Out in Greene County, Iowa

“March Madness” has always been a time when sports icon Gary Thompson fires his rockets

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
March 2, 2009
COOPER, IOWA

The late Mabel Burger Dial would have loved this story.

Dial, who died in 2005 in the central Iowa town of Nevada, had been a school teacher early in her career. Sixty-seven years ago right now, she was a first grade teacher in the little town of Roland. Among her students that year was one Gary Thompson – a tiny, burr-headed kid who not only was a nut for sports, he was also a perpetual motion machine.

“He never just walked any place – he always bounced!” the old teacher told me shortly before her death, when I was interviewing her about Thompson.

So last Thursday morning, Thompson and I were driving from his office in the southeast part of Ames to a church on the northwest side of town, where we were spinning stories for the Golden K Kiwanis Club from my new book “GARY THOMPSON: All-American.”

As we came into downtown Ames, Thompson said, “Can we swing by the Post Office? I want to pick up the mail for our office.”

I pulled up in front of the Ames Post Office, stopped and the 73-year-old Thompson was off like a – well, like a rocket.

He jogged from my car, across the street, up the stairs of the Post Office and in the door, waving and yelling “Good morning!” to a couple of other people who were walking to their mail boxes. He was inside no more than a minute, came bursting back out the front door, jogged down the steps, across the street and jumped back into my car.

“That is pretty funny,” I said to him. “We are not in that big a hurry!”

“Oh, are you talking about me running over there and back?” he said, with a laugh at himself. “I don’t know why I do that. Jan (his wife) is always tugging at my jacket, telling me to slow down.”

I’m blaming this latest burst of Thompson hustle on March Madness.

After all, this month of March, with its basketball tournaments, has always been the time of the year when “the Roland Rocket” blasts off. That’s been his nickname since he led the small-school Rockets to the boys’ state tournament in Iowa City three straight years, 1951-’53. They became known as the giant killers for their upsets of such big schools as Waterloo West, Des Moines East and others, cheered on by nearly the whole state. Gary Thompson became a household name in Iowa before he was old enough to drive!

Then from ’54-’57, he led the Iowa State Cyclones to some of their best seasons ever – in both basketball and baseball – becoming a two-sport All-American. Then it was on to AAU basketball, which was bigger than the NBA at the time, and he led the legendary Phillips 66ers to a national championship, and he was named MVP of the tournament.

And, as many remember, for 34 years Thompson was one of the best game analysts ever in TV coverage of college basketball, which most years saw him covering the NCAA tournament games.

This year, the two of us are tipping off March Madness with an especially busy 10 days on the book tour, and if you want to come join us along the trail, you will be seeing some especially neat venues. And we’ll be sharing a lot of our favorite tales from the book, as well as selling and signing books for those who want them.

We have stops this week and two of the neatest independent bookstores in the state, and if you haven’t visited them yet, please come while we’re there.

Tuesday, March 3, we are at Beaverdale Books in the Beaverdale neighborhood of northwest Des Moines from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Alice Meyer opened that store in the summer of 2006, realizing a dream she’d had for 20 years. It’s become a frequent stop for many authors who are promoting new books. You can read more about it on the Internet site www.beaverdalebooks.com.

Thursday, March 5, we are going to be in Oskaloosa at what has become one of my favorite bookstores in Iowa – the Book Vault. Nancy Simpson opened her store in December of 2005 in a renovated former bank building, and as you can tell in the photos here, it is a great book environment without being a bit stuffy.


The Book Vault bookstore is on the west side of the Oskaloosa town square, adjacent to the excellent Smokey Row Coffeehouse (with the awning). The bookstore carries about 10,000 books, nicely displayed in browsable stacks and on decorated tables. The classic old building came with such neat touches as marble paneling on its walls, and the original stained glass skylight shown here. Musco Lighting has its headquarters a half-block away, and CEO Joe Crookham helped set up both the coffeehouse and bookstore, renovating historic buildings on the square. Why? Crookham's associates say he invested heavily in both businesses because they are good for the community and because they are especially popular with the people he wants to keep working on the Musco staff.

Thompson and I are being welcomed at an Oskaloosa Chamber of Commerce “After Hours” event at the Book Vault, and we’ll be there from 5 to 7 p.m. You can read more about this store at www.bookvault.org.

Incidentally, both Meyer at Beaverdale Books and Simpson at the Book Vault are Iowa State University supporters, and that’s significant, because Thompson is donating all proceeds from book sales to the university.

This coming Saturday, March 7, we will be signing and selling books at Iowa State Cyclones men’s basketball game against Texas Tech at Hilton Coliseum in Ames. We’ll be in the south concourse at Hilton an hour before, and an hour after, the game, which has a 12:45 p.m. tip-off time.

Then next Monday, March 9, Thompson and I will be at the Iowa Hall of Pride from 4 to 6 p.m. That’s across the street from Wells Fargo Arena, where the boys’ high school state basketball tournament will be underway, and we’ve timed our Hall of Pride event for those hours when the afternoon crowd is leaving the arena and the nighttime crowd is arriving. And plan to take enough time to do some browsing around the Hall of Pride. There are oodles of new displays, features and videotaped interviews in this facility that tells the Iowa story so well, and which is always changing.

After all that, I expect to be dragging.

Thompson, on the other hand, will still be running.


For more details about the book, including seeing & hearing some of Gary Thompson’s high school pals sing the old Roland High School fight song, check the display on the left side of our home page here at Offenburger.com. You can write the columnist at chuck@Offenburger.com.