My other contribution to Wabash was my presence on the Wonder Five. Wabash has had five great teams that won championships and were referred to as the Wabash Wonder Five, but only Dave "Whitey" Wilcox, Duane Axel, Jim Price, Charlie West, and Bill Boone remember the Wonder Five of the 50's. We were the five that sat on the end of the bench and

                                             Charlie West--1961

  "Wondered" if we would get into the game that night. Most of the time we got in when the game was either lost or won. We got to go in and mop up. Duane Axel played a lot his junior year and looked forward to starting his senior year until the Wizard of Alamo showed up. It didn't take Ax too long to see that his days on the floor were numbered, but he cheerfully became a member of the Wonder Five. One of the contributions of the Wonder Five was to play the opponent's defense in preparation for the game. We decided that if we weren't going to play in the game, we would make the starters work as hard as we could to get ready for the actual game. The practice time was our chance to make a contribution and we did our best to help the team. Duane Axel provided my most embarrassing moment in my athletic career, topping even striking out in the bottom of the seventh with the bases loaded one day. As I have reported, we always sat together on the end of the bench and tried to stay in the game as much as possible. One night in a close game, Axel turned to me and said, "Boone, the coach wants you." I took off my warm ups, left my seat on the bench and went to Coach Brock for my instructions that would undoubtedly preserve the game for Dear Old Wabash. When I got there, Coach Brock looked surprised and said, "Boone, what in the H_ _ _ are you doing here." I wanted to dig a hole and pull it in after me. I had been had-big time. Axel and I have laughed about that one many times

Several incidents stick out in my mind about different ball games that Charlie Bowerman played in. I don't remember most of the opponents or where the incidents took place, but the incidents are vividly etched in my mind and now they are on paper so others can laugh about them too. Charlie had very little tolerance for bad referees or inferior opponents. He had a real killer instinct and strove for perfection in every facet of the game. If others didn't, they were in trouble. I can remember several times when referees would make bad calls on Charlie or one of his teammates. Charlie would always end up with the ball and when the referee would turn around to inform the bench, he would get hit in the head with a long pass from Johnny Unitas, who then put on the most innocent look as if it were impossible for such a nice guy to do something like that. He never got caught.

At other times a defensive player would try to guard Charlie too close and Charlie would protect the ball by putting it back over his head and to one side. As soon as the defender got his nose too close to the elbow of the "Assassin of Alamo"-you guessed it. He got hit in the nose and usually ended up getting called for the foul in addition to the shot in the nose. CB was a fierce competitor and protected the ball at all times using any method. He was difficult to tie up even when surrounded by defenders because he always kept the ball moving until one of the defenders slapped him on the arm trying to get the ball.

I can still see the incident in my mind's eye from my seat on the end of the bench the night when Dwight "Ike" Tallman, a football tackle was playing high post for the hated DePauw Dannies basketball team. Tallman, who was about 6'5 and 260 pounds, had set a pick at the top of the key for Charlie's man. As Charlie slid over the pick, he reached back and casually, but with some enthusiasm struck the cup-less Tallman in the portion of his anatomy where he should have been wearing a cup, at least that night. The infuriated Tallman chased the "Wizard of Alamo" the rest of the game trying to get close enough to even the score, which was obviously 2-0, without attracting the attention of one of the referees. It completely destroyed his game, his poise, and his ego, but Charlie just kept playing as if nothing had happened. We had some real battles with the Dannies my junior and senior years. Sometimes I got to watch. Sometimes I got to play. One of my proudest moments was at a game down at DePauw, when there were three County boys on the floor at the same time. There was Charlie, either Rusty Nichols or Gary Jouris and me. It was a great moment. It was at the end of the game (That's why I was in there) and we won.

Charlie was at his best in big games and against traditional rivals. In those days, that was Butler and DePauw because we played them home and home each year. It really rankled Charlie that Butler's legendary coach Tony Hinkle didn't recruit him because he thought he was too small and too slow. The ledger versus the Bulldogs read Wabash 4 Butler 2 in three years of competition, including the 5 overtime win in 1959-60 when three players played the whole game. Two were County boys Charlie and Richard Haffner from New Ross who along with teammate Bernie Burk had gone to Butler to play basketball and study to become coaches under Tony Hinkle. The other player to play the whole game was Orville Bose of Butler.

What do I remember about the 5 overtime game? I wish I could verify this by some kind of record like the film of the game, but unfortunately the cameraman ran out of film before the 5th overtime when I finally got into the game because somebody fouled out. I'm sure nobody remembers but me that I stole a pass to help set up the winning basket. Can't prove it, but it happened. Oh well, this isn't about me. Charlie was even more amazing that night than usual. He scored 53 points and played the whole game. He was playing just as hard at the end of the game as he was at the beginning. He wasn't fast, but he sure was quick and understood the game as well as anyone I ever played with or against. At one time, we attributed his endurance to a resting heart rate of 62. I think it was because he chewed on a piece of gauze instead of gum. J. Owen Huntsman said he would have made a great distance runner with that low heart rate. The picture of Charlie running a Marathon seems a little out of focus to me.

Ah, J. Owen Huntsman. That name takes me back to some more stories about Charlie: now Tom Bennett from Southport, a protégé of Blackey Braden enters the narrative. Charlie, Tom, and I were all planning to coach. Tom and I did, but Charlie went on to his career with Phillips 66. We must have taken 3 or 4 courses with J. Owen, all in his office, which as I recall was right next to George Mahorney's equipment room. George was a marvel. He worked at Wabash for 15-20 years and knew everybody's name.  To George, everybody's name coaches and athletes alike, was "Brother"  and that's what he called us. 

George Mahorney is honored at his retirement.

When we went to J. Owen's office to learn about the theory of basketball, baseball and football, the discussion always got around to the same topic--his sons. Stan and Jerry Huntsman were two outstanding athletes for Wabash in the early 50's. Stan was the youngest and was a powerful running back and trackman, even competing in the Decathlon trials at Wabash in 1956. He went on to coach track at several colleges and recently ended his illustrious career at Austin, Texas coaching track at the University of Texas. Jerry quarterbacked the undefeated Little Giant football team of 1951 or 1952 and went on to coach at Covington High School, Crawfordsville High School and Indiana State Teacher's College, now Indiana State University. J. Owen was justifiably proud of his two sons and could launch into stories about them at anytime. When the three of us met to go to his office for class, we kidded each other by saying, "Here we go, it's time for our class-Stan and Jerry I and II." We learned a lot about the offense of the New York Celtics which J. Owen either played on or coached and guaranteed us that their offense could get a lay-up every time against any zone defense in the land. He even diagrammed the offense on the board while we dutifully took notes about everything he said. You know what coaches say? "The last guy with the chalk wins." Tom Bennett must have taken better notes than I did. He ended up coaching at a Jr. College in Arizona-Mesa Grande or something like that and won the National Juco Championship, I think. Anyway he had a great coaching career. He is going into the Wabash College Athletic Hall of Fame this year so it will be good to see him again and relive some great days and listen to some old Wabash stories.

Well, back to the 5 overtime game. It was the most exciting game I ever watched or played in. I'll have to check, but I think Charlie broke all the Wabash scoring records that night as he scored 53 points. I also recall seeing one of the most amazing rescues I ever saw in any athletic contest. I think some alert photographer got a picture of it and put it in the paper. Ken Pennington was a big, strong post man for Butler and very agile for a big man. I think he was from Rochester, Indiana. As I recall, Orville Bose got faked off his feet and jumped up and came down on the back of the shooter. He got turned around upside down and was heading for a nasty fall, in which he would have certainly hit his head on the floor. Pennington had the strength and the presence of mind to grab him by the shirt and hold him like a person would hold a suitcase until he could let him down easy. He really saved his teammate from a serious injury.

What else do I remember about Charlie? He had a little routine that he went through before every game he would sit down and read a passage from his Bible in his motel room before every game. He said that his Dad gave him some passages to read and think about. I also remember the time that we were getting ready to go on a basketball trip when John Currier walked up to the bus. I can't remember whether John was a manager or a sportswriter for The Bachelor. Charlie lured him over to the bus and I cut off his tie with a knife or pair of scissors. He looked pretty funny with only three inches of tie left below the knot. As I look back at it now, it was a pretty stupid trick. We used to go the game room where the Wabash bookstore is now and play Ping-Pong in the afternoons. I could win some of those games because I had played a lot of ping pong while I was growing up. We had a ping pong table at the IOOF lodge hall, one at my house, and several at the high school, so I had played a lot of ping pong. I was not exactly the Forest Gump of the 50's, but I played a lot. We also played baseball together at Wabash for three years. Charlie always said that baseball was his fun season. He enjoyed baseball, but loved basketball. He worked a lot harder at basketball than he did at baseball and Ping-Pong.

Charlie talked a lot about his Dad and always called him "Picks." I guess that's what everybody at Alamo called Tom Bowerman, who coached at Alamo for over 30 years. I think that name referred to the fact that Tom was as skinny as a toothpick. I remember Charlie telling me once that he was shooting baskets late one night. Charlie's Dad had evidently put up a lighted goal at their house. (Probably the only electric light in Alamo at that time) Anyway, Charlie had come home from a date with his beloved "Corky" (The only girl he ever dated). He decided to shoot some hoops before going to bed. He had been shooting for a while when, as he related it to me, "Picks jumped out from behind a bush and screamed like an Indian; he almost scared me to death." Charlie really loved and respected his Dad and talked about his coaching philosophy a great deal. Charlie would have made a great coach. He would have been just like his Dad. He even shot his free throws underhanded, just because his Dad had a rule that everybody had to shoot a certain percentage on free throws or shoot them his way-underhanded. Charlie became an excellent free throw shooter shooting that way and just never changed.

Charlie still holds several Wabash records. The two top single game scoring marks are his. He scored 63 points his senior year against Illinois-Chicago and 53 in the 5 overtime game against Butler his junior year. He scored 1,408 points in his career, which spanned only three years and would have scored a lot more if the three-point arc had been in existence. He scored many of his points on high-arching two hand set shots from well beyond what is now the three-point line. He loved to shoot from "downtown." His 22.0 scoring average is still tops on the list. I'm sure that the records he cherishes most are the team records of 42-22 for his three years on the varsity and three appearances in the NCAA small-college tournament.