University of Massachusets Athletics
The Last Minute
April 16, 2004 | Men's Basketball
April 16, 2004
By Bill Strickland, Associate Athletic Director
The Maroon & White
I've been writing this column for 11 years and writing some sort of column or another since I was in the first grade. Never before have I sat down to write something where, before I even started, I just knew it wasn't going to be good enough. That's how I felt as I thought about what I was going to say about Jack Leaman. Writers sometimes deal in hyperbole, stretching the truth, exaggerating simply because it makes for a more interesting story. In Jack Leaman's case, there is no stretching of the truth; there is no need to exaggerate. Jack Leaman was simply the best person I have ever met and ever expect to meet. To say there will never be another like him is a new level in understatement.
On April 18, the University will be celebrating the life of Jack Leaman. The program will be held at the Cage beginning at 1 pm and there will be a reception afterward. For those of you whose lives have been touched in some way by Jack, this will be a wonderful opportunity to get together and reflect on the life of a true icon, the man who embodied the heart and soul of UMass Athletics. Speakers will include his former BU co-captain Bob Cumings, his BU classmate and former UMass assistant Pete Broaca, former players such as Julius Erving, Al Skinner, Tom McLaughlin and Ray Ellerbrook, his most recent broadcast partner Bob Behler, and John Calipari.
It is hardly surprising that Jack Leaman grew to be one of the most beloved figures this University has ever known. Yes, Jack was a hell of a basketball coach, the all-time winningest coach at this institution and a member of various Halls of Fame. But Jack was beloved, not because he won a lot of basketball games, but because he didn't have a bad bone in his body and he had the uncanny ability to make everyone around him feel good. No matter how bad you were feeling, no matter what difficulties you were facing in your own life, a sit-down with Jack always left you feeling like things were going to get better. He just had that way about him, a smile, a kind word, a story, a joke, whether you were the president of the University, one of the guys delivering the mail, or the waitress at any of his favorite local haunts. He had a way of making everyone he came in contact with feel special. Everybody he knew could lay claim to being a friend of Jack Leaman's, because he made you feel like you were. About the farthest he would go in expressing a negative about somebody was calling the person "a strange dude" and even then, he'd usually find something positive to say.
Let's face it. Most of us, even the best of us, have some kind of agenda, some kind of angle, at least a little bit of selfish motivation. Jack? Jack wanted everyone to succeed; he wanted everyone to be happy. When the football or hockey teams were leaving for a trip or one of our other sports was hitting the road for a postseason tournament, he would go meet the bus to wish the players and coaches good luck. He loved UMass - excuse me, Massachusetts - unconditionally. Jack passed on more than a few opportunities to leave UMass, giving up more money, more resources, better facilities. After stepping down as coach of the men's team because of the rigors of travel in the newly formed Eastern 8 / Atlantic 10, Jack took on a series of jobs at the University, including head basketball coach and golf coach at Stockbridge, head women's coach for a year (the team's one winning season over a 15-year stretch), and assistant women's coach. No matter the position, Jack took it on and did it well. He loved the kids, the teaching, the coaching. Coaching, after all, was what he did. After Bob Marcum came to town, Jack was appointed Special Assistant to the Athletic Director, Stockbridge Athletic Director and began his new "career" as radio color man of the Minutemen, a platform that served to let the Commonwealth and the country know that this jewel of a man was still in our midst. The rise of the basketball program under John Calipari re-introduced Jack Leaman to the world as the man who coached Dr. J, Al Skinner and Rick Pitino. Jack made the rounds as the team went from one high profile game to another, in reality garnering more attention then he ever did when he was actually coaching those UMass teams. At the Final Four in '96, one of the feel good stories for the assembled national media was Jack doing the radio while his former player Pitino coached Kentucky against UMass.
It is human nature for people to want those who come after us to be not quite as good as we were. More than a few even want their successors to fail. Jack? Jack rooted for and was there for every basketball coach that followed him. He never forced his opinion on any of them, but if Cal or Bruiser or Steve asked Jack's opinion, they could be sure they were going to get an hour-long basketball lesson. Even though his coaching days were behind him, Jack was a coach right to the very end. It was not unusual in a given week to see him making notes from a tape of a UMass women's basketball game, a Memphis game, a Drexel game, a Boston College game, a Youngstown State game, or even a Celtics game. He was always there to lend a hand to his guys (and his girls). Thankfully, that encyclopedic basketball knowledge never went to waste.
It is an eerie feeling in the Mullins offices. Every morning I walk in and look at Jack's desk expecting him to be sitting there. I know it's silly, but I can't help myself. Every day an unnamed coach walks in, knocks on Jack's desk and has a private word. Every day there are phone calls and comments, not just from the basketball community, but from the golfers, from the umpires and officials, from the Stockbridge folks, from all over the University, from all over ... well, from all over. How could one man have touched so many lives in such a positive way? In reflecting on the life of our dear friend Jack, may we all just take a little time out of our days to try and make someone else feel good, to make someone else smile. The way Jack did.
This story was originally published in The Maroon & White.
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