Robert Booker: Basketball legacy at Knoxville College celebrated

Knoxville College President Dr. Horace Judson

KNOXVILLE, Tennessee  -- On Oct. 26, a ballroom at the downtown Holiday Inn will be filled with the largest group of former Knoxville College athletes and fans ever assembled. The event will mark the 84th anniversary of the first varsity basketball team to take the hardwood and to celebrate the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championship teams of 1956 and 1957. Organized by Dr. McKinley Dillingham, a member of the 1956 team, the festivities will include a panel of athletic standouts, a slide-show history of Knoxville College athletics and an old-fashioned meet and greet.

It is expected that all of the living members of both championship teams will be present. Representatives of women's basket ball teams and other sports have been invited to participate. Several members of the 1956 team will speak to the Knoxville College student body at its Contemporary Issues Program on Thursday morning.

The gathering at the Holiday Inn comes 56 years after the big tournament win in 1956 and 84 years after the Knoxville College gymnasium was built in 1928. That year the alumni raised $10,000 for the construction of the building. It was "a place to practice and a good excuse to form a team," said one observer.

A member of that first team was Theodore E. "Ted" Gross, who also played football and baseball and ran track. After graduating from Knoxville College in 1930, he taught at Maynard Elementary School and later became the highly successful basketball and football coach at Beardsley Junior High School.

As the new kids on the block, that first team lost ...

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Sports Fans:

If you do not know where Knoxville College stand in American history, following is a brief list of notable alumni of this historical institution.  Without Knoxville College, there may have never been an Alonzo S. "Jake" Gaither in the College Football Hall of Fame, or the countless young men that went on to successful professional careers in the NFL -- and in life -- from Florida A&M, under Coach Gaither.

George E. Curry		editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association news service (NNPA) and www.BlackPressUSA.com.
Michael Eric Dyson		Professor of sociology at Georgetown University, author, media commentator, talk radio show host	[1]
C. Virginia Fields		social worker and former Borough President of Manhattan, New York
Johnny Ford		Mayor of Tuskegee, Alabama
Jake Gaither		Legendary Florida A&M University football coach who won more than 85 percent of his games over a 24-year period, from 1945 to 1969.  College Football Hall of Famer.
Grady Jackson		former defensive tackle in the National Football League
Vernon Jarrett		first African-American columnist for the Chicago Tribune and former president of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ)
Ken Johnson		former defensive end in the National Football League
Lyman T. Johnson		educator and influential leader of racial desegregation in the state of Kentucky during the 1940s
Dr. Edith Irby Jones		first female president of the National Medical Association
Barbara Rodgers		anchor for KPIX TV in San Francisco
Ralph Wiley		noted author, speaker, and sports columnist for The Oakland Tribune, Sports Illustrated, and ESPN