John Wooden

The Remarkable John Wooden

by Gerald M. Costello, The Christophers

August 16, 2010

A lot of things about John Wooden’s life had the word “remarkable” attached to them, beginning with his age.  He was 99, a few months short of 100, when he died in June.  Remarkable.

You didn’t have to be a sports fan to know that Coach Wooden had died, by the way.  News of his death in Los Angeles was prominently featured in newspapers and in telecasts all over the country, because he was so well-known.

Unquestionably people came to know about him because of his basketball skills, first as a player at Purdue many years ago, and then as a coach at UCLA – not only as a successful coach, but, in the words of New York Daily News sportswriter Dick Weiss, “the gold standard.”

The record bears that out. In just 12 years, from 1964 through 1975, UCLA won 10 national championships, and at one point (1967-1973) reeled off seven of them in a row.  His coaching career at UCLA spanned nearly 30 years, and in that time he won 664 games, for a winning percentage of .804.  Again, remarkable.

But it was what he did away from the basketball court that made John Wooden’s story one-of-a-kind.  He was a throwback, a man raised in another era who never forgot the lessons he learned there.  The coach was thrown into a sports-world atmosphere that lived just for today, but he taught two generations of eager pupils that the standards of an earlier age were worth living by, even more so now than they were then.  And that was something that made a lasting impression.

Take the word of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the former Lew Alcindor, who was perhaps Wooden’s greatest star at UCLA and who went on to an illustrious professional career.  “There were so many things I discussed with Coach over my lifetime,” he said, “but the things that mattered were family and faith.”

That was no accident.  Wooden proudly and without pretense made God and family the centerpiece of his life, and he made sure his players got the message.  As Abdul-Jabbar continued: “The fact that Coach was more concerned about having a positive effect on the lives of young men who played for him doesn’t seem like much of an award to people who think like that.  But Coach’s values are from another era.  They were developed in an America that has passed on.  I think that’s the reason so many people are motivated by Coach’s teachings.  His connections to the moral nature of his faith and his ability to convey them to us have given us the answers we need to hear in times like this.” And the basketball great concluded: “His success as a teacher, coach, mentor and parent are testimonies to the wisdom of how he lived his life.”

Abdul-Jabbar spoke at a June 26 memorial service for Wooden, one that the Daily News’ Weiss reported on – and one that was unabashedly sentimental.  Many paid tribute, but the words of Abdul-Jabbar stood out.  He reminded us that in a world where so much is worthless, John Wooden taught lessons worth listening to.  His values might have come from another time, but in fact they are timeless.  The way he lived by them, and encouraged others to do so, made his a singular life.  Or, in a word, remarkable.

(This essay is this week's "Light One Candle" column, written by Gerald M. Costello, of The Christophers; it is one of a series of weekly columns that deal with a variety of topics and current events.)