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White, Former ORU Coach, Passes On
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Being a new school back in 1965, ORU wasn't expected to make much of an impression in its first year of athletic competition. But the fledgling Titans finished 16-10 while playing a freshman schedule. In Bill White's next three years as head coach, the team was 17-9, 18-6, and 14-10. A winning tradition had been established. It would be twelve years before ORU suffered its first losing season. In the meantime, there were four trips to the NIT and one to the NCAA Tournament.
Dr. Lavoy Hatchett came to ORU in 1965 to teach mathematics. He had known Bill White in Oklahoma City.
"As time drew near for the basketball season to begin," Dr. Hatchett remembered, "Bill asked if I would help out with the scoring of the games. I even got to help 'oversee' the concession stand as a 'bonus.'" Hatchett remained the official scorer for the team until 1998.
Bill White had another small favor to ask that first year.
"Along about February," Hatchett said, "Bill called me into his office and said, 'I've worked up your baseball schedule. You had better start getting a team together and get some practice going.' That was it--I was now Coach Hatchett, the first baseball coach at ORU."
White didn't go any easier on his players. Dr. Ralph Fagin (70), a player on White's 1968-69 team, is putting it kindly when he says, "He would challenge you.
"He was the Vince Lombardi of basketball," Fagin laughed. ORU used to have what were known as minimesters, with a long Christmas break. White's three-a-day workouts, designed to maximize practice time, "were legendary. He worked us! The highlight of those days was the half-hour when we would take a break and could watch 'Mr. Ed.'
"Boot camp couldn't have been tougher than that."
Joe Girard (84) knew a different Bill White: the man who rolled up his sleeves and helped with Summer Spruce-Up. White's wife, Lois, was working in Admissions when Spruce-Up began in 1994, and the two of them ran the program through 1997.
"Lois stayed at the desk, and Bill was the runaround guy," Girard said. "He worked with the paint crew quite a lot. He showed me the ropes as far as painting the dorms was concerned. My second year, he let me lead a crew." That meant a lot to Girard, who appreciated the chance to hold a leadership role.
White, he said, was good at assessing people's abilities. "He knew who was better than others" at the various Spruce-Up tasks. Equally important, "he knew how to deal with all sorts of people, and how to motivate them. He had a great sense of humor, but he was also very straightforward. He'd joke around with me and say something like, 'You're not carrying your weight.'" When White was around, the work got done. "He kept things running smoothly."
White also coached basketball at Emmanuel College (Ga.), Corpus Christi College (Tex.), and Pan American University (Tex.), but he'll be remembered for more than his contributions to the game.
"I hope to carry on the tradition of what I learned from Bill," Girard said. And that lesson was "to take the opportunity to help other people."
When Bernis Duke came to ORU in 1965, it was to teach physical education and serve as assistant basketball coach. He says Bill White "fit in with the ministry because of his Christian beliefs and background. He knew the position we were in as a new school, and what President Roberts wanted the team to be: an outreach of the ministry."
Duke remembers a night in Georgia back in the 1960s when the team had a bad game. White, he said, "drove them straight home in a station wagon." On the way, they were running out of gas, so White pulled into a filling station. "He asked the attendant if they could use the rest room, and the answer was, 'Yes, but not the black guys.'" White told him to forget the gas. They pushed the car about a half block to another filling station.
"The main thing I remember about Bill," Duke said, "is that he was in tune with the purposes of ORU, and he incorporated that into the philosophy of what the athletic department should be."
He was the right man in the right place at the right time.
