An icon passes

"Sing turkey." Is that what the man said?

And so again I go over my notes, on this high school basketball evening decades gone. I squint hard at the squiggles. I flip the pages of my reporter's notebook.  OK ... OK ... Yep ... Got that ... 

Ah. There it is.

We had a chance to make 'em sing turkey ...

So said Anderson Madison Heights basketball coach Phil Buck, sitting up here in the bleachers at Shelbyville High School on this night 35 or 40 years ago. He passed this week at the age of 90, a man whose life was truly lived to full measure and beyond. A member of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame, he came out of tiny Rossville to star at IU and then coach high school basketball in Indiana for nigh-on 40 years, winning 495 games, 13 sectionals, four regionals and a semistate. Along the way, he also coached a few folks: 1977 Indiana Mr. Basketball Ray Tolbert, Harry Morgan, Winston Morgan, Stew Robinson, Bobby Wilkerson -- all of whom went on to star on the major college level themselves.

On this night in Shelbyville, though, a lot of that resume remained to be filled. Buck stared out at the empty floor. He thought about the almost-win his young Pirates had almost pulled off against the hometown Bears. And then ...

Sing turkey.

No, I had no idea where that came from, or what was its etymology. It was just a Buck-ism, roughly equivalent to "cry uncle" (or so I guessed).  It was just classic Phil Buck, hard-nosed coach and folksy kid from little Rossville all balled up together.

First time I saw him he was standing in the lane in the Madison Heights gym on a January afternoon in 1977, waving a broom aloft. It was his way of trying to distract Tolbert, who stood 6-foot-9 and remains, all these years later, the best high school dunker I ever saw. There was whimsy to it, Buck waving that broom around, but there was also purpose. In that sense it was very much like Buck himself.

The man terrified me at first, truth be known. I wasn't yet 22 years old, a kid sportswriter who still had much to learn. Buck was already a legendary coach; on this day in 1977, he was only six years away from his Hall of Fame induction. And he was old school before anyone invented the term.

Which is what terrified me.

Later I learned the gruff coach who could peel you like an orange if you asked the wrong question at the wrong time also possessed a big laugh and an immunity to grudges. I learned, after a time, to give him his space after a tough loss. Usually this meant waiting until he finished pacing, which he often did when agitated. Then you asked your questions, and he would answer them.

Well. Unless you asked something really stupid. And God knows I did, on more than one occasion.

Here's the thing, though: By the time I called him the next week to preview Heights' upcoming game, he'd forgotten the whole thing. He was back to calling me "Benny," which I've always hated coming from anyone but Buck.

And then Friday night would roll around. And at some point, from somewhere in the vicinity of the Heights bench, there would come this curious sound.

Slap ... slap ... slap ...

It was Phil Buck, stomping his foot on the floor.
    
Slap ... slap ... slap ...

It was Phil Buck, trying to get the attention of Ray Lee or Winston or Stew or any of the hundreds of young men he guided through all those cold winter nights across the years.

Slap ... slap ... slap ...

It was Phil Buck. Doing what few men in the long and spangled history of high school buckets in Indiana ever did better, or with more passion.

Coaching his boys. Coaching 'em right the hell up.