maly, too: Johnny Orr, Who Brought Magic To Hilton, Dies At 86

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Johnny Orr, Who Brought Magic To Hilton, Dies At 86

By RON MALY

Sad news today, gang.

Johnny Orr, the basketball coach who built Hilton Magic at Iowa State, is dead at 86.

Orr's teams won a school-record 218 games at Iowa State from 1980-1994, and I was present for many of them.

Indeed, I was on hand as a sportswriter at Hilton Coliseum for his very first victory for the Cyclones, on Dec. 4, 1980 over Drake.

I wrote many, many stories about the emotional, fist-pumping Orr and his teams, and enjoyed every minute of being around him.

He was always a straight shooter with me.

We respected one another. I knew he had a job to do and he knew I had a job to do.

No sportswriter and no coach at a major-college can expect any more.

I covered Orr and his Cyclone teams in wholesale numbers of regular-season games, conference postseason games and NCAA tournament games.

Actually, I covered a number of games coached by Orr before he came to Iowa State.

When he was at Michigan, I covered him when his teams played Iowa, and I wrote the game story in 1976 when his Wolverines lost to Bobby Knight's Indiana team in the NCAA tournament title game.

Knight was a huge fan of Orr, and called me when Johnny decided to quit at Michigan and take the Iowa State job.

"I'd like to write a guest column for you about Johnny," Knight told me on the phone.

Knight kept his promise. He wrote the column and it was published.

In a day or two, I'll reprint Knight's guest column on this website.

Afer arriving in Ames, Orr brought magic to Hilton Coliseum, a place that as in need of someone like Johnny after the likes of previous coaches such as Lynn Nance and Ken Trickey.

Fans adored the entertaining Orr, and flocked to the arena to watch his teams.

He'd walk onto the floor at Hilton, and the band would play, "He-e-e-e-r-e-'s Johnny!" to the sound of the Johnny Carson TV theme song.

Orr loved it. The crowd loved it.

And I sure loved it.

It was less than a month ago that I was discussing Orr while aboard a giant cruiseship headed to the Hawaiian Islands from Los Angeles.

We were seated at a dinner table on the fifth floor of the Star Princess. The man next to me asked where I was from.

"West Des Moines, Iowa," I said.

"I know someone from your part of the country," the man said.

"Who?" I asked.

"Johnny Orr," he answered. "I played on the outstanding basketball teams Beloit College had many years ago," the man said. "Johnny was our leader."

Little did I know then that I would be writing about Orr's death a few weeks later.

So sad a thing to have happen on New Year's Eve.

I'll miss Johnny Orr a lot.

Among Orr's survivors are wife Romie and daughters Jenniefer, Leslie and Rebecca.

*

Photo courtesy of USATSI

JOLTIN' JOE GOT IT STARTED

When Ron Maly was a kid in Cedar Rapids, he wanted to enter an essay contest, and he did. He wrote about Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees being his favorite baseball player. For finishing second in the contest, Ron won a Louisville Slugger baseball bat autographed by DiMaggio. Ron later wanted to be the first person in his family to attend college, and he was. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Iowa, and did what all political science majors do. He became a sportswriter. He had, after all, covered high school football, basketball and baseball games for the Cedar Rapids Gazette while he worked parttime during his university days. Ron wanted to sit in the press box and write about an Iowa-Minnesota football game, and he did. It happened while he was the sports editor at the Albert Lea [Minn.] Tribune, and the game was at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. Ron wanted to cover a World Series, and he did. Also when he was working for the Albert Lea newspaper. Ron wanted to cover Rose Bowls, Sugar Bowls, Orange Bowls, Cotton Bowls, Holiday Bowls, a Freedom Bowl, a Sun Bowl, a Super Bowl and NCAA basketball tournaments, and he did those things after he moved to Des Moines. Ron was a four-time sportswriter of the Year in the state of Iowa [the years were 1977, 1978, 1994 and 1996]. In 2006, he was named a charter member of the University of Iowa's media Wall of Fame in the Kinnick Stadium press box. A photo of the plaque that's displayed in the press box is displayed above this story. Following Ron's retirement from the newspaper business, a publisher asked him if he wanted to write a book about the rich football tradition at the University of Iowa, and he did. The hardback version of "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines" was a best-seller, and so was the revised, softback version. Now he's been asked by his publisher to update the book for a second time. He's in the process of doing that at the present time. Ron considers being asked to update a best-selling book for the second time to be the supreme compliment, considering the Hawkeyes won just four games in the 2012 season. When Ron isn't working on books, he's busy traveling and spending time with his family. Indeed, he attends the athletic, theatrical and musical [both vocal and instrumental] events in which his six grandchildren participate. He also writes about anything that interests him for his many websites. Every chance he gets, Ron proudly wears his America Needs Farmers T-shirt.

The Hawkeyes' Rich Football Tradition, Revisited

I mentioned a while back that I was in the process of updating my Tales from the Iowa Sidelines book. Updating it for the second time. The original hardback edition of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines [pictured at the right] was published in 2003, during the 10-3 season, when coach Kirk Ferentz and his Iowa football team had a 10-3 record that included a 37-17 victory over 15th-ranked Florida in the Outback Bowl and after the Hawkeyes went 11-2 in 2002. That book was a best-seller, so the publishers came to me again in 2005, a season that finished with a breathtaking 30-25 victory over No. 11 Louisiana State in the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, 2005. Because buyers had cleaned out the the shelves in the bookstores, the publishers wanted to know if I'd do an updated version of the book. I agreed, The revised, soft-cover edition [pictured at the left] was published in 2005. Warren Holloway, who teamed with quarterback Drew Tate on a miraculous 56-yard touchdown pass to win the Capital One Bowl, was featured on the cover. That book, too, turned into a best-seller, So I had reason to feel very good about my years as a published author. It's not every day that a the original version is a best-seller, and so is the updated version. Then, imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a senior editor at the publishing company last fall, wanting wanted to know if I was interested in doing a second updated version of the book. It came at a time when things weren't going well for the Hawkeyes in the 2012 season. They lost their last six games and finished with a 4-8 record. Frankly, the thought of doing a revised edition of the book during a 4-8 season seemed to be a stretch. "Maybe producing a revised edition in a year or two would be a better idea," I told the publishers. "We'd like to do it now," I was told. "Let me think about it," I said. After a few days of thought, I accepted the idea. I talked myself into the idea that this was the supreme compliment--being asked to do a second book update during a 4-8 season showed strong confidence by the publishers in me and in the Hawkeyes' football program. So I got back into the business of interviewing players and coaches again, going to postgame press conferences, weekly press conferences and a scrimmage in West Des Moines. After a press conference in Iowa City, I did a one-on-one interview with coach Kirk Ferentz, and mentioned to him that I was in the process of doing a revised edition of my two best-selling books. I congratulated him on the excellent things he had done for Iowa's football program--all of which contributed to the success of my books. "I think Coach Fry had more to do with it," he told me, bringing up the name of Hayden Fry, his one-time boss at Iowa and a man who brought Iowa's football program back from the dead in the 20th century. That's modest Kirk Ferentz for you. Even though the 2012 season wasn't something Hawkeye coaches, players and fans will recall with any special feeling, Ferentz has a 14-year record of 100-74 at Iowa that includes two 11-victory seasons [2002 smd 2009], two 10-victory seasons [2003 and 2004], plus he's been the Big Ten coach of year in 2002, 2004 and 2009, and national coach of the year in 2002. Indeed, Ferentz has done some wonderful things at Iowa City, and I fully expect his success to continue. I've concluded my writing for the second update of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines, and the senior editor has furnished me with an early look at the book. Not only are the Kirk Ferentz years included in the updated version, but so is the stuff I previously wrote about Howard Jones, Dr. Eddie Anderson, Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick and the 1939 Hawkeye Ironmen, Ronald Reagan, Ozzie Simmons, Ossie Solem, Randy Duncan, Alex Karras and lots of other legends from Iowa's rich football history. I expect the book to be in stores soon. I hope you like it.