TIPTON, Okla. (AP) - Jerry Shipp’s road to the Olympic Games started with a makeshift basketball and goal. It ended on the podium in Tokyo, where the 6-foot-6 forward received a gold medal for helping the United States win the 1964 championship at the Olympics. That moment in time was preceded by a lengthy stay at the Tipton Orphans Home, adoption, an All-American career at Southeastern State and five years with the AAU’s Phillips 66ers, The Lawton Constitution (https://bit.ly/1bmgJ2p ) reported.
“I made my first goal out of a nail keg ring,” Shipp said. “They used to have wooden nail kegs and the center ring was the biggest. It came off about a five-gallon wooden nail keg.
“So I nailed it up to an elm tree. I put boards under each side where if I hit it, when I shot the ball, it wouldn’t bend down.
“My first basketball was one of the old Spaldings that had a bladder in it and laced up. It was flat, so I took the lace out. We grew cotton there at the Home, so I stuffed it with all the cotton I could stuff, then I laced it back up. You couldn’t dribble it, but you could shoot it and pass it.
“That’s how I got started in basketball.”
At Tipton, Shipp - then Jerry Franklin Wafford - was assigned work as an assistant to John Cole.
“He was a plumber, electrician, maintenance man of all sorts,” Shipp said. “He knew I was interested in sports, so he bought me a basketball and told me to go in the gym.
“He said: ’don’t turn on any lights because there are windows along that one side and plenty of light comes in. If you hear anybody coming, jump in that closet and practice on this end because you’re supposed to be working with me. I’ll do twice the work that I normally would do and you practice every day.’”
Shipp did as he was told and began playing with the Tipton Junior High team. Hollis, Hollister, Gotebo, Frederick and Midway were some of the opponents.
He is quick to admit that he was not a good student.
“I didn’t go to school to learn anything,” Shipp said. “I went to play whatever sport was in season.
“Back then, they turned you out at 18 and I was gonna use sports as the way to succeed. Most of them go in the military, but I didn’t want to do that.
“I didn’t even try and I had an algebra and geometry teacher (Mrs. Maynard) that would assign homework and I’d just put my name on it and put a zero on it and hand it in. She’d tell me to go to the board and put Problem 6 on the board. I’d just go up there and write the number 6 and go back and sit down.
“I know she got extremely frustrated with me and I didn’t have parents, so she told me one day, and I know it was frustration, that I would never amount to anything, that I’d probably be in jail by the time I was 21.
“I just got up and left the classroom and walked home and hid out until about 3:30 because I didn’t want any overseer to see that I was out of school.”
The Home’s finance officer, Brother Morton, took Shipp under his wing and taught him the basics of algebra. He returned to class, answered the six questions on a test and turned them in.
“She always graded the papers as you handed them in because she gave short tests,” Shipp said. “She just wadded mine up and put it in the trash can.
“Well, I got it out, straightened it out and laid it back on her desk. She wadded it up and threw it back in again.
“And I called her an old battle ax or something and she sent me to the office and I got three licks from the principal, whose name was Jess Hanna.
“I never forgot that. That was a negative, telling me that I would never amount to anything.”
She did strike a nerve.
“There are times in your journey to succeed that you want to give in to yourself, but she drove me,” Shipp said. “When I would reach that point to give in, I would think what she said. I didn’t want her to be right, so I’d just get another shot of adrenalin and take off.”
After becoming one of our country’s finest basketball players, Shipp often returned to Tipton.
“Probably 35 years later, I go back,” Shipp said. “Mr. Hanna was a young man when I was there. I was going to Las Vegas with my family and I wanted to go through Tipton because I wanted to talk to Mr. Hanna.
“So I found out where he lived and walked up to his door.
“He said: ’what brings you here?’
“And I said: ’I’ve come to tell you I didn’t cheat on that test’ because Mrs. Maynard accused me of cheating.
“He said: ’you know what, Jerry? I don’t know why, as many times as you were sent the office, why I remember that, but I remember that time.
“And he said: ’I believe you now, because had you cheated, you would have forgotten about it.’
“I had tremendous respect for him, even though I got three licks about every other day for doing something - not trying in class, just not doing anything.”
Hanna went to the University of Colorado one summer and came back with a new theory.
“I think it was when I was in the eighth grade,” Shipp said. “He wouldn’t give me licks. He would talk to me. It made me feel so bad, I thought: ’hmm, I’d rather have the licks than this.’
“So I kinda straightened up because I didn’t like that at all.
“That’s a negative that I turned into a positive.”
Shipp tries to visit the Home the Saturday before Easter every year.
“I looked up Mrs. Maynard’s grave many years ago, and I used to drive by and tell her how much I hated her,” Shipp said.
Then he saw the big picture.
“I got to thinking: you know, I need to thank her,” he said. “So now, every Easter, I go by her grave and I thank her. I get out and I thank her because she drove me.
“I remember standing on the stand and I bent down and they put the Olympic medal on me. I stood up and I looked into the camera, and I said: ’Mrs. Maynard, I hope you’re watching because I’ve made something out of myself.’”
Shipp donated the medal to Southeastern State, where it is prominently displayed.
“I told ’em I wanted to make a little writing to put by the medal because I don’t want it to be shown to glorify me,” he said.
“It’s a message to kids that you don’t have to come from that big gold house on the hill. You can come from a small town where you milk and farm and things like that; that you don’t have to have a $150 pair of tennis shoes. You don’t even have to have a mom and dad to be successful in what you choose.
“That’s the little writing that I put with the gold medal was to encourage everyone, but particularly kids from very small schools and towns who are overlooked because big-time coaches think: ’well, they didn’t play tough competition.’
“Well, there have been many athletes who have succeeded who came from small towns.”
Shipp continued to succeed after the Tokyo experience. He returned to Phillips for nine years, and then worked for a sporting goods company out of McAlester for three before deciding to become a coach.
He signed on at Kingston and was head basketball and assistant football coach until reaching retirement age. He now lives in Ardmore and continues to serve as a substitute teacher in the Plainview district.
___
Information from: The Lawton Constitution, https://www.swoknews.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.