The news clipping in the wallet: A conversation with John Wooden

Fond memories are etched in our brains and, often, on yellowed, faded newspaper clippings carried in our wallets.

I got an e-mail Saturday from the R-J’s longtime pressman Dick Borghi, who recounted an encounter back in the early 1980s with the legendary and now late-John Wooden, the former UCLA basketball coach who died Friday night in Los Angeles at the age of 99.

Dick knew someone who put on motivational seminars and booked various speakers. He was at Caesar’s at Lake Tahoe where the guest speaker was Wooden. While the crew was setting, Dick mentioned that he knew people in Indiana, so the basketball great invited him to sit and chat for an hour or so.

“Something I will never forget, Dick writes, “this great man's most cherished possession of his past glories was a South Bend Tribune original clipping that he kept in his wallet — it was about him being the local high school All-Star guard who lead his team to win the state championship — this great man always remembered where he started and kept a piece of it with him — with all he accomplished later in life that article obviously was most precious to him.”

Wooden’s obituary in Saturday’s R-J reported that he had led Martinsville High School to the Indiana state basketball championship in 1927. He went on to Purdue, where he was a three-time consensus All-American and the Boilermakers were national champions his senior season.

Wooden led the Bruins to 10 NCAA championships, but of all the honors, all the milestones, all the championships, that clipping from his high school days was what he kept in his wallet.