(BUD) STALLWORTH Interviewer
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AN INTERVIEW WITH ISAAC (BUD) STALLWORTH Interviewer: David Downing The Oral History Project of the Endacott Society The University of Kansas ISAAC (BUD) STALLWORTH EDUCATION Year, Degree, University Major / Minor Department Year, Degree, University Major Department Year, Degree, University Major Department SERVICE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Title, Department Years RETIREMENT Date TITLES/RANK Title, Department, Years Title, Department, Years Title, Department, Years ADMINISTRATIVE/CHAIRMANSHIP POSITIONS List positions, or See Resume Provided 2 Downing: “Hello, I am David Downing, a member of the Endacott Oral History Project Committee. I will be interviewing Isaac (Bud) Stallworth, who recently retired from the KU Design and Construction Management Department. Okay, Bud, it’s usually a good idea to start at the beginning, so when were you born and where?” Stallworth: “I was born January 18, 1950 in Hartsell, Alabama.” Downing: “Okay. Can you give us a little bit of background about your parents and who they were?” Stallworth: “Sure. My father, Isaac F. Stallworth, Sr. was a high school principal, and later on in his career was an administrator for the school district in which the… Morgantown Training School District which I was educated in, in Hartsell, Alabama. My mother was a school teacher. She also, in the Morgan County School District later on when they consolidated the schools and de-segregated them in the late ‘60s, she became a teacher at Hartsell Junior High School.” Downing: “Okay. What were some of your interests when you were growing up?” Stallworth: “Early on growing up, I was involved in quite a few different activities. My parents, being educators, my father and mother both stressed the education. In the ‘50s and early ‘60s, as we all know, there was segregated school systems. A lot of the students had parents that were not as fortunate as I was growing up. They were basically share croppers or farmers, so education wasn’t really important in the area that I was growing up in, but my parents were very, very disciplined about their kids being educated. So, education was really important and I was involved in music and also athletics as part of my curriculum.” Downing: “Did you have any brothers and sisters?” 3 Stallworth: “Yes, I had one brother and two sisters. Three of my siblings, or two other of my siblings attended the University of Kansas. My oldest sister Harriet got her Master’s and Doctorate degrees from the University of Kansas. My younger sister Eunice – both her undergrad and Master’s degree came from the University of Kansas.” Downing: “Okay. Growing up, obviously your parents had a tremendous impact on you, were there some other people, mentors or family friends, who helped you out a lot?” Stallworth: “Well, growing up in a small town in the southern part of the country, my parents, along with my grandparents, I think, had a real positive impact on my life, being that both my grandfathers owned their own businesses. They were involved in the country store business, so they were independent in their own ways. They were, I think, way ahead of their time as far as seeing the future and providing opportunities for their kids when they were growing up. I had great relationships with a lot of my aunts and uncles. We… the family was important to our family, and so during the holidays we would always spend it with our relatives, even though they lived in another part of the state. I think having that background and seeing what my parents had to go through when they were growing up, and also what my grandparents had to go through, I think it gave me the drive to succeed at the highest level that I could as I was maturing.” Downing: “Okay. Now, did you indicate that you actually went to a segregated school?” Stallworth: “Yes. The school that I eventually graduated from, Morgan County Training School, grades one through twelve, was an all-black segregated school in Hartsell, Alabama. There was another high school that was beginning to de-segregate during my junior and senior year, and I did have an opportunity – we’ll probably get to this a little later on – because of my athletic skills, to attend an integrated high school, but because of my relationship with both my family and my peers at the time, I decided to finish my career out with the school that I had started in.” Downing: “Okay. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about your elementary school.” 4 Stallworth: “My school was, again, grades one through twelve. Morgan County Training School was both an elementary school, junior high school, and high school. And grades one through twelve, when I said small it was very small. It was three hundred kids. My graduating class, to give you an example, was thirty-four. So there was not, I guess, a transfer from elementary to junior high to senior high school. It was all in one building. Fortunately for me, again, my parents, being the strict parents that they were, made sure that even though we were not, I think, afforded all the amenities of the big high school, or white high school at that time in the South, we had a strict tutoring program at home, we had to do homework before we played, and so all of these things that I was growing up with in my home life gave me the ability to succeed in other areas that a lot of my peers didn’t have an opportunity to do.” Downing: “You mentioned that one of the things you did is you played sports all the way through school?” Stallworth: “Yes, all the way through school. My first grade teacher had us write on a single sheet of paper (I tell this story all the time), ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’, and on my sheet of paper, and she kept it in my records, I said I wanted to be a professional basketball player. For me, that was the outlet from the education, the music, and what really, I think was a driving force because of my love for that game of basketball, that that was something that I thought I would be able to pursue and achieve, not knowing as a youngster, in the first grade, six years old, that that was something that was gonna be a journey, not just something that you could make happen because you wanted it to. Part of the things that I can remember even as a youngster, when my parents were in teacher’s meetings or they traveled to statewide teacher’s meetings, they could drop me in the gym at the college that they were going to their meetings at, and didn’t have to worry about me going anywhere else. I would stay in the gym for hours. My father put a goal up in my back yard, and my next door neighbors, the kids that lived on the street I lived on, we all gathered after school every day and played basketball.” 5 Downing: “I’m trying to keep the dates straight – about how old were you? Well, what was the year when you were six?” Stallworth: “Six years old, first grade student.” Downing: “Yeah, what date was that?” Stallworth: “That was in the… 1956. I started first grade in 1956.” Downing: “Okay. This idea of… there was no professional basketball in Alabama, so who did you follow or how did you recognize that there was such a role…” Stallworth: “Well, on Sundays during basketball season, one of the major networks (we did have a television in our home), and I don’t know how it became such an interest to me, but during that period of time we would get to see the Boston Celtics, and at that time there was the Philadelphia 76ers and also the Los Angeles Lakers. On that team was the former, future Hall of Famer named Wilt Chamberlain who was also a KU grad, that was one of the star players on the 76ers at that time. They were always playing against the team the Boston Celtics. The Celtics, at the time, were winning all the championships. For whatever reason, I became just fascinated by the game and the athleticism and the skills that these players had. Any time that, you know, Game of the Week came on, I would be propped in front of the TV just trying to mimic some of the moves and some of the skills that Wilt had because he would always out-score Bill Russell, who was with the Celtics, and the Celtics would win the championship. My favorite player was Wilt Chamberlain. I one day thought that I would be a seven-footer because I was tall and skinny as a kid, but the growth spurt stopped and I made it to about 6’5”.” Downing: “Well, it’s a small world because I grew up in Detroit, and I watched those same games, but I turned out to be a Bill Russell, Boston Celtics fan. It was great, great basketball. It is kind of strange that there was only a very few number of teams that played on TV.” 6 Stallworth: “Right. Yeah, you had, I think, the Celtics, the Knicks, the Lakers, and sometimes I think the Baltimore Bullets were on quite a bit because at one time they had Earl Monroe, who was one of those, you know, very gifted players, and I think that’s what television tried to promote at that time were the teams that had a player that had just unbelievable skills.” Downing: “Yeah.