2008 Woodie Awards
Hall of fame not a priority for Truman
Brian Russell
Issue date: 10/21/04 Section: Sports
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Quite simply, the University should have created an athletics hall of fame 21 years ago. That was when the first athletes were inducted into this non-existent tribute to Truman sports. The fact that after all these years, the University still has not found room for anything more than a Web site hall of fame is unfortunate and unacceptable.
Great athletes and coaches have performed at this school. Harry Gallatin played basketball here and is in the NBA hall of fame. Ray Armstead won an Olympic gold medal in 1984 after competing on the Northeast Missouri State University track team. Don Faurot coached the University's football and basketball teams before making his way to the National Football Hall of Fame.
These great sportsmen and others like them should be celebrated in a public forum. Truman needs to find a tangible way to honor them - something more than a few small paragraphs on a Web site that few know exists.
Jerry Wollmering, Truman's director of athletics, said the main reason the University does not have an athletics hall of fame is because the school does not have any space available to create one. To me, this means that creating a Truman sports hall of fame is not, and has never been, even a small priority for the University, which is a shame.
What's worse, the University actually has a place that would be great for a sports hall of fame - it's just not using it.
The gymnasium that is the upper level of Kirk Building, now nothing more than a storage facility, once was the University's athletic home. The Auditorium, as it was known, housed University sports until 1958 and then was the home of Truman's intramural sports program until the mid-1990s.
It would serve as an ideal forum for a hall of fame. The problem is, Physical Plant director Karl Schneider said the old gym is unfit for public use at present. That is not to say, however, that it could not be repaired.
And what better way to honor Truman's many great athletes than to turn the gymnasium in which many of them performed into an eternal celebration of their accomplishments? Imagine it: the gymnasium could be used to house busts of the greatest of Truman athletes and coaches. Plaques could be forged and arranged throughout the gym - one on each seat of the auditorium, based on when the honoree was inducted, with a sitting-in-your-seat ceremony at the time of induction. Old game-worn jerseys, game balls, photos and other memorabilia from over 100 years of intercollegiate competition could be displayed in a place seemingly custom-built for just such a purpose.
A historical lack of priorities, however, dictates that this simply isn't important.
Priorities dictate that an entire basketball arena sits on campus, serving as nothing more than a closet for University junk. It is understandable that in these times of lean higher education budgets, the school may not have the money to repair the old building. But if having a sports hall of fame was any kind of priority, the money to repair the building could be found.
After all, Wollmering said there's no room for a hall of fame in the school's current bastion of physicality, Pershing Building, nor at the Student Recreation Center.
Wollmering also mentioned that the school possibly could put a sports hall of fame in the old fire station on the corner of Franklin and Normal Streets, should Truman follow through with plans to convert that building to a museum. But in the spirit of the NCAA, don't bet on it. It's just not important.
That leaves only the Kirk Building Auditorium. The charming, rustic, old-school basketball arena could serve no better purpose than riding out its final days as the home to Truman's athletic elite - all 196 of them. It's the proverbial two-birds-with-one-stone situation: Truman gets its long-needed hall of fame, and the Auditorium gets one last useful hurrah.
If only it were a priority.
