Wooden’s UCLA success can be traced to Midwestern values from his formative years

Winning is a big part of John Wooden’s legacy. As his UCLA basketball teams dominated in the 1960s and 1970s, his name became synonymous with success.

But to those who knew him best, the most unforgettable thing about Wooden was the simple and dignified way he carried himself every day. They remember the unique set of Midwestern values Wooden brought from rural Indiana to UCLA, and the way he maintained them even after he reached the pinnacle of his sport.

Wooden never forgot the lessons of his youth, the wisdom and faith of his father and family or the teachings of his coaches.

John Robert Wooden was born Oct. 14, 1910 in Hall, Ind. In his autobiography, he wrote that his earliest memories came from his family’s time in nearby Monrovia, Ind., where his father worked as a rural mail carrier.

The Woodens moved to a large farm in Centerton, Ind. when he was in second grade. The entire family ““ Wooden, his mother, father and three brothers ““ worked on the farm.

On the farm, Wooden formed a close relationship with his father, Joshua Wooden. John Wooden carefully followed the principles of hard work and kindness that he saw in his father each day. He always admired his father.

“My father had a profound influence on my life,” Wooden wrote in the autobiography. “Both my philosophy of life and coaching came largely from him. … I always had great respect for him because I knew he would always be fair with me and had my best interests at heart.”

Joshua Wooden was a devout Christian and a lover of poetry and Shakespeare. When his son graduated from grade school, Joshua Wooden gave him a seven-point creed based in part on Polonius’ famous speech in Hamlet. The creed also included advice on hope and faith.

“Pray for guidance, count and give thanks for your blessings every day,” it said.

In all his days of teaching and coaching, John Wooden carried that creed in his wallet.

Joshua Wooden also guided his sons in athletics. He built a tomato-basket hoop with which his sons played basketball and constructed a make-shift baseball diamond on a field at the farm. As far as sports, John Wooden often said that baseball, not basketball, was his first love.

In the early 1920s, the Woodens lost the farm and moved to Martinsville, Ind., where Joshua Wooden found work at a sanitarium.

Basketball was an obsession in Martinsville, just as it was throughout the rest of Indiana.

Glenn Curtis coached John Wooden on the Martinsville High basketball team. Wooden described Curtis as a strong disciplinarian and a solid teacher of basketball fundamentals.

Martinsville reached the Indiana state championship in each of Wooden’s three seasons on the team.

In 1927, Wooden’s junior season, Martinsville beat Muncie Central to win the state title.

It was also in Martinsville that Wooden met his future wife, Nancy “Nellie” Reilly. Nothing kept them apart ““ not Wooden’s self-described shyness, nor Curtis’ policy against his players dating during the season.

“Nellie and I had seemed destined for each other from our first meeting,” Wooden wrote.

She encouraged Wooden to leave Martinsville in 1928 to attend Purdue University, which had recruited Wooden for its basketball team.

The couple remained together throughout Wooden’s four years at Purdue.

Playing for the Boilermakers under coach Ward “Piggy” Lambert, Wooden became a three-time All-American and college player of the year. In 1932, Wooden’s senior season, the team was selected as the national champions.

It was an era long before college sports were big business. Wooden received no scholarship and had to work to pay his own tuition. He waited tables at a fraternity house, sold programs at football games and worked as a food vendor on a train line to Chicago.

Wooden was also a serious student. He loved history and considered Abraham Lincoln his hero.

Wooden said his most prized honor was a Big Ten Scholar-Athlete award he earned at Purdue.

He also acquired an important education on the basketball court from Lambert, himself one of the greatest basketball coaches of his era.

Wooden studied Lambert’s offensive concepts, the way he structured players’ movements without restricting them to a pattern. He learned the press defense from Lambert as well. And from Lambert, Wooden discovered the values of fast-break basketball.

In the autobiography, Wooden called Lambert his greatest coaching influence.

Lambert also directed Wooden into the teaching profession. At the end of his senior year, Wooden considered a lucrative offer to play professional basketball, but decided to accept a teaching fellowship after a conversation with his college coach.

Wooden married Nellie on Aug. 8, 1932 in Indianapolis. They moved to Dayton, Ky., where Wooden had accepted a job as a high school English teacher and basketball coach.

In Kentucky, the Woodens gave birth to their first daughter, Nancy.

They left in 1934, when Wooden received a job offer at a high school in South Bend, Ind.

The family had a wonderful life in South Bend, Wooden wrote. They welcomed a second child, Jim, and enjoyed the pace and intimacy of life in the Midwest.

Wooden worked as a baseball, basketball and tennis coach at South Bend Central High. His teams there were never champions, but he loved his players, and he loved coaching.

Wooden wrote in his autobiography that he may never have left South Bend if not for World War II.

He served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1946. After the war, he returned briefly to South Bend, and then accepted a head coaching job at Indiana State University in 1946.

Wooden’s first team finished with a record of 18-7 and won its conference, but did not play in the 1947 National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics tournament. Wooden would not play his team in the tournament because the NAIA refused to allow one of Indiana State’s black players to participate.

The NAIA changed its rule in the 1948 season, and Indiana State reached the championship game, where it lost to Louisville.

With his immediate success, Wooden began to receive offers to coach at bigger schools. He narrowed his list down to two final choices: Minnesota and UCLA.

He favored Minnesota, but there was a hang-up in the negotiations. He told UCLA Athletic Director Wilbur Johns he would take the job at UCLA.

A new chapter of Wooden’s life began with that phone call. The young coach and his family moved to California in the summer of 1948. With him he brought all the wisdom, character and experience he had acquired in his first 38 years in the Midwest.