MiddletownJournal.com

The Streak - Part 2: Coach Walker takes Middletown to new heights

On Dec. 16, 1955, the Middletown Middies had just defeated Portsmouth 75-62 on the road. After the game, the team went to a cafeteria-style restaurant in Portsmouth before heading home. But when the players — pleased with their fourth win of the season — sat down, social reality struck. The restaurant refused to serve the team's sole black player — Oliver Wallace. The whole team, outraged, walked out. They wouldn't eat without Wallace. "That meant a lot to me," Wallace said. "It showed they were 100 percent behind me. I couldn't find a better bunch of guys." When the Middies played white, segregated teams, Wallace said he was called names. But his teammates, Wallace said, always backed him. "My teammates were there," Wallace said. "They never backed down. I'm still very close to most of them." The 1950s were difficult times for blacks, even as far north as Ohio. In interviews, surviving Middies from those teams all point to one person who taught them to ignore skin color — their coach, Paul Crane Walker.

WATCH THE VIDEOS OVERVIEW: A series of classic photos with an audio introduction by Johnson THE 55-56 SEASON: Action photos & play-by-play higlights from Lucas' sophomore season LUCAS' JR. & SR. YEARS: Middies win another state title & 'The Streak' comes to an end MORE: Stories & more on 'The Streak'

"Walker was like a father figure," Wallace said. "I had a great relationship with him. I never saw Walker mistreat anyone. He was a father figure to all the black players."

After home basketball games, many players ate at Frisch's downtown on Main Street.

Jerry Brown owned the restaurant, and he let the Middies basketball players eat for free, even the black ones.

But they couldn't bring their black friends inside.

"I could go in because I was a basketball player," Wallace said. "But my friends couldn't. When I was with them I had to eat in the car."

But racism never seeped into the locker room or the gym during practice. Black players like Wallace and A.C. Mitchell attest that the team's attitude started with Walker.

Mitchell — a reserve forward on Middletown's 1957-58 squad, who helped lead the Middies back to the state tournament after the 76-game winning streak had ended — graduated from Middletown in 1959.

But he couldn't find work after high school.

When Walker found out that Mitchell didn't have a job, he called Armco Steel.

"The next week, I got a job," Mitchell said. "It was his phone call that got me the job."

Mitchell would work at Armco for the next 41 years until he retired.

"My dad didn't care if you were green if you could play basketball," said Walker's son, Paul Walker Jr. "He saw lots of prejudice. Because of his background — basically growing up with very little — he admired the black kids for scraping and being good players. He appreciated their situation because he had grown up in a difficult situation."

Walker, who died in 1999, ended up in Middletown after a series of stepping-stones. Walker was picked to coach Middletown at a time when the city had been left rudderless by the unexpected departure of George Hauck.

Hauck had spent 1946 coaching with All-State center Paul Lansaw to lead the Middies through an undefeated regular season and a state title win over Akron North.

But Middletown had some spectacular basketball history already.

In 1917, coach E.O. Smith led the Middies to a 12-0 season, the fifth in Middletown's history.

Elmo Lingrel, also the football coach and later athletic director, took the basketball program to another level as its basketball coach in 1927 when the Middies finished 17-1.

But it wasn't until Royner Greene arrived that Middletown became elite.

In 1944, Greene — who had been the Middies' coach since 1929 — led Middletown to its first state basketball title, outlasting Toledo Woodward 50-47 in overtime.

From then on, basketball became Middletown's first love.

"This town became a basketball town," said Dan Humphries, manager on Greene's 1944 title team.

Greene took the Middies to the state title game again in 1945, but Middletown fell one basket short of winning its second straight championship, losing to Bellevue 36-34.

After the season, Cornell University lured Greene to be its basketball coach.

And so, Middletown assistant George Hauck was promoted to head coach.

After Hauck won the state title, he quit; the "politics," he said, had become too much.

Ohio's basketball capital was left without a leader for the second straight year.

More than a coach

Walker was a quirky character.

Dressed in a brown suit, he would eat oranges as games ended.

And for the really big games, he packed an extra pair of shoes for Jerry Lucas.

"He was always afraid something was going to happen to Lucas' sneakers," said Don Stokes, the team's manager in the late 1950s.

Walker was also the school's golf coach for many years.

"He was the worst golfer and the worst golf coach," said Jack Gordon, Middletown's football coach during for much of Walker's tenure. "He'd tell (his team) to get that killer instinct, leave, then come back in two hours to check on them."

Another Walker paradox was that he was the driver's education teacher at Middletown.

"He was the worst driver," Gordon said.

But while Walker hated to golf and didn't excel at driving, he loved to play cards.

After practice and often before, Walker would invite other coaches to the coaches' office for a card game of pitch.

And during, Walker would always be smoking cigarettes.

"It didn't matter how big an ashtray he had, he would get ashes on the floor," said Ed Payne, who played on Walker's back-to-back state title teams in 1952 and 1953 and later would be his assistant coach.

Later in his coaching career, Walker showed up at practice smoking a cigarette.

Coach, Payne said, you can't smoke at practice.

"The hell I can't," Walker snapped back.

"There has only been one Paul Walker," Gordon said. "He was a hell of a basketball coach and a hell of a guy. He'd do anything for you. And he knew the game of basketball."

One attribute that dazzled other Middletown coaches was Walker's ability to scout opposing teams in his head. He never took notes.

"He was a terrific scout," said Jerry Nardiello, former Journal sports editor.

Payne recalled the first time he scouted another team with Walker.

Payne had charted the entire game, while Walker just watched. In the third quarter, Walker told Payne he was ready to leave. And he never used Payne's chart.

"He was so quick on being able to analyze a kid and see the talent the kid had," Payne said.

But Walker wasn't just a fun-loving spirit. He was a family man, too.

In June 1935, he married Mary Lou Mahoney and stayed with her until his death in July 1999.

"She was a wonderful woman," Nardiello said. "He could do whatever he wanted when he was out. Not at home."

Walker also embraced his two sons — Paul Jr. and Tim. He allowed his oldest son, Paul Jr., to be Middletown's ball boy.

"The great part about it was that I lived the dream," said Walker Jr., who would later play for his dad in the 1960s. "I was the boy that got to go to basketball practice every day. He let me be around because he felt it was good for a boy to be around that stuff. And it was."

Walker, however, was much more than a father and a basketball coach.

His blue-collar roots mirrored those of most of the Middies and most of Middletown.

Walker was born on April 17, 1911, in Summerton, Tenn., about 40 miles north of the Alabama border.

His father held various blue-collar jobs that took Walker, his mom and his brother to Alabama and later Kentucky. In Madisonville, Ky., his father was a track foreman at a strip mine.

After graduating from Madisonville (Ky.) High School, Walker attended Western Kentucky University, playing football and basketball.

"Athletics was his way of raising himself up from that background as many athletes have done over the years," Walker Jr. said.

Following coaching stints at three different Kentucky high schools, Walker finally caught his break, which brought him to Ohio.

During World War II, Portsmouth High School's football coach had been drafted by the military, while the basketball coach took a commission in the armed services.

The military turned down Walker's attempt to join because of a bad knee injury he had incurred while playing football — Walker walked with a limp for the rest of his life.

The football coach, Huston Elder, a friend of Walker's, asked him to be both football and basketball coach at Portsmouth, and when Elder returned, Walker could be basketball coach.

Walker's basketball team went 12-11 in his first season. But it would be his only year at Portsmouth.

The old basketball coach returned and demanded his job back. Portsmouth relented, and Walker was relegated to freshman basketball coach. And after Elder came back, Walker was demoted to assistant coach of the football team.

Eventually, all three were fired as Portsmouth sought to eliminate an awkward situation.

At this time in 1946, Middletown was looking for a new basketball coach, hoping to keep up the momentum of the last three seasons.

In 1944, Elmo Lingrel's Middies football team went 8-0-1.

Which team tied Lingrel in a scoreless game?

That was Walker's Portsmouth club.

So when the Middies basketball job became vacant again, Lingrel, athletic director in 1946, remembered Walker and the tie.

Lingrel called Walker, telling him to meet him and superintendent Wade E. Miller in Columbus.

During a two-hour conversation, both Lingrel and Miller grew even more impressed with Walker.

Within the week a Western Union messenger came to Walker's apartment in Portsmouth, handing him a telegram. Before Walker could open it, the messenger smiled and told him he got the Middletown job.

Walker faced a lot of pressure in his first season in 1946-47. The previous two coaches had enjoyed tremendous success, taking the Middies to three straight state tournaments, winning two of them.

Walker had a seasoned group of players, including Shelby Linville who would later star for Adolph Rupp at the University of Kentucky.

But the Middies endured a rough regular season, going 11-6 — the worst regular-season record in 11 years.

Walker knew his team had to produce in the postseason.

And his players responded.

After winning in double overtime over Dayton Northridge, the Middies reeled off six straight wins to capture their third state title.

Walker's job was safe.

"I don't know what might have happened if I hadn't won," Walker wrote in his memoirs. "They might have fired me. As it was, I was in pretty solid."

During that first season, Walker and his wife, Mary, had their first son, Paul Jr.

"The tradition had been building, and there was a good foundation," Walker Jr. said. "He inherited it to a degree, but he also built on it."

Walker's first season was an auspice to one of the greatest high school basketball coaching careers in the country.

The Ohio Associated Press named Walker Coach of the Year in 1956 and in 1958.

"I thought he was a tremendous coach," said Warren Johnson, who broadcasted in Middletown during all but two of Walker's seasons. "He knew the game inside out. He always had a good game plan."

Walker came to Middletown, like many other coaches from that era, as a defensive-minded coach.

But in the early 1950s, Walker attended college basketball's National Invitation Tournament in New York City. There, he decided to make a profound change in his scheme, shifting his emphasis from defense to high-powered offense.

With a fast-break mentality, Walker's Middletown teams would go on to win four more state titles as he compiled a 562-136 record.

He still stands as the third winningest boys' basketball coach in Ohio high school history with 695 total wins.

"Obviously, Walker was a great coach, and he knew the game very well," Lucas said. "He was a good teacher, good instructor, a father image to a bunch of us guys. I have nothing but fond memories of him."

Crazed city

In 1899, George M. Verity agreed with Middletown city leaders to build his American Rolling Mill Company (Armco) in Middletown.

Verity's tiny company immediately prospered, largely because the plant was one of the first to bring the scattered branches of the steel industry into one integrated operation.

In 1903, the company produced the first steel specifically for motors and other magnetic applications. In 1909, Armco received a patent for high-purity iron that became known as Armco iron, and a year later, it established the first research department in the steel industry.

In 1955, Armco Steel Corporation produced a record 117 million tons of steel, emerging as a leader in the steel manufacturing industry.

Armco also reached record highs in employment and payroll that year and commenced a lofty expansion program.

And as Armco prospered, Middletown's citizens prospered, too.

That same year, Middletown set records in industrial employment, bank transactions, bank deposits, retail sales, postal receipts and local construction.

Meanwhile, across Ohio, communities struggled with labor strikes and unemployment.

But largely because Armco's relationship with Middletown's more than 8,000 workers was excellent, business boomed in the city.

In 1955, for every million man-hours worked in Ohio factories, industry lost 3,100 hours through strikes and labor disputes.

But in Middletown, for every million man-hours worked, the loss was just 19.

In 1957, the National Municipal League and Look Magazine named Middletown an "All-American City," largely because of the good relationship between corporate and labor groups.

Not only did the city prosper as a steel town, several paper mills flourished, too.

The geologic features of Middletown, which has a large underground supply of pure, clean water, made it one of the few places in the country where the water is largely free from iron and other impurities that discolor paper, making the city an attractive location for a paper mill.

At about the time industry boomed in Middletown, the city was falling in love with its basketball team.

Walker's knack for making the community feel part of the basketball program only intensified the city's passion.

Every Monday at noon, Walker interacted with boosters and fans during the Quarterback Club meetings at downtown's Manchester Inn.

It was at the Club that Dick Nisbet, the optometrist who would later be awed by Lucas' amazing eyesight, first got to know Walker.

"Paul Walker took me in," Nisbet said. "I came to town for wonderful high school athletics, and I sure got it."

Years before, while Nisbet was in high school in Eaton, his dad took him to watch the high school state basketball tournament.

"I knew in high school what I wanted my hobby to be — high school athletics," said Nisbet, a Middletown optometrist for 38 years. "To me, high school athletics was the ultimate."

Nisbet was among the many Middletown residents who loved high school basketball.

Nisbet didn't miss a single game between 1955 and 1958. In fact, he bought season tickets at Ohio State after Lucas enrolled there.

And when Lucas competed at the Olympics in Rome, Nisbet went, too.

He left his five kids at home and took his wife to Italy for 17 days.

Nisbet was just one of many locals who worshipped Walker and the Middies.

Middletown had to build a new gym in the early 1950s — Wade E. Miller Gym, named after the superintendent — to accommodate booming attendance.

But Miller wasn't nearly big enough.

Even though Miller could hold at least 3,400, many people had to listen to WPFB's broadcast of the game in the Miller lobby.

"The clamoring for tickets will always be in my mind," Warren Johnson said. "During the heyday of Lucas it was almost impossible to get in the gym."

Many who couldn't get into the arena or the lobby listened to the game from their cars.

"They just wanted to be close to the games," said Bob Cole, a star guard for the Middies in the 1950s.

But even as popular as Walker's Middies were after his first three state titles (1947, 1952 and 1953), Walker knew the best was still to come.

When Walker went to Sunset Park to watch kids play pick-up basketball, one player stood out, dazzling the coach. The playground kids called him "Luke."

Luke hadn't lost an organized basketball game since the fourth grade, Walker had heard.

So in 1955, when Middletown needed to replace starting center Charles Watkins from the previous season, Walker wasn't too worried.

Jake Trotter is The Journal's sports editor. Contact him at (513) 705-2837 or e-mail him at jtrotter@coxohio.com.