Two Men Remembered...

Two men passed away this week. One of them made the national headlines, the other received a headline or two in the local paper, The Arizona Daily Star.

One made his living on the sidelines adjacent to a hardwood floor, the other swept particles of hair from the floor into a tray at his place of business, a barbershop on 6th Avenue in downtown Tucson.

Both men left a legacy that would take more than a couple of bold headlines to do them justice. In fact, a book or two wouldn't be enough to chronicle the lives and the deeds of these important men. They were both pioneers in their own right, one was born in 1910, the other entered this world on an August day in 1921.

The older of the two gentlemen was a teacher, a disciplinarian, a revered basketball coach. He was simply known in the sports world as Coach Wooden. John Wooden, the Wizard of Westwood, led UCLA to 10 NCAA Championships. He won 620 games at UCLA, and if you include his 44 victories at Indiana State, prior to his arrival in LA, you'd come up with a win total of 664. An All-American player at Purdue, Wooden was inducted into the National Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 1960 and again as a coach in 1972.

 he hardware in his trophy case is mind boggling, but it was the lives he touched in his 99 years that is his biggest legacy. You couldn't build a trophy that big. The players who went through his tutelage learned about life on and off the hardwood floor. The basketball court was Wooden's office and the players were his students.

The younger man who passed away last week was on this earth 88 years. His name: Johnny Gibson.

Gibson touched the lives of many Tucsonans, maybe not on a national scale, but within the confines of a 25 mile radius in and around the Old Pueblo. He cut my locks when I was a young boy. I was in his barber chair all of 20 minutes. I didn't know too much about the man at the time. I was to busy squirming in the chair.

What I didn't know was the man was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for his service as a paratrooper in WW2, and as a medic, he jumped into Normandy on D-Day. Later in life, he was a fitness guru, a Mr. Arizona in 1950, and an eight-time state of Arizona weightlifting champ. But to his customers, he was affectionately known as the "Mayor of 6th Avenue" as he ran the Johnny Gibson Barbershop from 1949 til 2001. A lot of children squirmed in his barber chair over those years and I am proud to say I was one of them.

As far as Mr. Wooden goes, I brushed by him once at McKale. Two very good men were lost to us last week. Their accomplishments will be remembered for a long time to come.