p.1

Jack Laird combined

Bob.

Murphy: [0:01] Hello again everybody, Bob Murphy. Today we're going to talk a little bit about . We're going to go back as far as we possibly can with Jack Laird, our old buddy. We have spent so much time and so many years together.

Jack: [0:13] , we've never had the opportunity to put all this stuff on a record like this. But, we talk about the history of Stanford sports, basketball has always been a part of that history, and we're going to talk about it here today. Tell the folks a little bit about where you came from and how you entered Stanford and what it's all about.

Jack: [0:31]

Laird: Well, I came from Portland Oregon. I was just a very actually kind of a modest or mediocre player in high school, but I stayed out of school one year to get some money to go to college. During that time, I played with the Multnomah Club, which is sort of like the Olympic Club in . [0:52] I didn't play for their team, but I'd work out with them, play around. I also played for a church team, and I played for Portland Gas and Coal Company, an industrial dig. I was playing for a couple of teams at a time also.

[1:06] So anyway, bottom line is who was then the coach at the University of Oregon came up one day, and he was very interested in my coming to Oregon. But at about that time, my parents who were not at all wealthy as far as Stanford goes. In fact, my dad was out of a job and it was during the Depression, which is why I was working a year to get money to go to school.

[1:30] Actually, in retrospect, I might've played a lot more if I'd taken Hobson's offer to come to Oregon, than I did at Stanford. But at the time, it impressed me. I thought, "Well, gee, if a great coach like Hobson could think I was pretty good, I'll wow them down at Stanford," which didn't exactly turn out that way. Anyway that was sort of the beginning, and so I went to Stanford.

Murphy: [1:51] Jack, I would guess that now that's about an hour and 15 minute plane ride from Portland, but that isn't the way you traveled. I'm sure you were on the train, and you went by Mount Shasta and all the big mountains on the way to Stanford.

Laird: [2:03] Yep.

Murphy: [laughs] [2:04]

Laird: [2:05] I rode a train. I think it was about 15 hours that it took, or something like that, to go from Portland down to, well San Francisco and then to Palo Alto.

Murphy: [2:14] You entered Stanford in '36? Is that about right? p.2

Laird: [2:17] Yeah, in the fall of '36. That's right.

Murphy: [2:20] And of course, the Depression, of course, in the '30s an interesting lifestyle then. Stanford was well established. A lot of Stanford still looks now the way it did then, but there's been much added to it since then. You've seen it all.

Laird: [2:35] Yeah, a lot of it looks the same. But it's just expanded tremendously. What was the main campus, I guess, they might have called it the core campus then, now it's just expanded, as you know, I guess for miles outside.

Murphy: [2:52] But the beauty of it is the Quad is still the same, and of course, Hoover Tower has been added since then.

Laird: [2:57] Yeah, the Quad was the same. In fact one of my jobs, I went down, and obviously did not get any scholarships at Stanford, but I did get a lot of jobs. I helped work on, I guess it was a Federal deal or something, they were building Frost Amphitheater, and I worked on that as a freshman, and I had a lot of other jobs down there. [3:17] You're right, the Quad itself is probably the same. It's all the other buildings outside that building.

Murphy: [3:24] Now, what was the tuition then? Do you recall? Like $100 a quarter?

Laird: [3:29] You're awful close. It was $115 a quarter.

Murphy: [3:32] Yeah.

Laird: [3:33] $345 for the year.

Murphy: [laughs] [3:34] A lot of people could afford to send their kids to school now at that. Couldn't they?

Laird: [3:40] Yeah. Well, of course, everything is relative. But still in those days, that was kind of expensive compared to, say, the University of Oregon or I guess Cal or some of those. I think, I'm not sure, the 15 of the $115 was sort of like a student body fee that was supposed to go for things like, I don't know maybe sports, maybe the band, maybe things like they have for student stuff.

Murphy: [4:05] Now, you moved in to Encina Hall, I would expect.

Laird: [4:08] That's right. Yeah.

Murphy: [4:10] Encina Hall then looked just as it does today, although it doesn't function as... Even in my day, back in the '50s, 550 guys from all over the country and parts of the world that you've never heard of all were living under one roof. It was pretty much the same then. That didn't change for a long time.

Laird: [4:27] Yeah, the exterior of Encina is almost the same as it was then. But, of course, now it has offices and that thing. I had two roommates. One was from Compton, California, and the other was from Modesto, I believe. p.3

Murphy: [4:40] Well, and right across the street was the old pavilion.

Laird: [4:44] That's right.

Murphy: [4:45] The old pavilion was built back in the '20s. Ernie Nevers, Nip McHose, and all kinds of great athletes played there before you. Tell the folks a little bit about that because there already was a great tradition in Stanford basketball.

Laird: [4:56] Yeah, they've had some great teams, and to be honest with you, if somebody said, you know, how we did through the '20s or '30s, I guess I wouldn't know. I was a big basketball fan. Growing up in Portland, my favorite teams were Oregon and Oregon State.

Murphy: [5:09] Sure.

Laird: [5:10] I could tell you the starting lineup of the Oregon team that I would have been on, that they talked about. So I didn't know too much about the early stuff, the history, at Stanford. I do know, just to correct something, it wasn't called the old pavilion in those days.

Murphy: [5:28] Yeah.

Laird: [5:28] It was The Pavilion.

Murphy: [5:29] "The Pavilion."

Laird: [5:30] And I think the capacity was around 2,500.

Murphy: [5:33] 2,700.

Laird: [5:34] 2,700, OK.

Murphy: [5:35] 2,700 and I don't think it ever changed. In fact, I don't think the old pavilion ever changed until Maples opened, and that was some time back in the '60s. Maples is about 30 years old now, and of course, it's being redone as we speak. Now it is really going to be something when it's reopened, Jack. It's going to be fun to see.

Laird: [5:56] Oh, yeah. No, there was no room to expand the seating in the old pavilion. I mean it was there, and that's it.

Murphy: [6:02] All right. Now we're going to spend a few minutes talking about a guy by the name of . I knew Hank. In later life, he was in the travel business, and I led some tours over to the islands and worked with Hank and visited with Hank. He was just a wonderful guy. [6:19] But before we get in to all this basketball, he had a little case against Stanford, something about Al Masters, and he just had a little antipathy about Stanford that I tried to heal a little bit, but I didn't have much success. Do you know anything about that?

Laird: [6:33] Well, I know what caused it. Hank had appendicitis in 1938 - actually it was probably in '37 in the fall when he got it - and he had to have an appendectomy and p.4

so forth. He figured that the school, the athletic department, or somebody, should pay for it, and no one paid for it. I don't know the legal ramifications of it, but that made Hank kind of bitter. [6:59] I think as years went on, he still maintained that bitterness that he had to pay for that. That's really all I know. That's what it was about, and that's what generally solidified his, maybe, lack of fondness for Stanford.

Murphy: [7:15] Yeah, he had a little grudge against the old athletic director, Al Masters. Who knows what an appendectomy cost then. If the tuition was $100, an appendectomy was probably not that much. [laughs]

Laird: [7:25] You're probably right, you're probably right, but again everything was legal. In fact, as I mentioned before I had jobs. We got 50 cents an hour on the job I had for building Frost Amphitheater, and we thought that was pretty good.

Murphy: [7:42] Yeah, that'd be all right. That's about what I made for caddying at Burlingame Country Club too. All right, let's talk a little bit now about Hank. You walk across from Encina on that afternoon and you sign up for freshmen basketball, and there's a guy by the name of Hank Luisetti who's playing basketball there a couple of years ahead of you.

Laird: [7:58] Yeah, as I say, in the freshman year, but my main relationship with Hank was in the next year when I was a sophomore and he was a senior. I think he was known, obviously, for his great scoring ability. One of the things in practice I admired about him, and was almost in awe, was his ball handling ability. [8:21] I think he invented the behind the back dribble, and he was perfection at it. He also had the running one-handed shot. People had used one-handed shots before then. He didn't invent it, but he perfected it certainly, for a time.

Murphy: [8:37] And talk about that. It was not a . If you're right-handed, it was a take-off on the left foot push shot.

Laird: [8:45] It was almost the same motion you would use in driving in for a lay-up, except you might have been 20 feet out. I mean, you jump up on your left foot and lay it up off the backboard or through the glass, through the hoop, whatever. [8:59] In fact, I don't know if you remember Art Rosenbaum, he was a great writer for the "Chronicle" and one day he had in his column that Hank Luisetti was better and more dangerous without the ball than most players were with it.

Murphy: [9:14] Isn't that interesting. And he loved the game and then, of course, 50 points, going to New York. You weren't on that trip, but you certainly remember a lot about it. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Laird: [9:25] Well, 50 points in those days, when a lot of games were won with a total team less than 50 points. I say they could have been in the 30s - 36, 37, or maybe 42 or something - that's the total points that a team scores. He scores a total of 50. And as I say, I was not on the trip.

Interviewer: [9:45] Duquesne? Was that against Duquesne? p.5

Laird: [9:46] Yeah, Duquesne, that's where it was. And that was, I guess, today like maybe scoring 150. It was just unheard of.

Murphy: [9:57] Jack, now explain this to the younger folks, because no television then, and radio was pretty much a new science in those days, too. We didn't have the instantaneous communication that we have now, so everything was in tomorrow morning's paper, the "Call Bulletin," the "Examiner," the "San Francisco News." There were all kinds of newspapers then that don't even exist now. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Laird: [10:19] Well yeah, other than just to verify what you just said, the sole source of information on any out of town game, be it basketball, football, baseball, was through the papers. Certainly our basketball games were not on the radio. Football was broadcast on the radio in those days, but not basketball. As I say, the fans for any away game, the only way they knew about it was reading the paper.

Interviewer: [laughs] [10:44] Yeah, the next day. Everything was the next day. Now basketball practice in those days was the coach, and some of the other players in that era, talk about that.

Laird: [10:54] Well the starting line-up, as I recall, was Hank along with Phil Zonne at forwards. A guy named Art Stoefen was called the stork, that was his nickname, he was center. And the two guards were Jack Calderwood and Beebs Lee.

Interviewer: [11:09] And Beebs, of course, later became an outstanding basketball coach.

Laird: [11:13] He did. He was a coach and an athletic director in, it seems to me it might have been Colorado State or maybe even Utah State. I'm just not sure. Then he ended up down in New Mexico as an AD. I'm a little fuzzy on that.

Murphy: [11:31] Of course in later years, Art Stoefen became a great friend of mine and I spent a lot of time with Art. He was a big man in those days. He was 6'5".

Laird: [11:39] Oh yeah.

Interviewer: [laughs] [11:40] He may not have been 6'5".

Laird: [11:42] I was 6'4" and I played forward.

Interviewer: [laughs] [11:45] Yeah. But people are a lot bigger now. It's a different kind of game now?

Laird: [11:49] Oh absolutely, it's faster and it's fun. Now today, it's not unusual for a guy to make 10 out of 12 free-throws, something like that. The average trip to the free-throw line in those days, you had it big if you went four times, you maybe got four free throws. There was no one-on-one. You did get two shots if you were fouled in a shooting effort. But otherwise, any other foul was just one shot. p.6

Murphy: [12:15] And the game was different in the sense that there were a lot of jump balls. The lane from the free-throw line was much narrower in those days. Talk about that a little bit.

Laird: [12:26] Well it was narrower, yes. I don't recall that there was any penalty for hanging around in the lane in those days either, you could go any place you wanted. Obviously, there was no time limit on coming across the centerline. You could take as much time as you wanted there. There was, obviously, in a close game at the end, there was a lot of stalling. Just passing it around, the ball, and stalling.

Murphy: [12:57] Do you consider it a better game now, the way the game has been changed over the years, from a crowd stand point?

Laird: [13:02] I think from a crowd, yes. But, one thing to go back, what I was talking about the free-throws in those games. As you know I'm not exactly a Charles Atlas-type physique, but I don't recall getting banged around much. I don't think that they got away with mayhem-type fouls. The guys just didn't foul as much.

Murphy: [13:23] Well, you just didn't touch as much then, did you? There wasn't as much physical contact.

Laid: [13:28] That's right. There wasn't at all. If you drive in for a basket, no one really tried to hinder you too much. As I say, the fact that you might get three or four foul shots in a whole game and it was just no contact. They didn't do it like they do now.

Murphy: [13:44] Jack, you and I was talking separately before this and we can both remember with laces. What was the basketball like that you played with then?

Laird: [13:54] Oh, absolutely as you said, it had laces. I can actually remember some games that we'd sort of check out the balls and see now if this one perfectly round or is it maybe got a little bulge on this side where the lace is. Oh, absolutely and when you bounce it, if you hit it on the laces, it might take a strange bounce away from your dribbling, I mean. [14:14] Then, of course, the other big change is wooden backboards.

Murphy: [14:16] Yeah, isn't that right.

Laird: [14:18] They're all white, wooden backboards.

Murphy: [14:20] Now, of course, the glass is standard, and that's common place now, obviously.

Laird: [14:25] Oh, yeah.

Murphy: [14:27] How about basketball practice? Was it a fast paced kind of thing or a lot of strategy to the game then?

Laird: [14:32] Yeah. I think we did just about the same as they do now, as far as what you're practicing. We practiced offense, defense and all kind of drills and we had to shoot 25 free-throws every practice session. I think the practice itself was about the same. p.7

Murphy: [14:52] Then, of course, it wasn't long after that that Bob Burnett was playing. Can you talk about Bob? And he coached for a number of years when he followed .

Laird: [15:00] Yeah. Bob was one of my favorite guys. I nicknamed him Flash. Bob was pretty good. He was a backup guard and he got a lot of playing time. One of mine, as I say, I did not get to play much. One of my shining moments with Coach Bunn, we were having one of the drills, it was obviously five on five. And I wasn't in that particular one. [15:22] He comes over and he puts his arm around me and he says, "Jack, you should have . . ." You've got to remember that UCLA's basketball in those days was about the worst team imaginable. They were as bad as they have been good over future years. But, anyway he put his arm around me and he said, "Jack, you should have gone to UCLA. You would have started for them." And that's true. So, now whenever they ask me how good I was, I say, "Well, coach said I could have started for UCLA."

Murphy: [15:48] You could have been the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of UCLA in those days.

Laird: [15:49] Yeah, that's true. That's one of my shining moments.

Murphy: [15:56] Now, the game today with the jump shot and all the great players that we see, what a change. As you look back over the building blocks of basketball, what a change you've seen.

Laird: [16:08] Oh, yeah, it's tremendous. I think one of the greatest things was eliminating the center jump. I mean that speeded up the game, obviously and that's allowed for more points to be scored, of course. That was good. In those days, you fouled out if you had four fouls. But, the whole game has just speeded up and gotten a lot rougher, I guess, you would say.

Murphy: [16:32] Well, let's just finish with Hank Luisetti. There was little question that he stood out beyond anyone else playing the game in those days. Not just here, but the fact that Stanford did go east and show the very skeptical because they thought that the cowboys and Indians were still fighting in the west in those days. But, to show those New York writers and those eastern writers a real basketball player, Hank Luisetti did that and it made big news.

Laird: [16:58] Yeah. There were two great teams, I guess in the New York era. There was CCNY and . . .

Murphy: [17:04] .

Laird: [17:05] . . . and Long Island and Stanford took care of both of them and that just shocked the eastern writers, as you mentioned.

Murphy: [17:12] I think the thing that shocked them was that in those days with Nat Holman, the coach and those old time guys, the players would put their two feet together and have the two hand set shot from outside and it was kind of a stand around game. p.8

[17:27] All of a sudden, they saw Hank Luisetti running, and dribbling, and dribbling behind his back, and making great passes, and running. I think he made a running game out of what was pretty much a stationary game in the east. Do you see it that way?

Laird: [17:39] Yeah. I think he is responsible for developing that probably because, I thought, well gees. This is a new technique; maybe, we ought to try it, some of the other coaches maybe that watched it, or something."

Murphy: [17:48] Well, what influence did Luisetti have - Everett Dean came out in'38, '39, about then. And then, in '42, the war had started, and we'll talk a little bit about that too. But, Stanford wins a national championship - And I wonder if Hank Luisetti, his presence at Stanford, the awareness of basketball at Stanford, didn't have something to do with Everett building a national championship team in 1942 - Howie Delmar, and Voss, and Cowden, and , and all those wonderful players.

Laird: [18:20] I suppose that it helped his recruiting, I would guess. I'd say, well gee, we've heard of Stanford now, and Luisetti. I guess it helped Dean's recruiting, I would imagine.

Murphy: [18:33] And the one player I didn't mention, of course, Howie Delmar, a great player, and later a great coach for many, many years. ...

Laird: [18:39] Oh yeah.

Murphy: [18:40] Jim Pollard, it always seemed to me, and more looking back - as I wasn't present all the time around there - but Pollard - with the great one-hand shooting like Luisetti - and I'm not sure he didn't idolize Luisetti as a little kid growing up.

Laird: [18:54] Yeah. I guess so. I never saw them play. I was sort of on the government payroll in those days.

Murphy: [18:58] Yeah. Jack, talk about that. The war comes along, and my gosh, what a change for you guys in your age bracket. 1940 the war was going on in Europe at that time. There was a threat in the Pacific that we didn't take much notice of in those days, but all of a sudden December 7, 1941, your life changed didn't it?

Murphy: [19:20] Yeah. It sure did, I guess. And, everybody, even before that... You're too young to know this, Murph, but, everybody got a draft number in those days. Guys would talk, "Now what's your draft number? Are you high, low, or something?" [19:35] That influenced me because when I went in the, what was then the Army Air Corps, I didn't have a real low number, which just means you're going to be picked early. I was sort of in the close to the low, I think, I don't know. So then, the guys would go shopping around, "Well, I want to be in the Marines, or the Navy, or the Army, or the..."

Murphy: [19:53] You had a choice.

Laird: [19:54] Oh yeah, as long as you're a civilian.

Murphy: [19:55] As long as you exercised it. p.9

Laird: [19:56] Well, if you're a civilian, you can go say I want to join the Army, join the Navy. You could do anything like that.

Murphy: [20:02] Yeah. Oh boy. Let's think a little bit about that interesting group of guys. I think of Dick Madigan, and Babe Higgins, and Fred Bunch, and several others at Stanford, who lettered at Stanford, and then went over to Cal because Cal had a Navy program during the war. So there were these kinds of athletes who ended up lettering in football at both Stanford and Cal, started at Stanford, went to Cal and came back and finished at Stanford. [20:32] And Babe Higgins is one of a kind. I always get a kick out of Babe, and we laugh about it every time we get together. He lettered in both basketball and football at both Stanford and Cal, one of the oddities of World War II.

Laird: [20:45] Yeah. I know Babe. I did not know him at the time. I've got to know him since, and we talk about that too. But, still, I'm not sure, again, I wasn't around. Those guys were all in the Navy over at Cal. And Stanford, when I went there, they had an Army ROTC. And I guess for whatever reason, all those guys that transferred, wanted to be in the Navy instead of the Army...

Murphy: [21:09] Yeah.

Laird: [21:10] ...is the only thing I could figure out.

Murphy: [21:11] Where did the war take you, Jack?

Laird: [21:13] Well, I was based in the West Coast, in the U.S. for a while. After I got out of Cadets, I was based in what was then called the Air Transport Command, which is now like MAC or Travis. Then, I was there for, I guess, a couple years. Then, I was based as Guadalcanal and after it was ours. That's before...

Murphy: [21:38] Henderson Field?

Laird: [21:39] They had Henderson, and Coley, and Carney. There were three airports there in that Guadalcanal. Then after I was there for a while - that was flying C-47s which is DC3, that little airline run out there - then I went to Fiji islands where I ended up as CO of the base there, and that was like going on R&R there because you're way out of the war zone and it was kind of - it wasn't exactly a tropical paradise but it was close to it.

Murphy: [22:09] Jack, then you came back to Stanford and you've been associated with Stanford ever since. You've had a long association with .

Laird: [22:18] Yeah, I worked for a couple airlines in between, but I came to Stanford in 1960 and started out just in the University Development department. I wasn't sure that's what I wanted to do, and after about a year and a half, in those days each school, like school of engineering, law, and medicine, each had a fundraiser of their own, but athletics didn't. I'd gotten to know , and Chuck decided the athletic department needed a fundraiser, and he wanted me. So that's when I came over to the athletic department.

Murphy: [22:53] Yeah, that was, pardon the expression, a change of life for you. p.10

Laird: [22:57] Yeah that was a great job, I was really happy, I enjoyed it, and it was a good deal.

Murphy: [23:04] Tell the folks a little bit about Chuck Taylor because he was unusual in the fact that he was an All-American football player, played in the Rose Bowl, coached a Stanford team in the Rose Bowl, and was athletic director of another Stanford team in the Rose Bowl. I think Jess Hill at USC is the only other gentleman ever to accomplish that trifecta, the Rose Bowl both as a player, a coach, and an athletic director. Quite an achievement.

Laird: [23:31] Chuck was absolutely a wonderful guy, and the morale in the department was so high. If he'd have come by some afternoon at 4:30 and said, hey, everybody's got to work until 7:00 tonight, not that he ever did that, they would have said OK, fine. They all loved him. Chuck was just the greatest guy ever.

Murphy: [23:51] Another great guy of ours, Howie Del Mar, who played on that national championship team in 1942 and then came back to coach basketball and follow Bob Burnett. Howie had been back at the University of Pennsylvania, as I recall, and then came all the way back out to Stanford and had a great run. [24:09] But basketball was different in those days. Stanford's expectations with the very small pavilion were not anything what they are now, and that certainly wasn't Howie's fault. He fell into a situation that was pretty static and very difficult to change until Maples Pavilion, Rich Kelly, and bigger people came along.

Laird: [24:28] Yeah, Howie had, I believe, a winning record very close in his career there. But it was tough recruiting at Stanford in those days. I loved Howard too. He was a great coach, great guy.

Murphy: [24:41] Yeah. Now, your contact with the university continues, and you have a thing called the Starting Eleven, which relates now to Stanford football. Tell the folks about that.

Laird: [24:50] Yeah well, when I retired, just about every sport at Stanford has what I am sure what you're familiar with, the Diamond Club for baseball, the Cage Club for basketball, and the Bump Club for volleyball. But no one is doing anything for football, and even though basketball might have been my favorite love, basketball had John A. for anything they needed, so I decided I would start something for football. [25:15] I thought, get something in the neighborhood of $1000 a year, and I start thinking about names like All-American Touchdown Club, something, and somehow I thought, I dont know how it came to me, the Starting Eleven and we'll make it $1100 a year. So I started that, and the first year we had 22 members, and we now have about 180.

Murphy: [25:35] How old are you now Jack?

Laird: [25:38] This is not for publication, Murph. 87.

Murphy: [25:40] 87? But you look -- you've turned it around. You're not 78? [laughs] p.11

Laird: [25:46] For my social life, I've tried to conceal it, but I dont know, the intelligence leaks out. No, I'm 87, and still... I woke up alive this morning, and that's always a good sign.

Murphy: [laughs] [25:58] Well, this would be the wrong thing to say but that's a good way to end it. [laughter]

Laird: [26:03] Yeah.

Murphy: [26:04] Thank you Jack. That is Jack Laird.

Transcription by CastingWords