El Pasoan Ron Henry said it best: “I wish I was as rich as Nolan Richardson, not in money, but in friends.”
So many people, organizations and businesses contribute to Richardson’s charity golf tournament in El Paso each year that the list seemed endless when he tried to name them all at the tournament’s 26th annual banquet on May 31.
Richardson proudly announced that his tournament, which is the fund raising arm for the Yvonne Richardson Memorial Foundation that honors his late daughter, has now raised more that $1.5 million which has been donated to various charities.
RICHARDSON and I go back a long way. In fact, I gave him his very first writeup. It was in 1950. Little League baseball had been started in El Paso that year by Bob Haynsworth, an El Paso businessman. There was still segregation in the country but Haynsworth opened Little League to all races.
It was my first year as a sports writer at the El Paso Herald-Post. The Little League games that year were held at Houston Elementary School, which had enough ground to include a small diamond. Richardson, nine years old at the time, stepped up to the plate and hit a tremendous homerun over the fence. If not the first, it was certainly one of the first homeruns ever hit in Little League baseball in El Paso.
I was covering youth sports for the El Paso Herald-Post at the time. I didn’t know, or care, at the time who he was or that he was black but I mentioned his homerun in a little story in the newspaper. For some unknown reason, I saved that little story and still have that clipping in my files.
I CAN’T DESCRIBE the thrills I have felt through the years as I saw what that little guy went on to accomplish in sports. Nolan was an all-district star in all three major sports (football, basketball and baseball) at Bowie High School, an outstanding basketball player at what was then Texas Western College and one of the best college basketball coaches in the country.
To this day, he is the only coach to win all three college level basketball championships – junior college at Western Texas Junior College, the NIT at Tulsa and the NCAA at University of Arkansas.
Not all in life has been rosy for this amazing man. Besides battling the color line all his life, he lost his daughter, Yvonne, to leukemia when she was 15, which led to the creation of the present memorial tournament. And just a little over a year ago, he lost his 47-year-old son, Nolan Richardson III.
THROUGH IT ALL, the elder Richardson has held his head high and has gained some solace in helping others through his charitable foundation.
And he likes to honor people who have helped him. At the banquet this year, attorney Ron Henry was awarded Richardson’s Bobby Joe Hill Humanitarian Man of the Year Award.
The Coach Don Haskins Bear Award went to golf professional Bobby Kaerwer and the Elaine Pharr Woman of the Year Award was presented to Irma Chavez-Rodriguez.
The Alamo Ballroom where the banquet was held was packed, of course. A special guest was Don Haskins’ ever so endearing wife, Mary.
I WAS LUCKY to be invited, too. Nolan has never forgotten the many articles I have written about him, especially in his early years. He even jokingly calls me “my press agent.”
Tubby Smith, the new basketball coach at Texas Tech University, was the guest speaker at the banquet. He said a lot of nice things about Nolan Richardson, not the least of which was his thanks for how Richardson trail blazed and opened opportunities for other black coaches.
Amen to that.