WIBERFORCE, Ohio -- This, too, is what is meant by “Back to the Future.”Rather than the science fiction adventure movie of the mid-1980s, this is a real life love story that began over six decades ago and now, thanks to an unexpected realignment of the sports stars, has been rekindled into another moment of the heart today.
In the early 1950s, Barbara Jean Townsend came to Wilberforce University from Cleveland, Mississippi, and Homer Lockett Jr., of Kansas City did the same. The two education students met and soon fell in love — with each other and the school.
They got teaching degrees, married after graduation and became educators in Alliance, Ohio. She was a teacher, he a school principal. Over the years they would return to the university that meant so much to them and often they brought their daughter, Beverly, along with them.
The place became magical to her as well and many years later, long after she had begun a family of her own, Beverly passed along her glorious stories of Wilberforce to her oldest child, Dorianne.
By then, though, Dorianne Johnson was on a different collegiate path. A big-time prep basketball talent, her sights weren’t set on a small NAIA school in Greene County.
She was recruited by several Division I programs across the South and chose the University of Mississippi, where she became a three-year starter, was team captain, led the Lady Rebels in blocked shots and ended up an integral part of teams that made two NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 appearances and had several top-15 national rankings.
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