CRAWFORD | My final Denny Crum moment, and a wink I will never forget

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- I feel fortunate to have had a few memorable moments with Hall of Fame Louisville coach Denny Crum, who died Tuesday at age 86. I don’t know that I’ll remember any of them more than my last.

The day they dedicated Denny Crum Hall, the coach showed up with his wife Susan, and he looked as good as I’d seen him in a while, decked out in a red sport coat with black checks. He wasn’t getting around great and couldn’t say too much, but he looked really good, and happy.

They dedicated the residence hall named after him, and brought him inside, where he sat on a couch and smiled for photos as people took turns saying hello to him, taking pictures with him. I pretty much spent the day taking pictures of him. For a year, I never knew which opportunity would be my last. But that day, I felt pretty certain that was it.

One of the great things about Denny is that people not only have memories of him from his basketball accomplishments, but they have personal memories, have met him, have photos with him, have a ball he signed for them, or a loved one. They have pieces of him, and those pieces are more precious to all of us now.

At some point, I saw Denny sitting on the couch by himself, amid this crowd taking in the sights of the new dormitory. On a large screen TV across the way, they had an old Louisville basketball game playing. The game had captured his attention. I could tell he was really lost in it. And I started snapping frames.

I liked the way he was sitting on the sofa, his arm laid across the back, and I slid over so that I could get some pictures of him with a display of his photo and name and some balloons in the background.

Eileen Nelson-Smith, a close friend of the Crums, was standing nearby, and said, “You got the shot.”

At that, Crum’s attention moved to me and the camera. And he grinned. And then he winked. Eileen saw it and said, “Did you get the wink? Wink again!” And he did.

Turns out, I got both winks. And I had my last moment with the Hall of Fame coach.

I knew Crum, and liked him, and we got along. But it was a reporter-coach relationship. I would see him only once or twice more, at Louisville basketball games, in a wheelchair, watching.

But I knew I’d had my final moment. I don’t really think that moment was about me. I think it was Crum winking, telling people that though he couldn’t say it like he once did, he loved them, and that he was going to be fine, and in some ways, that they were too.

It doesn’t feel fine right now. After posting the story I’d written in anticipation of the coach’s death, I thought of how many giants we’ve lost in Louisville. Muhammad Ali. Howard Schnellenberger. Paul Hornung. Wes Unseld. Denny Crum.

Maybe it’s my age, but it seems we’re left with lots of stars, but I don’t know who the giants are that the young reporters in my building will write about and talk about.

I had other moments with Crum. In addition to my last, I can remember my first, in Hawaii, where Louisville had just played a game a few days before heading to Maui for the Maui Invitational. It was the start of Crum’s final season. The game was over and Kenny Klein (a giant himself, media division) offered me a ride back to the hotel. I piled into an SUV with Kenny in the back seat, and Jock Sutherland and Denny in the front. Maybe Paul Rogers was in the car too.

Denny drove as if he were in a road race. At one point, Jock said, “Denny that sign says, ‘No turns.’”

“Aww,” Denny answered, “that’s just for tourists” and we turned and sped on.

I didn’t know it then, but I would hitch maybe 2 more rides with college basketball coaches my whole career. That little moment got more special over the years.

When they dedicated the court at Freedom Hall in 2007, I was on my way into the game on a cold and windy February night, approaching the door in the back of Freedom Hall where the media went in. A group of bundled up people were in front of me going in and it wasn’t until I was all the way there that I saw that Denny Crum was holding the door.

I started to walk in but couldn’t and stepped over and said, “I can’t let you hold the door for me tonight.”

I needed to hold it for him. The late, great Courier-Journal editor David Hawpe gave me a hard time for doing that when I wrote about it in my column the next day. But I have never regretted it.

Denny had a stormy relationship with the newspaper, and I didn’t expect him to be very hospitable when I took over the beat. The news that year was hard. There were leaks about his job future. It was messy and not befitting a Hall of Fame coach who had done so much for the city and university.

Crum was under a great deal of stress all season and things got uglier and more stressful as the season went on.

But he was never anything but gracious to me. The last time I talked to him before his retirement deal was announced, the pressure was on. We had heard from several sources that a deal was close, and I went to practice to talk to him.

We were discussing it, when an assistant coach came over to ask him what drill to run next, since practice had long since started. Denny waved his hands and said, “Whatever you want,” and turned back to talk to me.

“I haven’t been shown a deal,” he told me. “But if they show me a package I can live with, I’ll accept it.”

You will never see a more candid statement than that from a coach under those stressful circumstances. Denny Crum may have had a deer stand out behind his house (and that was another moment, visiting his farm with Rick Bozich and Mike Lacett of WDRB), but he did not have a bunker.

Soon after that little interview, Denny Crum walked away gracefully, and never really looked back, didn’t say a cross word.

None of us knows how many slights he faced in the coming years. He didn’t get prime tickets to games. The athletics department and the basketball program he helped to build, for a long time, didn’t much acknowledge him. But Denny, as part of his retirement package, worked for the university president. Even after he was made to give up his office and move to another one, he did, without complaint.

Finally, his deal ended and was not renewed by the university. Some younger fans and some in the media questioned why the school was still paying him more than $300,000 a year anyway. I promise, the university got more than it gave in that deal.

Somewhere in the midst of all that, a lot of us, and I include myself, would’ve said, “Forget it. If they don’t want me, I’ll just move on.” He certainly had the means to live anywhere and do anything.

Denny never left. He stayed and kept working for the university, because he realized it was about a whole lot more than one sport. It was about people all over the institution, in athletics and academics and administration. It was about young people. It was loyalty that was more remarkable than many of us probably know.

And it was about love. Denny never set foot outside his door that he didn’t experience the overwhelming love that this community had for him. All the trophies he won, the banners he hung, those were great, but what kept him here is the same thing that kept him here when UCLA called offering more money – the people.

You kept him here, Louisville. Just like you’ve kept so many out-of-towners who thought they were coming here for a pit stop and wound up here the rest of their lives. He was one of you. And he was one of us.

Denny could read any room. He knew the community’s love for him would carry the day. It was the clamoring of fans, their affection for and dedication to him, that put his name on an overpass (not a street, mind you), and then on the basketball court. It took a while. But it did. In recent years, belatedly, it went onto a building.

Which, I guess, brings me back to that final moment, there in Denny Crum Hall, with alumni and administrators, former players, fans and students all around. And that wink.

The old coach winning again, one last time.

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