Memoirs of a Walsh High Basketball Junkie - A Putnam Brother & Hayseed from Iowa

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Go Gaels

You know there is a time and a place for everything and now that it has been a lot of years since the emergence of the Walsh High basketball dynasty of the 1960's I guess I can comment on what I know of the first half of the decade that laid the foundation for the dynasty.

First to address some background.  When Mike, Bob and I lived in Iowa City we had a basketball court in the attic of our garage.  Our dad played for Iowa City High School and graduated from the University of Iowa so we were hard core Iowa fans from birth.

In fact even after we moved to Ottumwa we returned to Iowa City every weekend for football games and cheered the Hawkeyes on to two Rose Bowl championships in the late 1950's.  When possible we also came back for basketball games, especially when Iowa was playing Ohio State and other legendary teams of the time.

When we lived in Iowa City we were supposed to go to St. Mary's High School and even our high school to be was a basketball powerhouse, thus increasing our desire to excel in order to make the team when we got to high school.

In fact after we moved to Ottumwa the Iowa City St. Mary's team won the Iowa State Class B high school championship in 1956 and 1957 and finished second in 1958, such was the quality of the players and organizations in our hometown.

Once in Ottumwa a different set of issues was involved as the Walsh Gaels had no legacy, in fact they even had no home as they played in the old Ottumwa High School practice court with the track overhead.

We joined the YMCA leagues in 7th and 8th grades where we played with and against the future stars of Ottumwa High School and together we made the All Star teams.  In other words, long before the so called bitter rivalry between Walsh and OHS which supposedly culminated in the 1963 District championship we were competitors and we were friends.

I think people perceived something that was never there.  We were fierce competitors in Little League, Babe Ruth and basketball but were always able to leave the game behind after it was over.  That was the nature of competition and sportsmanship.  If we had to lose in the tournament it might just as well be to OHS.

Of course we didn't really lose to OHS in that 1963-64 war did we?

Since Walsh never had enough students to mount a football team, my first love as a sport, we were also big supporters of the OHS Bulldogs and went to every home football game on Friday nights.

So along comes high school and Mike spent his freshman year at the old Walsh in South Ottumwa.  By the next year when I was a freshman we moved to the Airbase 12 miles away from Ottumwa into an abandoned building while work began on a new high school.

For basketball practice the team would have to get back to town and go to the civic auditorium basement, crawling through the city road vehicles and snow plows to a court, concrete of course, dimly lit, with no heat, and a steel girder directly over the baskets.

Needless to say there was no hot water for showers and in addition to having your shots blocked by freezing defenders you might have your vision blocked by the smoke pouring out of your mouth from the extreme cold.  Did I mention that the baskets were mounted on the coliseum walls so if you were charging to the basket for a lay in a second after the ball left your hand you crashed into the concrete wall?

In truth the conditions and the environment were far more suited for a Dicken's novel than for the foundation of a basketball dynasty.

Official games were played in the OHS practice gym with the running track above and you often had to strain to hear the ref when track runners were pounding overhead.  On one side bleachers pulled out from the wall and seated about 100 people (slight under-exaggeration).  The overflow had to stand on the track high above the game.

My freshman and sophomore years were spent commuting between the airbase, auditorium basement and practice court with the track overhead but something went right because we were 21-2 the first year I got to play varsity, in '61-62.

That was when I made a decision that Walsh had the potential to become good, really good, but no one would ever know around the state.  It became my mission to be the secret source of all Walsh basketball statistics for every major news outlet in the state.

Every week under a pen name from my sophomore year on I submitted weekly background for stories to the top newspapers, radio and TV stations from Des Moines to Dubuque, Davenport to Iowa City about the achievements of the Walsh Gaels.  Sports writers and broadcasters were inundated with Walsh info and stats and a running update of the career statistics of my brother Mike.  These same people were the ones who voted for the top ten basketball teams in the state in each class.

Only two people really knew what I was doing those three years because I had to share the strategy in order to be successful.  One was my close friend and sports editor for the Ottumwa Courier Alan Hoskins because I knew the sports people from around the state would want follow up info from a local reporter.

The second was my principal once we moved into the new Walsh High School, Father Ryan, aka Mister Golden Gloves, famous writer, etc., etc.  Now Father understood the value of publicity and I needed to stay on his good side because I was constantly in trouble with teachers, coaches and priests.

Like the time we borrowed a truck with a crane to move a 3000 pound bell out of the backyard of some unsuspecting people and mounted it as a victory bell at the airbase to generate school spirit.  I just knew we were going to have a great team and wanted to do something for the school.  Of course we had no driver's licenses nor permission to take the bell and we were all sworn to secrecy so no one knew from whence it came.

That is until photographer Michael Lemberger showed up one fateful day and took a school picture for the newspaper with the entire student body surrounding the bell out at the airbase.  The rightful owners had reported it missing and we did intend to return it after the last game of our first winning season but one day they found their missing bell on the front page of the Courier and eventually the cops forced a confession from us.  Still, we did get to keep it until after the last game since we would not be returning to the airbase the next year.

As for my secret journalism efforts, by the time we moved into the new school in 1963 Walsh was ranked number 1 in the state in class B where we stayed for two years.  My brother was all state his junior year and All American his senior year and Walsh, well we went 21-2, 22-2, 21-2 and 20-5 the four years I was there.

Mike broke the career scoring record in Iowa basketball and from 1960-64 Walsh had one of the best four year records in state history at 84-11, all while having to play schools up to 12 times as large during the tournaments.  At least I had something to write about those years.

The power of the press paid off as it helped us get the top ranking and kept me from getting expelled.  Of course Alan Hoskins and Father Ryan protected my secret.  It also might explain yet another mystery at Walsh.

Through no fault of my own (of course) I had been kicked out of journalism class from November until I graduated my senior year yet I somehow remained on the staff of the Unitas newspaper and was co-editor of the yearbook with Maureen Dessert.  Then I got the outstanding journalism award at commencement.  Perhaps the years of ghost writing were secretly recognized.

But there is more to the Walsh story and this part few know about.  I mentioned this to my friend Doug Potter who does an excellent job keeping the natives informed and now I will share it with you.

There is a class issue regarding Walsh basketball that often goes unnoticed like most class issues.  We all recognize that a team is made up of five or more key players but it was rather unusual that three of us were brothers and were starters for two years.

In the past 55 years Iowa boys high school basketball had 49 split state champions (two or more classes) and 6 single state champions.  The single champions were from 1960 - 1966.  My brothers and I played from 1959 - 1965.  In other words we played in 5 of the 6 single state champion years, and every year more than one of us played together there was only a single state champion.

Walsh was ranked #1 in class B both years the three of us started.  The highest state tourney finish by Walsh during the single champion years was 1964 when we reached the Sweet 16 before losing to eventual state runner up Cedar Rapids Jefferson.

Ottumwa High and Cedar Rapids Jefferson who knocked Walsh out of the state tourney in 1963 and 1964 both were in the top 15 largest high schools in the state for enrollment with over 1,500 students.  Walsh ranked about 360th in enrollment in Iowa with about 125 students.  Both times Walsh lost to schools 12 times larger.

By the way, that Sweet 16 finish in the 1964 season when I was a senior was the first time I got to play back in my home town, Iowa City, and finally I got to play in the University of Iowa field house before 14,000 fans, a far cry from the few hundred just three years earlier.

A few other notes from my ghost writing days.

In my three varsity years we never lost a home game.

Our worst record those years was 20-5.

Every year after winning sectionals we played Class A or AA teams from much larger schools.

During the time we played there were 3 All Americans from Iowa, Mike Putnam, Jerry Waugh from Mt. Ayr and Jim Cummins from Cedar Rapids Regis.

Regis won the single state championship in 1962 and finished 2nd in 1963 and Cummins went on to become a famous NBC News reporter.

Walsh in 1962-63 played against both other Iowa High School All Americans during the season, Cummins once and Waugh twice.

There were a whole lot of scoring and other records and Mike was inducted into the Iowa High School Basketball Hall of Fame for holding the career scoring record for some time.

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What does a Spanish Civil War revolutionary, The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, one of the most influential architects of the 20th century and Walsh High School in Ottumwa, Iowa have in common?

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Felix Candela

Probably unbeknownst to most people from Ottumwa when the new Walsh High School opened in 1962 students stepped into an unusual building using a design by one of the most famous architects of the 20th century, Felix Candela.

Born in Madrid, Spain in 1910, Candela was a national sports champion in Spain and a noted award-winning architect who was pursuing graduate studies in Germany when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936.

He left school to return to Spain and fight for the Republic against Franco and when Franco won he slipped into a refugee camp in France to avoid becoming a prisoner of the Franco regime.  In 1939 he was selected for relocation to Mexico and moved to his new home.

In Mexico Candela pioneered the use of thin shelled concrete in building construction and among the nearly 1,000 buildings he designed were the revolutionary 1968 Olympic Stadium in Mexico City and the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

The Guadalupe Basilica is the most popular Catholic pilgrimage site in the world drawing over 20 million visitors annually to see the tilma of Juan Diego with the image of Our Lady that was made December 12, 1531.

As a point of reference, at that time America had not been settled and Henry 8th was still King of England.

Candela developed a thin shelled concrete material for use in buildings called the "hyperbolic paraboloid" and his structures are located in Mexico, the United States, Spain, Venezuela, Columbia, Peru, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Great Britain and Norway.

My father, Wayne E. Putnam arranged with Felix to use his designs for the new Walsh High School as well as our home overlooking the Ottumwa Country Club.  And that is how all those pieces in the title tie together. Felix Candela, a very nice man and world renowned architect whose world famous "hyperbolic paraboloid" design was incorporated into Walsh High School.

Local architects for both of the projects were Ken Steffen and Steve Stoltz.

Felix moved with his family to the United States in 1971 and taught at Harvard University and the University of Illinois.  He died at the age of 87 while living in North Carolina.

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Tara the Cat - America's New Hero

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The Games People Play Part 4 - Voodoo Economics - Who Loses?

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Oh the Games People Play Now

Every night and every day now

Never meaning what they say now

Never saying what they mean now

Where is Dr. Who when you need him?  We gotta get out of this place...

There are a few things they forgot to teach us in Economics 101 and they have nothing to do with algorithms, exchange rates, return on investment or earned income.  You see, basic economics is a mathematical function but the underlying factor in American Capitalism has nothing to do with mathematics.

Our system of capitalism has fallen into the age old trap of being controlled by ethics and morality rather than math tables and the masters of capitalism are those who manipulate the system for only one purpose, the accumulation of wealth and the power that comes with it.

Once upon a time in America there was such a thing as a fair and relatively honest system but it has long been banished to the land of fairy tales and mythology as if it never really existed in the first place.

Now we eat, sleep and dream the lies that have been implanted in us as if we never knew better in the first place.  Economics must be derived from the word control because that is what it is all about and because control is what the 1% of the population have over all the money earned by the 99% .

In my studies and experience over the years there are a handful of guiding principles I found in all those who make their fortunes on the backs of the middle class.

1. OPM -  Always use "Other People's Money" to make money.

2. DOY -  Always make the little people "Dependent On You".

3. DTBS - Always "Dazzle Them with Bull Shit" to keep them confused.

4. WCF -  Always "Work to Create Fear" to keep people in line.

   

As a result, if we have any disposable income, money we don't need to survive, we invest it in the stock markets based on the promise to grow your portfolio.  Then, as a card-carrying member of what I call the Raggedy People, we are denied the right to buy new stock issues at the offering price.

Nor are we allowed to have our money invested by the massive computer generated strategies of the super rich (high frequency trading) in which they intercept your pension fund strategy and beat you to the punch.

We are drowning in financial news, analysis and misinformation.  What we need is a little truth.  Here is some.

On October 9, 2007 the Dow Jones hit 14,164.  By March 6, 2009 it collapsed to 6,443, a loss of 54% of it's value.  That is what happened to your investments and pension funds other than your home equity which was also crashing.

As of today, May 13, 2014 it has risen to 16,715, an astonishing increase of 259% in just shy of 4 years.  Ask yourself, do you now have almost 3 times as much money from investments, or in your pension or 401k as you did just 4 years ago?

As far as stocks, the wealthiest 10% of Americans own 80% of all stock.

Just this year it was reported that the wealthiest 1% of Americans possess 40% of the nation's wealth while the bottom 80% possess 7% of the wealth.  The other 19% just below the super rich possess 50.5% of the nation's wealth.  As a result, the top 20% control 90% of all the nation's wealth.

Of course these are the people sucking the stock market profits up.

So why invest in the market - don't.  You are only padding the pockets of those who could care less about you.  And while you are at it demand that Congress protect the pension and 401k funds managed by the rich as these funds seem to make a lot less money than the stocks owned by the people doing the managing.

It is too easy to use your money to manipulate the market so the high frequency boys can steal a few hundred million or billion dollars a day at your expense.

What can we do?  Be aware of how you are being used.  Keep abreast of the market fluctuations and demand to know from your broker or pension manager why you aren't benefiting just like the rich.

Pay attention to all the things they say are right like inflation, are you really not seeing massive increases in health care and food, and wild changes in gasoline?  How could we be at a 1-2% inflation when the price of meat can double?

The unemployment rate is down but not because of economic recovery but because millions of  people have dropped out of the labor force because they can't find jobs.

In America all people are entitled to equal opportunity but when it comes to capitalism that is far from the truth.  Demand answers to how your money is being manipulated.  Demand now before it is too late.

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The Games People Play Part 3 - Can Hillary Clinton run on Bill Clinton's Legacy?

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Oh the Games People Play Now

Every night and every day now

Never meaning what they say now

Never saying what they mean now

Seems the trial balloons are flying through the air as Hillary Clinton continues to toy with the idea of a presidential run yet the news media continues to push her possible candidacy while making no effort to qualify or quantify the results of her record.

No doubt Hillary would make a formidable candidate as the Clinton machine long ago mastered the art of fund raising and aren't presidential politics in America all about MONEY regardless of qualification?

But her campaign strategy seems to be dependent on the news media not doing their job when it comes to due diligence regarding candidates.  Now clearly the media love affair with the Clinton's predates the media love affair with Obama but now that Obama has demonstrated the media was wrong they have had to shift their love to Hillary as the last hope for liberal reform.

Yet the media is living a lie based on the record, as it seems history, and even recent history, runs contrary to the media depiction of Hillary.  For one she is not liberal.

For another, the media is prepared to blame Obama for all the foreign relations disasters of this Administration when as Secretary of State Hillary was the Administration person most responsible for policy development and implementation.

Here is just a partial record:

• Iraq and Afghanistan are drifting farther and farther from US influence in spite of the billions and billions of dollars this Administration spent.

• The Arab spring has resulted in new governments from Egypt to Libya and the Arab states distrust the US more than ever.

• The Israeli and Palestine peace talks have once again broken down leaving tension higher than ever.

• The Administration attempts to stop nuclear proliferation in Iran have failed and nothing is being done.

• The Administration threats to dump the President of Syria and liberate the people because Assad "crossed the line in the sand" is an international joke and policy disaster.

• The Administration response to the Benghazi fiasco has demonstrated a serious neglect of State Department security, and failure to make any effort to save our four diplomats who were murdered.

• The Administration failed to recognize any threat to the Ukraine from Russia until the Russians had already annexed Crimea and the eastern Ukraine was totally destabilized.

 

• We have done nothing to help Mexico in their drug wars on the American border as more than 120,000 Mexicans were killed and another 27,000 are missing since 2006.

• The Administration failure to approve the Keystone Pipeline to ship Canadian crude oil to American refineries has alienated our best ally and neighbor to the north.

All of this has happened while Hillary was Secretary of State.  Yet the news media acts as if she had nothing to do with it, it was just Obama's fault.

Still the Clinton people are carefully working to transfer media focus from the litany of policy disasters she was responsible for under Obama to what they consider to be President Bill Clinton's economic achievements while she was First Lady, even though she was not responsible for them.

So let's play the game.  If she had no official standing in economics as First Lady then her influence came from her intimacy with her husband and the media would try to convince us she influenced him through such intimacy.

When one thinks of the proliferation of the president as a ladies man and looks at the record of conquests admitted and reported we come up with the following list of ladies in Bill Clinton's life from the time he was governor of Arkansas through his presidency.

Paula Jones - Gennifer Flowers - Kathleen Willey - Monica Lewinsky - Juanita Broaddrick - Elizabeth Ward Gracen

One wonders how Bill Clinton had any time to be intimate with his wife Hillary and who knows if this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the presidential prowess.  It seems pretty doubtful such intimacy could have occurred and clearly defining economic policy was not the president's goal in intimacy.

Still we are expected to believe she was a major force in his economic policy.  If you really look at the record the major economic policies that led to accelerated growth generated by Clinton came from co-opting the Republican platform, not through bedside manners.

Clinton's Budget Reduction Act cut spending and cut taxes for over 12 million Americans.  He passed a Balanced Budget bill and reduced the deficit, again cutting taxes for millions of Americans.  He championed the NAFTA free trade treaty with Canada and Mexico.  All of these policies were approved on bi-partisan votes and all came from the Republican platform including his new Federalism initiatives to reduce central government control and transfer powers to the states.

The whole concept that they were a result of Hillary's efforts is laughable at best, sheer lunacy at worst.  More important, to expect the American public to credit Hillary with Bill Clinton's economic achievements indicates a rather dark and foreboding cloud has descended over our news media as truth, facts and history have been distorted, twisted and mutilated in an effort to get her elected.

If they continue to promote Hillary through such tactics then America needs to find a new source of news and truth.  One day American voters, progressives and moderates, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, and yes, even the one third of the vote totally ignored by the media and our two party system, the Independents, will wake up and realize they have been victims of an unethical political system that simply takes their vote for granted because the so called "experts" think Americans are too dumb to think for themselves.

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