It’s the one night a year reserved for remembering, when the Northern Kentucky sports community and the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame come together at their annual end-of-summer awards reunion gala — this was the 40th — to honor, thank and say how good it is to be a part of all this.
But Wednesday night’s gathering at the Gardens of Park Hills opened by remembering one of our own who wasn’t there. NKSHOF Director Ron Schneider died suddenly, unexpectedly a week ago Sunday and with his Hall of Fame director’s badge proudly displayed, had been buried earlier in the day.
Remembering Ron, who was honored with an editorial in The Kentucky Post for his ability, as principal of Twenhofel Middle School, to remember the name of every single one of the 880 pupils in the Kenton County school, seemed only right. As the HOF’s scholarship director, he had helped raise $24,000 in 14 years for scholarships including seven $1,000 scholarships this past year.
In Ron’s honor, and as a special request, John Stephenson opened proceedings with his traditional singing of “My Old Kentucky Home.” As we learned, upon his death, Ron’s wife opened a letter in his drawer. It said, “When I pass, call Kenny Shields.” And that’s how we all learned of Ron’s passing.
“He did a whole lot for all of us here,” said former Highlands and NKU basketball coach Shields, who grew up as a grade school friend (Ron at St. Aloysius and Kenney at St. Pat’s a few blocks away) and Knothole teammate. “He was a sincere person and wonderful, loyal friend.”
That was my take and as a Ludlow and Ft. Mitchell kid, I never played with – only against – Ron in Knothole and later softball. But he was the person who, even in my case if you’d been gone three decades, when you showed up, it was like you’d never left. Like the last time you talked, you just picked up where you left off.
Because you were talking sports and Northern Kentucky, where everybody knows your name. And the more they talk, as they did Wednesday night, the more they realize how true that is. In a setting surrounded by some of the sports collection the Behringer-Crawford Museum has put together, you had the memorabilia of Walt Wherry and Bill Cappel across from one another.
No more different people have ever existed on this planet than these two baseball/softball icons from Covington. And no more special, each in his own one-of-a-kind way with Cappel, the captain of Nick Carr’s 1939 World’s Champion fastpitch team, founder of the NKSHOF, caretaker of Covington Ball Park and leader for women’s softball championship teams. And Wherry, maybe the most gifted local baseball/softball player ever – and that’s saying a whole lot.
There was Randy Marsh’s umpire’s gear from all-star games and World Series, Jack Hatter’s collection of 10 World’s Championship senior softball rings, a Lang’s Pet Shop World’s Championship 1954 jersey (never saw one before), and a tribute to Dale McMillen’s untold years calling high school and college games on WHKK.
Hall of Famer Homer Rice, 95 years young now and the man responsible for the Highlands football tradition who eventually became the Cincinnati Bengals head coach and longtime Georgia Tech AD, chimed in with a phone call Tuesday night to NKSHOF Pres. Joe Brennan, thanking him for the group’s work.
Dick Maile, the former Covington Catholic and LSU basketball great and later CovCath coach and scion of one of the great athletic families in Northern Kentucky history as well as the nephew of Bill Cappel, echoed the night’s theme.
“I feel so blessed,” Dick said, “Northern Kentucky is the most wonderful place in the world. This is what life is all about, when you have great people all around you.”
*** A lot of them were here on this night. Inspirational speaker – and former Reds batboy – Teddy Kremer, 39, who spoke at the 2019 awards event, wrote a book “Stealing First, the Teddy Kremer Story” of his life conquering the world with Down syndrome. “Thank you,” Teddy said, for the Tom Fricke Service Award, then hugs all around.
*** Former Newport High AD and baseball coach Grady Brown accepted the Bill Cappel Award for the late Mel Webster, the 30-year Bishop Brossart softball coach – and Northern Kentucky sports historian — who died at the age of 69 this past March. “A very special man,” Grady said of his friend, a pioneer and expert on Title IX and opportunities for girls in sports. “He was a Holmes grad who found a home at Bishop Brossart,” Grady said. Indeed.
*** Judi Gerding, winner of the James “Tiny” Steffen Humanitarian Award, told of how a Northern Kentucky Hall of Fame football coach, Owen Hauck, got her started on what has been a half-century of service and leadership for the intellectually and developmentally challenged with her founding of The Point/Arc nonprofit that now serves 1,400 people a year with its coffee shop, employment programs, and 16 residential programs housing more than 60 residents.
Both families shared a challenged child each and Owen’s dream was to be able to have a facility in Northern Kentucky like the one in Somerset where he drove to every weekend to visit his son, Glenn. Both are gone now but the dream that was helped with fundraising from his former Boone County player and NFL great Shaun Alexander and Alexander’s Alabama coach Gene Stallings, and a recent donor of the land, “the Owen Hauck Home of Fame will be built by 2024,” Gerding announced. “All because of a caring coach and caring athletes.”
*** Kenney Shields once passed along this advice to his fellow NKU basketball coach Nancy Winstel. “Go Division I,” Shields advised the two-time NCAA Division II champ. “If she went Division I, she’d be a multimillionaire.” But the retired Winstel, who does private coaching now, didn’t want that.
“I really didn’t want to go anywhere else,” the NKU alum said of her 31-year coaching career and 615 wins at her alma mater, “it was my own Field of Dreams.” Even if, when she told her mom she was heading off to Indiana U. for a master’s so she could be a college coach, her mom asked her “Are you ever going to get a job?”
Not really, Nancy realized. Working with friends like baseball coach Bill Aker, AD Jane Meier, and Shields, was hardly work. But it was plenty to qualify Winstel for the Pat Scott Lifetime Achievement Award, named after the great Walton athlete and Ft. Wayne Daisies pitcher who played for Hall of Famer Jimmie Fox there and was one of the inspirations – and a technical advisor – for “A League of Their Own.” Scott, a 1984 NKSHOF inductee and first woman on our board of directors, of which this columnist is also a member, passed away in 2016 at the age of 87.
And finally, the first-ever James Claypool Pioneer Award went to Robert Griffin, although we all called him Bobby, a member of the first NKU men’s basketball team. That team was made possible for that 1971-72 season by then NKU Dean of Students James Claypool.
A scrappy hustler from Pendleton County who had no thought of going to college until Mote Hils came a’calling, the tough-defending Griffin may have averaged as many steals as field goals. He moved on to leading a Griffin family that has done so much for the sports community here at places like NKU, Thomas More, CovCath and St Henry High Schools. “Bob has a big heart,” Claypool said in introducing Griffin. “He’ll get a lot of awards, he already has.” That inaugural team – whose 12 players’ names Claypool could rattle off 50 years later – was “a community of people who loved each other.”
“I’m not sure what the criteria were (for this award),” Griffin said, “but I’m glad I got it.” He could remember his first NKU practice, the snazzy uniforms and warmups and the horrible Pro-Keds gold and black suede-like shoes. “You could leave them out anywhere and no one would steal them,” Bob cracked.
As to the players from that team, “It’s been 50 years and if I called on any of my teammates, they’d help,” Bob said. Although more than likely, as history here has shown, it’s Bob who is getting called on and doing the helping.
His wife, Carol, was a cheerleader for that first NKU team and they’ve been married 49 years. All because of basketball, he says, and NKU.
“When Bob gives, it’s from a place down deep, you don’t get that often,” said guest speaker John Brannen, the former NewCath star, NKU coach who led the program so well into the NCAA’s Division I and tournament games against the likes of Kentucky.
Then Brannen looked at himself and asked aloud the question he guessed everyone was thinking: “What the hell is the Cincinnati coach who just got fired doing up here?”
What he was doing was validating the awards that went before him. Of Judi Gerding, “We are lucky to have her in our community.”
Which carried over to the rest of the winners. “It’s interesting, the award winners here made everything about other people,” Brannen said. “Their whole careers have been about making the people around them better.”
As a result, “This is the greatest place to live,” he said, “a very special place.”
It certainly was Wednesday evening.