W THE CHOPPING BLOCK W

BROTHERS IN ARMS

(November 24, 2011). Luke, Tyler and Cody Zeller are now the highest scoring brothers in Hatchet history. The Bouchie brothers are second on the list. They had held the top spot since 1982. With Cody Zeller entering his senior year, the Zeller brothers could pass the 5,000 point mark. The top 10 are:

1. Luke, Tyler and Cody Zeller 4,249

2. Steve, Tom and Randy Bouchie 2,274

3. Ron, Denny and Bobby Arnold 1,762

4. Brandon and Justin Smith 1,454

5. Craig and Shane Neal 1,442

6. Scott and Sam Alford 1,399

7. Kelly and Alan Garland 1,302

8. Bill and Sam Gee 1,287

9. Dave, Basil and John DeJernett 1,208

10. Morry and Alex Portee 1,017

THE STATE CHAMPION HATCHETS PLAYED THE ILLINOIS ALL-STARS IN 1942

Seven graduates from the 1942 state champion Washington High School basketball team played a team of Illinois All-Stars on August 29, 1942. Paul Lostutter of Bedford, who had coached the Indiana All-Stars against Kentucky the previous night, selected this new "all-star" team to play Illinois. Lostutter chose Hatchets Charles Harmon, Jim Riffey, Art Grove, John DeJernett, Bob “Jug” Donaldson, Garland Raney and Fuzzy Crane. He finished out the squad with Ary, Greenberg, Latham and Althaus of Evansville Central. The game was played in the 2,100-seat Mt. Vernon, Illinois gym for the benefit of the Navy relief fund.

Although Harmon and Riffey had to play in the Indiana-Kentucky series the previous night in Indianapolis, the former Hatchets racked up a quick 19-3 lead. After Coach Lostutter decided to rest Harmon and Riffey, Donaldson fouled out near the end of the first half after completely dominating the "famous" Dwight Eddleman. Donaldson was the defensive specialist on Washington’s state championship teams in 1941 and again in 1942.

Eddleman, who went on to star in three sports at the University of Illinois, is a member of the National High School Association Hall of Fame and the All-Time IHSA All-State Basketball Team. Illinois closed the gap to 22-12 at the half. The momentum had changed and Illinois went on to win 36-30. The Evansville Central quartet contributed only 4 points in the loss.

There you have it. Seven graduates from the 1942 Hatchets were Indiana's "unofficial" all-stars on a hot summer night in Illinois in August of 1942.

Not Too Bad For A Couple of West End Boys

Washington lost a true basketball legend last week with the passing of Brayton Simmons. At just 5-11, Brayton was a tenacious rebounder and defender, and led the 1960 Hatchets to the regional finals. He averaged almost 17 rebounds per game that season while scoring 13.1 ppg. His 23 rebounds against Jasper is the second highest single game total ever at WHS.

After graduating from high school, he went on to play basketball at Vincennes University. He was the first black to play at VU. It took a lot of courage to play in a city where just a generation earlier had sent the “committee of fourteen” letter to Dave DeJernett, threatening the black player’s life.

As a 9-year old in 1968, I had two heroes. One was Carl Yastremski of the Boston Red Sox and the other was Brayton Simmons of the Washington Hatchets. Yaz lived on the TV screen and on the front of a baseball card. Brayton lived down the street. I used to mow grass for Brayton’s mother (Brayton was in his late twenties and was busy playing ball). All the young ballplayers down in the West End knew he was “the Man.” Always smiling and upbeat, my real life hero was a positive influence on many young lives.

During the summer, my mom would take us to Allen Field to watch Brayton play fast-pitch softball. I can still see him exploding out of the left-handed batter’s box, stretching a single into a double. He truly was “the Man.” By the early 1970’s, fast-pitch softball faded and slow-pitch took over. Of course, Brayton excelled in the new variation of the sport also. His skill on the softball field was in high demand. I was fortunate enough to play on several teams with Brayton during my softball days. My childhood hero became my teammate and friend.

By the mid-1990’s, Brayton had retired from playing softball full-time. But during that time, my team needed a player for one game in a Vincennes tournament so we coaxed him out of his semi-retirement. He came over and played as if he never missed a beat. After the game, I went to the parking lot to thank him for making the trip for just one game. We started reminiscing about the old days, our past, present and future. Brayton looked at me with that great smile and said, “Not too bad for a couple of West End boys.” I agreed. Today, Brayton still lives in my head and in my heart. If I close my eyes I can still see Brayton rounding third and heading for home. I can still feel the excitement that only a 9-year old can feel. Not too bad at all, Brayton, you’re still the Man.

From the Blue Hole to the Hall of Fame-

The Life and Times of David “Big Dave” DeJernett

By Keith Ellis, Martha DeJernett House and Bob Padgett

The Great Dayton Flood of 1913 brought more than fertile riverbed soil to Washington, Indiana. Those treacherous waters set in motion a series of unforeseeable and unforgettable events. After an unusually warm and wet winter of 1912-13, the soil around Washington was saturated. In March, torrential rains hammered Indiana. B & O Railroad officials dispatched a work train to shore up weak points west of Washington. On March 27, 1913, all the work that could be done was completed and Engine Number 401 started its slow trip back to town. As the locomotive moved out onto the Blue Hole trestle, it collapsed. Four men were lost. After the waters receded, B & O immediately began work to restore train service. Garfield, Kentucky resident John DeJernett was asked to help repair the damage done to the B&O Railroad after the Blue Hole Disaster. Sensing an opportunity to serve and prosper (at a pay scale of 12 cents per hour), John went to work in Washington. Before long he sent for his wife Mary and their children Martha, Jim, and baby son Dave.

Dave grew up demonstrating a love for farm work, especially horses, and was a good-natured boy. The DeJernett family lived in the middle of Washington’s west end, a working-class section in a tiny town of ten thousand people. Their house sat a block from Dunbar School. In 1923 when Dave was eleven, a new elementary school was built in the west end. The new school was attended by white students only, but Dunbar provided a fine education, anyway.

Shortly thereafter, Washington High School hired a new basketball coach. Burl Friddle had been a highly successful center for the Franklin Wonder Five, a team that strung together three straight Indiana state high school championships. Friddle, a future Hall of Famer, didn’t wander far from home after high school and as a sophomore captained the Franklin College ‘mythical’ national champions of 1923.

After graduating from college, Friddle might have considered a professional basketball career in the industrial league at Akron, Ohio. Perhaps he could have played for the Firestone Non-Skids or Goodyear teams that rivaled the best in the nation. Maybe he knew of Roy Burris, the first Washington Hatchet to play pro ball, in Akron. Instead Friddle left his playing days behind and took a job as a Washington teacher, hired by the legendary figure of Washington athletics, A. O. Fulkerson. Principal Fulkerson paid for Friddle to attend the Zupke coaching school the summer before work was to begin.

Friddle inherited a team that had built a strong tradition in just a couple decades of play. In 1925 Washington under Coach Harry Hunter had appeared in its fifth state finals, a tourney in Indianapolis witnessed that year by Dr. James Naismith, the man who had invented basketball in a Massachusetts YMCA in 1891. Dr. Naismith later remarked “Basketball really had its origin in Indiana, which remains today the center of the sport.”

One of Friddle’s duties was to instruct physical education at West End Elementary School. Dunbar students were included in these classes. Friddle probably met Dave DeJernett’s brother Basil in the early elementary classes at Dunbar before he met Big Dave himself. Former Hatchet and Hall of Famer Charlie Harmon recalls Friddle at Dunbar, and a lady from West End School helping out.

The lady Mr. Harmon remembers was schoolmarm Lena Dunn, who later coached West End to so many city elementary basketball championships that West End School earned the nickname of the Tiny Hatchets. The Tiny Hatchets competed against other historic school teams in town like the Jefferson Wildcats, Southside Midgets, Veale Mustangs, Saint Simon Crusaders and the Saint Mary Cardinals. The new elementary school in the west end is named in her honor, Lena Dunn Elementary.

The Trustee’s Office of Washington publicly funded Dunbar School. In 1950 the Trustee decided Dunbar should be closed. As a result black country kids switched to Longfellow and town kids went to the West End School. The Hawkins family had donated the property on which Dunbar School was located at West Walnut Street to the black community. The Hawkins’ were descendants of Jake Hawkins, a slave who was one of the earliest permanent residents of Daviess County in 1806.

The town of Maysville, laid out on land belonging to the Hawkins’, was on the Wabash and Erie Canal, four miles southwest of Washington. During the great canal’s heyday, Maysville was the most important business place in Daviess County. Maysville’s waterways return us to the Washington’s west end, Blue Hole and the flood. That tragic event changed the face of Washington basketball and the city itself forever. For because of it Washington received the DeJernett family, who lived at 817 McCormick Avenue. Today where their house once stood there is a grassy plain on the south side of the old McCord’s (Corcoran, later Tokheim) factory. But why should we honor Big Dave?

In 1928 Coach Friddle decided that sophomore DeJernett had possibilities as a basketball player and deserved a place on the Hatchet team. Dave and Harold Bledsoe became the first Afro-Americans to don Hatchet basketball uniforms. Black athletes had previously starred for Washington’s state champion track team in 1914. Joe Umbles and Richard Ballou both won individual state track titles for WHS that year.

Friddle saw that DeJernett had no experience playing basketball, but his height and leaping ability were well-suited to center jumps that occurred after each basket was scored. DeJernett in practices would jump center, then play offensive guard, which in those days was a defensive position, staying back in case the opponent stole the ball and attempted a quick score at the other end. “It was then I realized,” Friddle later recalled, “how well the old ‘pivot play’ of professional teams was suited to him. Bill Blagrave had used it to some degree with our team the year before” (in 1927-28).

Historians attribute the Original Celtics as innovators of the Pivot Play. The strategy required a keen passer in the middle on offense to spot teammates making cuts as they eluded their defenders. As a pivot passer Big Dave was aided by the ability to grip the ball for superior manipulation.

Under Friddle the Hatchets had always had strong teams, going 192-86-1 over 10 seasons. The individual Hatchet Dave DeJernett should be remembered for several accomplishments. As a junior he scored six points, including two winning free throws, in a 13-11 state quarterfinal win over Franklin. Later that day Big Dave (who was only 6-3 at the time) faced down Big Jack Mann, a 6-6 sophomore at Muncie Central, outjumping Mann to win the second half tips while scoring 11 points as Washington rallied and won our city’s first state basketball championship.

David DeJernett became the first black athlete in United States history to star on an undisputed integrated championship basketball team. Two others before him (in Chicago and New York City) had played on integrated city champions, but never in an open statewide tournament. Big Dave, his teammates, and their coach deserve so much credit for this unprecedented accomplishment. They made newspapers as far away as China!

DeJernett returned the following year as a 6-5 Hatchet senior. The team was again favored to take the state title. Dave heroically responded to a letter from a cowardly “Committee of Fourteen” that threatened his life if he played in a regional game against Vincennes. He went out that night and scored 14 points to beat the Alices 22-19. The Washington Herald joked, “Lucky for the ‘committee’ it wasn’t composed of forty members!”

Next the Hatchets beat Indianapolis Shortridge in the quarterfinals 23-22 as DeJernett scored two field goals and assisted on another in the closing minute for the win. The game that followed was a rematch between Jack Mann’s Muncie Bearcats and the Hatchets. Muncie’s goal was to put Dave on the bench and they succeeded. He played little and fouled out early. Muncie won the game by two points and went on to take the state title. Dave closed out his high school career by being selected First Team All-State for a third time.

It is worth noting that Washington in the late 1920’s was scene to marches by members of the infamous Ku Klux Klan, frightened men who hid their faces behind masks and attempted to intimidate churches and other town associations. A Washington mine worker was killed in the 1920’s due to Klan-related activity. Thanks to bright young men like Burl Friddle, Dave DeJernett, and their teammates, the ignorance and failure of the KKK was exposed in Washington, Indiana, long before the civil rights era. After the Washington Catholic Cardinals won the Catholic Boys’ state basketball championship in 1931, a banquet at St. Simon’s honored both the Cardinal and Hatchet championship teams to further unify city pride.

David DeJernett graduated from Washington High School in 1931 and attended Indiana Central College (now the University of Indianapolis) for the next four years. He starred at ICC on integrated teams just as he’d done with the Hatchets. In those days no national championship existed at the college level, but the ICC Greyhounds were one of the country’s best teams in 1934 with a 16-1 record. During that time, he battled against his 1930 Hatchet teammate Ed “Jingles” Engelhart, star of the Central Normal College Purple Warriors. Dave earned nine varsity letters at Indiana Central and was inducted into its Hall of Fame in 1993 and his 1934 team followed suit in 2005. DeJernett was a role model for black Indianapolis youths such as Ray Crowe, who played in 1935 with Dave’s Greyhounds, as well as white athletes like LeRoy “Cowboy” Edwards, a center for Indianapolis Tech in the early 1930’s before starring at the University of Kentucky and in professional ball.

Ray Crowe eventually coached Bailey and Oscar Robertson at Crispus Attucks High School. Ray’s brother, George, became Indiana’s first Mr. Basketball and also attended Indiana Central. Their example and Big Dave’s led directly to Bailey Robertson’s attending ICC, where he set the school scoring record before joining the Harlem Globetrotters along with Attucks teammates Hallie Bryant and Willie Gardner.

After college, Dave DeJernett’s basketball options were limited. No professional league like the NBA existed at that time. A major team was in Indianapolis – the Kautsky AC’s, owned by local grocer Frank Kautsky. The Kautskys boasted one of the nation’s finest pro clubs, led by guard John Wooden. Stars like Wooden gave the Kautskys enough prestige to ensure their eventual inclusion in the formation of the National Basketball League that led directly to today’s NBA.

Because no real league existed in 1936, the Kautskys instead booked games at Indianapolis’ Butler Fieldhouse against local challengers such as the U. S. Tires team and out-of-staters like former Hatchet Roy Burris’ Firestone Non-Skids. This was the era of barnstorming, and New York teams of the caliber of the Original Celtics also played annual match ups against the Kautskys.

In 1936 the best team in the United States was the all-black New York/Harlem Renaissance, owned by “Smiling” Bob Douglas. Douglas’s Rens had a “Magnificent Seven” that set a professional record in 1933 with 88 straight wins. That team is in the National Basketball Hall of Fame today. After the Rens beat the Kautskys in early January of 1936, Frank Kautsky expressed interest in contracting Dave DeJernett to play against the Rens, and perhaps in other games as well. Had he done so, pro basketball might have been integrated more than a decade ahead of Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers.

Yet for reasons not fully explained, Dave DeJernett began playing two weeks later for the Renaissance on their road trip through the southern United States. His first game with the Rens occurred in January 1936 in Tuskegee, Alabama. When the Rens returned to Indiana for several re-matches with the Kautskys and other teams, Dave was hailed as a conquering hero. He was Indiana’s best basketball player on the nation’s best team.

Why didn’t Dave play instead for the Kautskys? Until it is explained further, the best guess is that Smiling Bob Douglas paid better. The Rens played seven days a week and twice on Sundays. That meant payday was every day during those Depression years. One of the Rens, Fat Jenkins, was reported to earn $10,000 per season. It would be easy to conjecture that race was a factor in Dave’s not playing for Kautsky, except for Mr. Kautsky’s stated interest, plus the fact that DeJernett had appeared in Indianapolis as a star of integrated amateur teams for the previous seven years. Adulatory articles, even a poem, had been written about Big Dave in Indianapolis newspapers. He was a very popular figure among whites and blacks in his day.

It has been said that Dave once appeared in Bicknell with heavyweight champ Joe Louis and attracted a bigger crowd of fans than Joe did. Whether this is true or not, DeJernett certainly knew Louis, as he played often against Louis’s Detroit-based Brown Bombers basketball team. Big Dave had considered professional boxing after he had graduated from high school.

After featuring Dave in about 80 Midwestern and Southern games, the Rens returned to New York and ended their season. DeJernett may have played for them again on occasion. He spent most of the next six years in Chicago, where he’d likely been encouraged to play by old rival Jack Mann. Mann graduated high school a year after DeJernett and played at Wilberforce College before turning pro at the ripe old age of 19.

While Dave was still in college, Mann in 1934 played a few months for Abe Saperstein’s Harlem Globetrotters. At that time the Globetrotters weren’t a well-known club. In fact, they’d been easily “taken over” by Saperstein in 1929 when he began booking games for the team, originated by Chicago high school star Tommy Brookins. Brookins learned that Saperstein was also booking games for another team and billing it as the Harlem Globetrotters. Since the business wasn’t very lucrative for him, Brookins simply dissolved his team. Some of Brookins’ players joined Saperstein, who continued booking for the ‘new’ Globetrotters and eventually assumed financial control.

The man who’d managed Brookins’ original Globetrotters, Dick Hudson, still helped other teams in Chicago after Saperstein took the Trotters. Hudson through the 1930’s called his teams the Savoy Big Five, the Hottentots, the Chicago Crusaders, and the Palmer House Indians. After leaving the Globetrotters in 1934, young Jack Mann began playing for Dick Hudson. The team often played as the Chicago Crusaders on road trips East, including Indianapolis. Mann shared laughs with Big Dave when the Rens appeared in Muncie in 1936. For the next several years they were teammates on the Crusaders.

It would be nice to say the Chicago Crusaders became the best basketball team of their day, but that would probably not be quite true. Nonetheless the Chicago Crusaders played against the Rens, Kautskys, and most other top teams in the United States during the late 1930’s. In 1937 they associated with Chicago’s historic Palmer House hotel and were known as the Palmer House Indians.

DeJernett outlasted Mann on the Crusaders and was still playing for them in 1940. That year the Crusaders played series against LeRoy Edwards’ Oshkosh (WI) All-Stars and won half the games. Oshkosh in both 1939 and 1941 finished runner-up in the World Professional Tournament. Oshkosh beat the Globetrotters eight times in 1941, and won the World tourney in 1942. Fair to say the Crusaders competed on a top-notch level, despite never appearing in the World tourney. The only black teams invited to compete in those years were Douglas’ Rens and Saperstein’s Globetrotters. The Rens and Trotters were always placed in the same bracket making it impossible for them to play in the tourney finals.

Today the University of Indianapolis honors Dave DeJernett with a plaque that states he played for the Harlem Globetrotters. But the Globetrotters’ website does not include Big Dave on their all-time club roster. Confusion may exist because in 1941 Dave’s Crusaders were apparently sold to Abe Saperstein. News accounts of that year indicate that Saperstein controlled the club as a “farm team.” It is believed that Dave’s team in 1941, once again going by the Savoy Big Five name, went on a road trip west and became the Harlem Globetrotters’ second traveling unit.

For many years now the Globetrotters have had more than one traveling unit (they played in Washington’s Hatchet House in the early 1970’s featuring Geese Ausbie and Pablo Robertson but not Meadowlark Lemon nor Curley Neal). Until 1941 they had only one squad. By the fall of 1940 the Globetrotters really hit the big time, winning the World Tourney earlier that year and parlaying the title into a ballyhooed game against the College All-Stars. Into that historic circumstance stepped Dave DeJernett. Ironically, Dave’s pro basketball career probably ended with the Harlem Globetrotters, while his friend and rival Jack Mann had started out playing for that team. They were emulated years later by Indianapolis schoolboy legends Robertson, Gardner, and Bryant.

After the United States had entered World War II in 1942, David DeJernett joined the Army. He saw action in Tunisia, Southern France, the Rhineland and Central Europe. He was decorated with the European/African/Middle Eastern Ribbon and four Bronze Stars. He also received the World War II Victory Medal and the Good Conduct Medal.

After defending his country in wartime Big Dave returned to Indianapolis. He continued to visit friends and family in Washington, but apparently spoke little of his many great accomplishments. DeJernett kept company with a notable Midwest social circle that included Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Sammy Davis Jr, and Adam Clayton Powell.

Dave’s legacy includes the Washington Hatchet integrated championship squads of 1941 and 1942. Through the 1940’s Washington could boast of five young men in addition to Dave and Roy Burris with pro basketball credentials. Future pros Charlie Harmon and Art Grove reunited with their old West End Elementary School mentor Burl Friddle as freshmen for the Toledo University team that runner-upped in the NIT college tourney in 1943. After leaving Toledo, Friddle coached in the NBA. Another West Ender, Jim Riffey, played in the NBA. Hatchets Woody Norris and Leo “Crystal” Klier both played for the Kautsky club that won the 1947 World Tourney. Klier played for the College All-Stars against the World Champion Pistons in 1946 and for the Kautskys in their 1947 game against the College All-Stars. Later Klier also played in the NBA.

Harmon, likely the United States’ first black coach of an integrated professional team with Utica in the American Basketball League of 1950-51, had a brother, Bill Harmon, on the champion Hatchets. Bill Harmon and John DeJernett, Dave’s brother who played forward on the champion Hatchets, both attended Indiana Central College as Dave had.

When the Hatchets won their second straight title in 1942, an Indianapolis newspaper noted that John was the brother of Dave DeJernett, “who made hardwood history a dozen years ago.” Then the newspaper editorialized, “In the fine teamwork and clean sportsmanship the public found a great lesson in tolerance and interracial cooperation. It was democracy in action regardless of the quaint color line.”

Children growing up in Washington’s West End during the 1950’s and 1960’s felt the tremendous pride still generated by the achievements of these young neighborhood men. Today Dunbar School serves as a humble yet earnest community center, while the former West End School looks like a bomb has been dropped on it. Only the keyhole-shaped lane in the gym remains as testimony to the glory years of West End Basketball.

True that it was tragic. But in a larger sense the Flood of 1913 provided a cleansing, blessing, and vindication for the better angels of the nature of Washington, Indiana, and the world. Out of dismal hardship true greatness can arise. Big Dave was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 1976. In 2005, he was named to Washington High School’s All-Century Team.