When you're a Hoosier, you forget all your cares by walking into a gym for a basketball game.
In high schools of all sizes, from Indiana's inner cities to its rural hamlets, the talents of players and the passion of fans of the game called "Hoosier Hysteria" erase from the mind such matters as the inclement weather, Monday's math test, past due bills, crime, and politics. And, certainly, life's tragedies - that's the last thing you think of at a basketball game.
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| JOY BEFORE TEARS: Terre Haute South fans hoist Mike Joyner after a 1977 tourney win. By year's end, he was dead in an aviation disaster. |
And yet -- when I have done online searches to find what became of some of those revered athletes I recall watching on television or in person at the Final 4 and elsewhere during the '70s and hence, I have often been stunned and saddened to find that their fates were that last thing you think of when watching the game that means life, youth and fun.
In events mostly involving vehicles, or sometimes illnesses, so many of my favorite Hoosier hardcourt luminaries had their lives cut short, often dying while still in their 20s. Their deaths were generally from unforeseeable accidents -- being in the wrong car or airplane at the wrong time. Check a YouTube on an Indiana basketball player from my high school and college years in the '70s and you just may see RIP in the comments, along with tear emoticons.
Here is the list of known deaths of standout players from the 1970s and early '80s who starred at Indiana's Final 4 or otherwise attained Hoosier high school basketball prominence:
Stacey Toran, a likeable, quiet Los Angeles Raiders defensive back who in 1980 had hit the 57-foot shot shown above in leading Indianapolis Broad Ripple High School to the state title game, died at 27 on August 5, 1989 when his car flipped over near his home in Marina Del Rey, Calif. He he was returning from a team open house at a high school in Oxnard which followed a pre-season practice with the NFL team.
Toran was engaged to be married when he died and described by Raiders teammates as pleasant and positive during the practice and open house. Still, he was well over the legal alcohol limit when his car crashed, but police said there were no skid marks or other indications of speeding.
A court level view of the great shot, which Stacey then describes.
Jack Moore, a 5-foot-8 guard whose outsized skills surprised opponents at the 1978 Final 4 as he led Muncie Central to a state championship, died in a private plane crash on March 3, 1984, two years after graduating from the University of Nebraska.
Moore and a business partner, stockbroker Gary Johnson of North Platte, Neb. were flying back from Indiana, where they had watched Moore's former high school team play. Johnson was piloting the plane, which ran into unexpected storms and fog over central Nebraska, then crashed on a ranch.
Moore had been revered at Nebraska and in Muncie as a smooth, agile court tactician and easygoing public role model. He quickly fell in love with his adopted home state, encouraging high school teammate Jerry Shoecraft, his best friend since childhood, to enroll at Nebraska and also play for the Cornhuskers.
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| Kevin Thompson at Terre Haute South |
A doctor diagnosed him with cancer, turning Thompson's planned battle for a starting spot with the Sycamores into a battle for his life. He died in January 1982, never having played a game at Indiana State, and leaving a wife, Tammy.
"He was a courageous young man who fought a good fight," Indiana State coach Bill Hodges said.
The day after Kevin Thompson died, Hodges resigned the coach position. He had gone through a difficult post-Larry Bird losing season in 1979-80, a divorce, then the death of a promising forward, but more so a young person Hodges had befriended during recruitment efforts from just across town.
"I grew to know him so well, and it tore me apart," Hodges said.
Tony Winburn of Jeffersonville High School was -- like Jack Moore -- 5-8 and won fans with an energetic, overachieving style of play. Also like the Muncie star, Winburn died in a plane crash in his 20s. Marion Anthony "Tony" Winburn was one of 29 people, including the entire University of Evansville basketball team, killed Dec. 13, 1977 when their propeller charter plane crashed just after takeoff on a planned trip to Tennessee for a game. The crash also killed head coach Bobby Watson and acclaimed Evansville sportscaster Marv Bates.
Winburn was a star on the 1972 Jeffersonville Final 4 team, which lost in double overtime to that night's state title winner. In 1973 his Jeff squad had been ranked No. 1 during the season, but was stunned in the state tourney's first round by arch rival New Albany, a team which had struggled mid-season but went on to win one of the most surprising state championships ever. They stole the title glory Jeffersonville fans believed would be theirs.
A New Albany substitute who helped turn that team's fortunes around was Steve Miller, a 6-8 sophomore forward who helped point his squad to the 1973 Final Four, but did not play there. Expense restrictions limited state tourney rosters. Miller was a starter his last two seasons at New Albany, and joined former rival Tony Winburn as a 6-9 forward on the ill-fated Evansville Purple Aces team. Miller was married four months before he died.
Terre Haute South Vigo High School's Mike Joyner, who was a senior on South's 1977 Final Four team, died in the crash that December after playing four games in his freshman season at Evansville. The Purple Aces' last game, three days before their deaths, was at Indiana State University in Mike's hometown, giving him some family time, including seeing his newborn sister Peggy for the second and final time. Mike also gave his mother Martha Joyner his Christmas gift wish list, which included sweaters and an electric blanket, she told the Terre Haute Tribune-Star in 2014.
As though Evansville fans hadn't had enough pain from the Dec. 13, 1977 crash wiping out their beloved Purple Aces team, a coincidental accident two weeks later killed the sole team member who had avoided doom by what seemed like the divine fortune to have a serious pre-season practice ankle injury that bumped him from the roster, keeping him off the plane.
Freshman David Furr, 18, who during his ankle's healing was working as a statistician at home games, then after the plane crash planned to join a new Evansville squad to be rebuilt the next year from catastrophe, was driving on Dec. 27 with his 16-year-old brother near their hometown in Illinois when their vehicle was hit by another driver, killing the brothers.
As is detailed on the website bird in flight dot com, which includes stories of aviation deaths it says contain a hint of predestination, the car carrying David Furr and his brother Byron Furr was hit by a pick up truck near Newton, Ill. while David was home from the bereaved campus on holiday break. The brothers were returning from a high school basketball game in Olney, Ill.
The Furrs' deaths added one more community to the list of stricken hometowns of Purple Aces players. Thirty years after the plane crash, a story in the News and Tribune in Jeffersonville included remembrances by Tony Winburn's mother Edna Winburn of half-mast flags throughout the city of Jeffersonville and constant expressions of condolences to her.
"A lot of people around here were very hurt and concerned about Tony," Edna Winburn told the newspaper. "And people still bring it up to me now, but not as much as in the past.
"He enjoyed going to school and playing his sports," she said of her son, who would have earned a business degree from the University of Evansville in the spring of 1978. "He was just a very congenial guy, never gave me any trouble. I'll never get over wishing he was still here."
Steve Miller's widow Vicky Peay, who has since remarried, said in that 2007 story: "The people around here could not have been better," adding that their kindness after the tragedy enabled her to become skilled at helping people after painful losses. "You can take something like this and become a bitter person. Or your can use it for good and help others."
Tommy Baker, in the video excerpt below from the 1974 Final 4 at Bloomington, is described as "in trouble" until a Jeffersonville teammate maneuvers in his direction to receive a pass from the then 6-foot-tall freshman. That brief interlude from early in Baker's great career for the Jeff Red Devils ominously foretells the path his life would take.
That un-glorious exit ended great hopes for IU stardom that began when -- as a Louisville newspaper sports columnist recalled it -- the high school senior Baker opened the curtains at his family's home in Claysburg, a historically black section of Jeffersonville, and gushed over seeing the legendary coach Knight getting out of his car on a recruiting visit.
There was much else that indicated Tommy Baker was a good match for Knight's program. The three-year starting guard at Jeffersonville was skilled at the motion offense, passing and pressure defense, the three legs of Knight's system which brought about an undefeated NCAA title in 1976. That was the same season that high school junior Tommy Baker led a talented Red Devil team that lost in the afternoon semis of the Final 4 by three points to that night's state champion Marion. In Baker's freshman and senior seasons, Jeffersonville also had state titles within their grasp, but suffered close tournament loses.
Back in Jeffersonville, Baker was arrested and imprisoned multiple times for selling cocaine, but critics of our nation's imprisonment-centered justice methods contend that Baker and the millions of other nonviolent offenders who have been sent to violent prisons are the real victims.
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| Much of Tommy Baker's problem, in one graph. |
One poster on an IU fan site, who as a Jeffersonville High student followed Tommy Baker by a few years, sadly announced Baker's death on the site in 2010, saying, "I didn't know him well, but he was a good kid and a hard worker. Well liked. Very humble young man."
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| John Hollinden in the high school class of 1976 |
Two productive seasons later, the popular and easygoing Hollinden signed to play professionally in a European league, but the night before his scheduled departure in 1981, another episode of dread familiar to Evansvillians struck. John was driving for pleasure outside the city when his car crashed, leaving him permanently paralyzed from the waist down. The giant niceness for which this giant was known endured; John began working with two charities helping the poor, became a motivational speaker, and joined a choral music group.
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Even after leg infections, then amputations of both legs in 1991, Hollinden remained a model of good spirits, his former high school coach John Wessel said.
"I went to see him in the hospital after that operation, and he had more grit and determination than the law allows," Wessel told the Evansville Courier. Nonetheless, John Hollinden died in 1992 of cardiac arrest brought on by infections. He was 34.
So many gone, so suddenly
