Events & Discoveries

The furor caused Myers to do a little moralizing, himself.

"I don't think it's the proper thing," he said, "to say you're going to do something and then not do it."

Then as he waved farewell to his former associates at Iowa State, he commented matter-of-factly: "There may be a lot of people bitter, but that's their business."

You're confused? Just suppose you are an undergraduate at Iowa State, learning about character and the sanctity of contracts.

THE WICHITA CABAL

Ever since a roving Kansan spotted some 6 feet and 11 inches of attenuated adolescence named Chamberlain in a Philadelphia high school, Kansan eyes in particular and those of basketball in general have been peeled for another star like Wilt the Stilt. It was probably with this thought in mind that an alumnus of Wichita University a little over a year ago dropped a note to Basketball Coach Ralph Miller describing a young man he had just seen playing on the team of an all-Negro school in Amarillo, Texas. The boy in question, the note said in an offhand way, stood 6 feet 10 inches and seemed to be a competent basketball player. Did Coach Miller care?

The result was something akin to that which might occur if a Vladivostok scientist dropped a postcard to Khrushchev saying that he'd just taken a trip around the moon and would the party boss care to hear about it? Coach Miller, in short, was interested. The well-oiled wheels of athletic recruitment began to whirr. With the help of a Wichita alumnus who had once been one of the university's top Negro athletes, Miller succeeded in luring young Gene Wiley, the Texas giant, to Kansas to complete his high school education. The arguments employed were much the same as those used on Wilt Chamberlain: the promise of a better future and a better life. The only trouble was that Gene, who was no great shakes as a player, didn't even care much about basketball.

Nonetheless, the boy was 6 feet 10 inches tall, and, with this salient fact in mind, Coach Miller set about hatching his egg in strictest privacy. As everyone knows, this is an age of well-kept secrets. Only last week a scientist once employed in Washington complained to a congressional committee investigating government secrecy that some casual notes he once made on his hobby, archery, were still on file under a top-secret classification in the capital. But even in an era of concealment, some seven feet of youth is a tough secret to keep on the campus of a Kansas high school—something like hoping a South American condor in full flight might go unnoticed in a kennel of bird dogs.

Miller and his alumni urged local newspapermen to keep mum about Gene, and, hypnotized by the thought of future bylines proclaiming a new Wilt the Stilt in their midst, the boys complied. Meanwhile, too old (20) to play in high school competition anyway, Gene appears only as a spectator at the East High gym and gets his workouts in scrub games at a local Y. Most of the time he keeps himself both busy and inconspicuous at odd jobs to support himself and at his books in an effort to get to college.

What college? Well, that's just the point. Gene hasn't yet committed himself. What he really wants is to be a commercial artist. He's just beginning to think better about basketball, but he still gets knocked down a good deal even in those games at the Y. "I know it's all part of the game," he says, "but I'm just not used to it." But, he adds, "they do say I have a future here, not like in Amarillo." Even though Gene is not much of a basketball player even now, there is still that matter of his 6 feet 10 inches. With things being as they are—uncertain at best—it just seems best to all concerned to keep his presence in Kansas inconspicuous. "We just don't want a lot of people bothering the boy," is the way those most interested put it.