The Loss of a D-B Legend

 

Betty Cook, the forever librarian at D-B

Betty Jean Cook began her freshman year at Dobyns-Bennett in September 1947. She essentially never left.

“I graduated in June 1951 and I started with the school system in July. I tell the students they never let me graduate.”

For the next 56 years she worked at D-B, in the library, in the principal’s office, and in the superintendent’s office.

When she retired in September 2008, after 56 years – 60 years if you count her four high school years – at Dobyns-Bennett, I wrote a column about the end of the Betty Cook Era at D-B.

Betty Jean Cook died Monday at age 91.

Here is my tribute to Betty Jean:

 

Betty Cook in 1956

The Kingsport school system doesn’t keep records on workplace longevity (they can tell you how many games the basketball team has won) but this has to be a record: 56 years.

Betty Cook has outlasted 14 different principals, seven superintendents, eleven head football coaches, seven head basketball coaches, four head baseball coaches, nine band directors and eleven librarians.

“I told the kids I don’t know how to fill out a resume. I’ve never had another job. I’ve never attended another church (Pleasant View Baptist). And I’ve lived where I live since I was 4 or 5.”

56 years.

“It doesn’t seem that long. I’ve enjoyed my work. When I see all the people that went here that have been successful it makes me feel good that I might have played a part in that.”

Betty was hired by Ross N. Robinson, who was then superintendent of city schools, on the recommendation of then assistant principal Ruth Ramer. She worked for a few weeks in Robinson’s office, then transferred to the library, where she’s been almost ever since. “I left the library for a few years and worked for Dr. Lay as his secretary. He decided to retire and Dr. Evans asked if I’d like to move back to the library.”

Betty can’t remember exactly but she thinks she started out at $156 a month.

56 years.

She has personal connections to so many of her colleagues. When Principal Earl Lovelace was a student at D-B, Betty was the principal’s secretary. She remembers he was on the baseball team and saw someone sideswipe her car. “He got the license number and brought it to me. He said the other day he never thought when he left here 45 years ago that someday he would be accepting my resignation.”

She remembers football coach Graham Clark as a little boy from Litz Manor hanging around outside the stadium where she ran the ticket office. “I thought he didn’t have much money so I would let him in free.”

56 years. Oh what she’s seen in those 56 years.

“The people I graduated with, their children came here. Then their grandchildren and now their great grandchildren. It’s been a fun place to work, mostly. I have thoroughly enjoyed the students and the faculty.”

The biggest difference between today and when she started? The kids, of course. But she still loves them. “They just have too much pressure on them today. We say they don’t know how to have fun.”

56 years. All those principals and coaches and students, the old D-B to the new D-B. She saw teachers hired and retired.

No one else will ever have that kind of record at D-B. She was D-B’s greatest resource. When someone wondered about the namesake of the east side middle school, Betty could say, “Ross Robinson, he hired me.”

Yesterday she walked out of D-B and headed to her Park Street home for the final time.

“They said you’d know when to get out. It’s just time.”

What’s next for Betty Cook? “Not anything for awhile. Just enjoy myself.”

She enjoyed 16 years of retirement.

 

High scoring college basketball players 

Caitlin Clark, the star basketball player from Iowa, sits atop the NCAA record book as the most prolific scorer in college basketball history, women or men.

Over her four years, she has scored 3,771 points with perhaps as many as six games remaining in the NCAA tournament this month.

But despite what you may hear, she is not the top all-time scorer in college basketball. Just the top NCAA scorer. The NCAA didn’t begin sanctioning women’s basketball until 1982.

If you are old enough, you may remember the days of Immaculata and Delta State, powerhouse schools in the women’s’ game long before the NCAA decided to get in on the action. They all played under the banner of the AIAW, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, which sponsored a national tournament from 1972 till 1982. Lynnette Woodard of Kansas held the AIAW record until Clark surpassed it in February.

There is still one record ahead of her, although you may not have heard about it.

Pearl Moore of Francis Marion College in Florence, South Carolina holds the all-time scoring record with 4,061 points over four seasons. Moore’s record is sometimes diminished because she played at a small school. Francis Marion is usually identified as “tiny Francis Marion” but it wasn’t that tiny. In 1973, when Moore enrolled, it had 1,625 students.

Moore had another disadvantage – there was no three-point shot during her college years, 1973-1977, and no shot clock.

Moore’s coach at Francis Marion, Sylvia Hatchell, who later won an NCAA women’s title at North Carolina, used to describe Moore’s three-point shot in the days before a three point circle. “She would be on a breakaway and she would actually slow down so the other team could catch up. Then she would draw a foul as she made the lay-up.”

(Hatchell graduated from Carson-Newman and got her masters at Tennessee.)

Moore’s achievement was given credence in 1979 when she was featured in the comic strip “According to Guinness.” Isn’t the Guinness Book of World Records” the reference used to solve all arguments?

So there you have it, Pearl Moore is the Greatest Scorer in college basketball history.  

 

 If Caitlin Clark were to average 40 points in her final six games in the tournament – and that assumes her team makes it to the national championship game – she would finish with 4,011 points, still 50 shy of Pearl Moore.

 

All the attention to Caitlin Clark’s scoring has also brought renewed attention to another great scorer, the greatest high school basketball player I ever saw in person.

 

In the fall of 1965, I was a freshman at Duke. It was definitely a different era. Students didn’t even have to have tickets to the games. We just lined up at the gym door, showed our student ID to the ticket taker and then grabbed a seat in one of the student sections: lower sidelines or end zones.

On December 10, Duke played UCLA in a much anticipated match up. UCLA was the defending national champion and ranked number one, although their best player, a freshman named Lew Alcindor, had to stay back in Los Angeles.

So the Duke freshman team played a local junior college, Southwood, in the preliminary to UCLA.

These frosh games were usually an opportunity for the fans to warm up, to get our voices stretched out and our cheers in synch.

Southwood had a guard who was a perfect target for our insults. He had big floppy hair and socks that wouldn’t stay up with rubber bands, as much because of his bony legs as the sock size. So we started razzing him. Usually this would panic an opponent, especially a freshman opponent.

But not this kid. He liked it. He gave us grins and winks.

And he gave us the game of a lifetime.

He played what today would be called the point guard. He brought the ball up court. First time up he crossed mid-court and launched what had to be a 40-foot shot. Swish.

We really started razzing him then.

So next time down the court, he did the same thing. With the same result. Swish.

He gave us a look, but not an angry look. It was a look that said, Watch this.

By the third time our guards got the message and came out to guard him. He gave them one juke fake and took off for an easy lay-up.

Our freshman coach double-teamed him from then on. Didn’t matter. He could shoot over any two guys; anywhere from 40-feet in, he was a threat. He could dribble around any two guys. And he could pass over, under, around or through our entire team.

You’ve heard of players who were unstoppable. He was the definition of unstoppable.

Once near the end of the first half he was trapped at midcourt. He flipped a pass behind his back, between two of our defenders, to a man wide open under the goal.

Our fans gave him a standing ovation.

The Duke freshmen ended up winning the game but that Southwood kid, name of Pete Maravich, won the crowd.

 

Pete Maravich at Raleigh Broughton High in 1964

There is a Kingsport connection here. When I was a sophomore and sitting way down the bench on the basketball team, I would occasionally get summoned to play against the varsity. I hated having to guard Leroy Fisher, who was four inches taller and four times better. Charles Hunley could just back into me and push me under the goal. But the guy I hated to guard the most was Worley Ward, a gangly six-six center with long, long arms. Worley didn’t even start until the tournament, when he came on strong, earning All-State Tournament team and a scholarship offer from North Carolina State. He came back home the next summer telling us about the coach’s son, a skinny kid who dribbled a basketball everywhere he went. Worley said the players would pile in a car to go get a bite to eat, and the coach’s kid would ride shotgun with the window down, dribbling the ball on the pavement as the car barreled down the street.

The N.C. State coach was Press Maravich and the kid was Pete, who would follow his dad to LSU for the next season. And rewrite the record book.

Pete scored 3,667 points in his three years at LSU, years without a three-point shot or a shot clock.

Pete with his dad Press - look how young Pete looks

Yeah, it was a different era for Pete and for Pearl.

I’m sure if Caitlin Clark had played then, she would have been every bit as dominant as she is today.