Forty Minutes of Hell (11 page)

But another lesson of Little Rock was that clinging to a racist past at the institutional level could be a popular policy.

Desegregating a high school in the biggest city in the state was one challenge. Getting anyone else to follow suit was quite another. By the autumn of 1963, less than one percent of African-American public school students in Arkansas attended classes with whites. As late as 1967, 83 percent of black students still attended segregated schools.

Any leader interested in keeping the world segregated had to
make the enemy seem to be the media
. But it could be taken in a different direction—befriending and controlling the media could be a smart step, too. Nothing in Arkansas received the same media attention given to the University of Arkansas football team.

 

In 1963, Governor Faubus
announced that he opposed lifting the racial restrictions on athletics at the University of Arkansas. The University of Arkansas Board of Trustees agreed with Faubus, instituting policies that excluded blacks from university sports and dormitories.

“When I heard the board of trustees made that ruling,” longtime UA psychology professor Phillip Trapp recalls, “I said the faculty should go on record.” They did. The college faculty, as well as the student association, officially endorsed the integration of Razorback athletics.

Trapp was asked to serve on the university's faculty athletics council in 1962. What better place to integrate, he thought, than the place where most of the attention was? “The board of trustees was still solidly against integration,” Trapp says. “That's why Frank Broyles was so against it, he'd be going against the board.”

Trapp's embracing the ideals of integration didn't sit well with one board of trustees member, Pete Rainey. When Trapp was introduced to him, Rainey turned his back on the professor.

Delbert Schwartz chaired the faculty athletics council for years, and Trapp says that Schwartz wanted to groom him to someday chair the group. Just before a meeting, Trapp cornered Schwartz and told him he was going to make a motion that Arkansas should integrate their athletic teams. “I want it to go into the record,” Trapp told him.

“Oh, my God,” Schwartz said, “if you do that you'll
never
become my replacement.”

“I knew the committee was handpicked by Frank Broyles,” Trapp says, “and I didn't have much aspiration that it would pass, but our students had voted that way.”

Knowing his proposal was likely doomed, Trapp still made the suggestion that Broyles integrate his team. “I can see this giving us a national title in short order,” Trapp said. “We'll be the first major school in the South, and we'll have our pick of black athletes.” Black athletes were already dominating on the national stage, and that meant bigger crowds, Trapp reasoned, more money. Many of the top black athletes were from the Old South, but Arkansas was now embracing the principle of segregation at the expense of their basketball team—as well as their balance sheets. Arkansas football was certain to be harmed as well, when the SWC integrated, if they didn't follow the trend of sports being at the forefront of racial progress across the country.

Two board members voted for integration; nine voted against it.

But that was not the most disheartening aspect. “I heard [Broyles] say when I made that proposal that it would be ‘over his dead body,'” Trapp recalls. “I think he had a strong race card going. That would be pretty obvious, he came from Georgia, and in fairness, he'd been indoctrinated, but at that time Broyles was very strong against integrating athletics.”

A few months later, Trapp would get a final reminder of how popular his ideas on integrating football were. He was removed from the faculty athletics council, with which Broyles worked very closely. “I would guess, and this is a guess,” Trapp says, “that Frank Broyles said, ‘We don't need that radical on that committee.'”

Trapp was gone from the faculty athletics council by the mid-1960s, but more showdowns were on the horizon, ones that would reveal who held the power at the only major university in the state. Would it be the students and faculty? The board of trustees? Or the football coach?

R
osario Richardson was
tired of the talk in Fayetteville, and they hadn't even been there a year. Waiting in line at a grocery store, she heard a shopper offering to give away her 1985–86 season tickets. The shopper knew the reason the Arkansas Razorbacks weren't winning. “Because they hired that black coach.”

Rose Richardson whipped out her checkbook and tapped the woman on the shoulder.

“I'll buy those tickets,” she said.

The lady at the grocery store was not the only disappointed Razorback fan. Former coach Eddie Sutton's crew had won their opening NCAA Tournament game the previous season, and Richardson had two of those starters back. Expectations were enormous—Arkansas was even included in some preseason Top 20 polls. While the team did pretty well in the preseason, once Southwest Conference play began, the Razorbacks stumbled badly.

The team appeared confused under Richardson's system, and they
even lost seven games in Fayetteville's Barnhill Arena. Richardson suspended two players for drug use. He realized that he didn't have the talent in place to do much better, and he was already catching heat, particularly from
Democrat-Gazette
writer John Robert Starr. “You have to sweep the house out before you move in,” Richardson says. “I didn't do that at Arkansas and it may have been a mistake.”

 

Richardson's time at Arkansas
began with a sense of trepidation—he loved Tulsa; Yvonne was sick; then his new team floundered. The traits that made him successful—brazen confidence and his us-against-the-world philosophy—were in stark contrast to Frank Broyles's trademarks. The athletics director was more politic and measured, quick to smile, always positive with his pat answers. Few people were aware then that Eddie Sutton had grown weary of Broyles's strange, overbearing-yet-distant management style.

Richardson found a modest townhouse overlooking a golf course in Fayetteville. The place didn't quite feel like home, partly because the family was returning so often to Tulsa for medical treatment. They kept their house near Seventy-first and Memorial in Tulsa as a base for when Yvonne went in for treatment. Richardson soon came to believe there were not the doctors available in Fayetteville that Broyles had suggested there would be. Little Rock offered better medical care, but Tulsa was an hour closer. The constant return trips to Tulsa reminded Richardson of how content he had been there.

Richardson also came to grips with the notion that leukemia killed the mother he could barely remember, and his nephew Butch was gone just two months after being diagnosed. Richardson badly needed support, but instead felt as though people in Arkansas only cared about whether his basketball team was winning.

 

Mike Anderson, the point
guard on Richardson's first Tulsa teams, joined the staff at Arkansas as a low-level assistant coach. His responsibilities were centered on driving Yvonne back and forth to Tulsa on days when her father could not. Anderson had met Yvonne in 1980, his first year in Tulsa. “She was like my kid sister,” he says.

“Yvonne was the inspiration to keep Coach Richardson going,” Anderson adds, emphasizing the powerful sway the girl, now in her teens, had over her father.

As her health declined, Yvonne never expressed pity for herself. “She didn't complain,” Anderson remembers. “She was optimistic, always thinking God would make a way for her to get well.”

Anderson believes Richardson had been so fortunate in his time at Tulsa that the same feeling of optimism initially spilled over into everyone's thinking about Yvonne. “All those championships Nolan had won, all those firsts for a black coach. His life was like a story-book in a way. When Yvonne was diagnosed with leukemia—well, we all just knew she would turn out okay.”

As Yvonne deteriorated, she could still find humor in the darkest of times. Occasionally, Anderson would drive Yvonne, along with her mother, to road games on the day the Razorbacks played, so she wouldn't have to be gone as many days as the team. Once, coming back from a loss in Dallas, Anderson found himself in a thick fog. High beams made the fog appear denser. Because he was on a narrow road, Anderson figured pulling over might be even more dangerous. He slowed down then leaned forward over the steering wheel, hoping that might help his vision. Rose, a nervous traveler in good weather, began crying out, “Oh, Lord Jesus!” at every dip and turn.

When the fog lifted, Yvonne began mimicking her mother. Soon, everyone was laughing, even Rose. “Yvonne called me ‘Oh Lord Jesus' for weeks afterward,” Anderson says.

Yvonne wouldn't let her father—
Papi
, she called him, or
Papito
—pity her, or himself. Instead, she peppered him with inspirational talks or demanded another “interview.”

In an attempt to comfort her, Richardson reminded her not to worry, that the Razorbacks would get better and he was doing his best. One day Yvonne told him his best wasn't good enough, a startling thing for a child to tell a father. “You've got to step it up,” she said.

When Richardson assured her he would, she let out a sigh.

“I think I can rest now.”

 

Remaining upbeat became nearly
impossible for Richardson. The drive to and from Tulsa, which he sometimes did instead of Anderson, gave him plenty of time to second-guess his decision to leave for Arkansas.

On one occasion, Yvonne was retching and vomiting and couldn't stop. Richardson pulled the car over and decided to let her stretch out in the backseat. Tulsa was still over an hour away. Richardson climbed back in and floored the accelerator, figuring if he exceeded the speed limit on a straightaway, perhaps a policeman would pull him over. He could convince the cop to flip on his siren and give them an escort into Tulsa. Instead, he sped into Tulsa unnoticed.

With Yvonne dying, his wife understandably distraught, and feeling pressure from Broyles, the fans, and media, Richardson felt isolated. He was in need of someone who could provide what Ol' Mama did, and he found that guidance and friendship in an old white man named Orville Henry, Arkansas's best-known sportswriter. Henry checked in with Richardson every day during his early tenure in Arkansas.

This is a pattern in Richardson's life, gravitating to older men, who are often white, for advice and friendship. First, Bert Williams, Don Haskins. Then Sid Simpson. Ed Beshara. Orville Henry.

Although Henry was better known as a football writer, he and Richardson became close. Henry was in some ways an Old Southerner but had become more progressive as far as questions about race were concerned. An Orville Henry anecdote: In the late 1960s, Henry
and his ten-year-old son Clay went to play golf at the Fairpark Golf Course. On the eighth hole, both Henrys drove their ball from the tee and began walking ahead. Clay saw a black boy about his own age cutting across the fairway.

“Dad,” Clay said, “we need to hurry! That boy's going to steal our golf ball.”

Orville Henry stopped in his tracks and turned to his son. “You think he's going to steal your ball because he's black, don't you?”

When they got to their golf balls, the black boy, perhaps eight years of age, had passed. They were safe. But Henry called and waved the boy back.

Henry asked the boy if he had ever hit a golf ball. The boy had not.

“Would you like to try?” Henry pulled out his son's five-iron. Then Henry emptied his son's bag of two dozen balls.

“I'm going to give you a lesson,” Orville Henry said to the boy—or perhaps both boys. Henry showed the black boy the grip, got him in a stable stance, and showed him the classic shoulder turn, and how to keep his eyes down. Fifteen minutes later, with balls sprayed everywhere, Orville Henry turned to his son.

“Where's your putting ball?” he said. “Let me have it.”

Henry presented it to the boy. Then he turned back to his son and said, “Pick up all the balls.”

Although Richardson had heard the story on several occasions, he always found it moving. He could have been that black kid cutting across the grass.

One longtime Arkansas sportswriter says that Orville Henry may have been influenced in the same way Evans Dunne was at Tulsa. Although Henry wasn't racist, he says, Henry would have certainly had an older mentality. “At one time, Orville had been asked not to return to Pine Bluff to speak, because of his off-color jokes,” this sportswriter says. “Later, Nolan sort of won Orville over. Also, Orville had married a very progressive woman, and that helped.”

 

Richardson's trouble with Frank
Broyles began during that first season. Orville Henry was friends with both men, and could sometimes smooth over misunderstandings. More often, though, understanding was beyond Richardson's and Broyles's grasp.

Broyles remembered Eddie Sutton's slower style, and Richardson was radically different. “When Nolan was struggling,” one Arkansas sportswriter says, “Broyles was coming down to watch practice, trying to figure out if Nolan could really coach.”

Once the disappointing first season concluded, Broyles told Richardson he wanted him to go visit Indiana coach Bob Knight. Broyles felt that Richardson could maybe learn how to teach defense and get his team under control.

Richardson, who was already sensitive about his rabid pressing and
Star Wars
–paced offense being slandered, considered this an insult.

Plenty of coaches still believed Don Haskins to be the best defensive coach in the nation. Knight himself had spent time with Haskins at the 1972 Olympic trials, where Haskins had been an assistant to Henry Iba. “Hell, Knight had all kinds of questions about Mr. Iba's system,” Haskins recalled. “Knight could have gone to Nolan to learn my system. Nolan knew it as well as anyone.”

Richardson declined to visit Indiana, although he admired Knight.

“Fuck Bobby Knight,” Richardson told Broyles. “My daughter is dying and you're bothering me?”

Broyles's pestering Richardson about coaching decisions was not unique to basketball. This was perhaps Broyles's central contradiction—he found great coaches, then could not stop himself from second-guessing them.

One October, football coach Ken Hatfield burst into Richardson's office, fuming, waving a legal pad. “Damn!” Hatfield said. “Broyles is sending me plays to run. First he wants me to fire [assistant coach] Fred Goldsmith, and now he wants me to change my whole attack.”

Richardson leaned forward in his chair and smiled at his assistant coaches.

“Let me see those plays,” Richardson said. He still loved football and liked to talk the talk with Hatfield. Richardson studied the diagrams for a long minute, flipping back and forth, engrossed in the possibilities. Suddenly he crumpled the pages into a ball and lofted a left-handed shot at the wastebasket. It banked in.

“That's what I do with Broyles's suggestions,” Richardson said.

As Yvonne's situation deteriorated, Richardson lost all patience with Broyles. It was one thing to make suggestions about scheduling, the media guide, or uniform styles. But it was quite another to suggest, by offering tactical advice, that Richardson didn't know how to coach.

“I think Frank Broyles had different expectations of black people,” Richardson says today. “Look where he came from—the Deep South, Georgia. His ancestors were slave owners, and he had a different view of the duties black people should have.”

He finally blasted Broyles over what he believed was his boss's lack of compassion. “You knew I had a sick daughter when you hired me!” he shouted at Broyles his first season. “Don't expect me to ignore her.”

Any gesture from Broyles seemed to irritate Richardson. “Broyles did offer Nolan to take a leave of absence with pay,” one longtime sportswriter says, “but Nolan misinterpreted that to mean Broyles wanted him gone.” Events that would unfold a year later would prove Richardson was right.

 

Richardson was not the
only person who might be baffled by Frank Broyles.

Charles Prigmore was the executive vice chancellor at University of Arkansas Medical Center in Little Rock during the 1970s. Prigmore, a former high school football coach, kept a close eye on Broyles, and sees him as a complex man, a charismatic leader who could border on arrogant and self-serving.

One hot summer day in the early 1970s, Prigmore was in his office at the Medical Center when word began circulating that a Razorback football player, a lineman from South Arkansas, had arrived in an ambulance. He'd fallen out of a pickup truck, and it appeared there might be spinal cord damage. Prigmore hustled down to the neurology floor, where the player had been moved. He was shocked at what he found.

With a whirlwind of commands, the neurology floor came under Frank Broyles's jurisdiction. He lined up the staff as if they were freshmen at fall football tryouts. “Our chief of neurology,” Prigmore recalls, “was a quiet and unassuming guy, and he just stepped back when Broyles and his entourage came through. Broyles wasn't trying to medically treat the kid, but he just took over, saying he needed this type of bed and that kind of room, and calling out orders to nurses.”

An hour later, without asking anyone for permission, Broyles hosted a press conference in the neurology wing.

 

The 1986–87 season was
a bit better than Richardson's first year, but he was preoccupied with Yvonne. Andy Stoglin would coach the team when Richardson couldn't be in Fayetteville, and the alternating coaches certainly didn't help the Razorbacks. They couldn't get any momentum, although they beat Kansas, Ohio Sate, and Cal, and were 8-4 before the league season. Then Yvonne got worse.

The back-and-forth trips to Tulsa and St. Francis Hospital, where Yvonne had been nearly full-time, were taking their toll on everyone. Transfusions, bone-marrow transplants, chemotherapy, a journey to the Mayo Clinic—nothing improved Yvonne's situation. At one point, fungus appeared on her lung, and that worried the doctors. They had to break her rib to get to the lung.