MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Yesterday started off like any typical sunny, lazy summer day.


I arrived at work at 9 am, scrolled through my social media to catch up with friends, and began planning an early afternoon exit to walk my dog. That’s when my boss, Michael Fragale, came into the office with news that Jerry West had passed away.


"Better get to work," he said.


It felt like a basketball had just flown through the window.


As someone who writes obituaries for the department, I often have material prepared for when one of the school's legends passes away. That was the case with Hot Rod Hundley and Sam Huff, who had both been in declining health. 


But Jerry West? The man who radiated energy, vitality, and vigor? 


Peter Pans don’t die—until they do.



Where do you start with a man who achieved so much? What do you include and what do you leave out?


It’s impossible to capture all of Jerry West's accomplishments from his 86 well-lived years in a short amount of time. 


How can you encapsulate what he meant to the people of this great state and to those who love and cherish West Virginia University?


Who do you talk to when he meant so much to everybody?


When you don’t know where to begin, the best place is always at the beginning. For me, that meant a file cabinet of interviews I've kept through the years, including some conversations with West. My interviews with him span about a half-dozen transcribed phone calls, each lasting roughly 20 to 30 minutes.


Some people give you 10 or 15 minutes of their time before they want to move on to more important things. I've had people much less significant than Jerry do that to me.



But not Jerry.


He was always willing to spend as much time as needed to answer any questions I had, especially about West Virginia, West Virginia University, and his Mountaineer basketball teammates. I found that the easiest way to get interesting responses from Jerry was to get him talking about his dear friend Willie Akers or his fellow classmates.


I remember once asking him why there were so many outstanding basketball players in West Virginia in the mid-1950s when he played at East Bank High. 


I repeated a story the late Eddie Barrett had told me about Virginia Tech coach Chuck Noe. Noe noticed that the scores of high school games in Virginia were in the 40s and 50s, while those in West Virginia were in the 80s and 90s, leading him to seek out West Virginia players.


That naturally got Jerry going.


"We played the Kentucky all-star team, and they were supposed to have the best players in America," he recalled. "Well, as it turned out, we had the better players. We played them twice and beat them twice. It was just a very high-caliber group of guys that we had in West Virginia at that time.


"Style of play was a big part of it," West explained. "I think coaches were a little bit restrictive than some coaches in certain areas. Most coaches probably inherit their coaching philosophy from coaches they played for. When I was being recruited for college, Maryland played a very slowed-down game. I liked that school a little bit, but I just couldn't go there and play that way. It just didn't look like it would have been fun for me to play like that."


At the time, West Virginia coach Fred Schaus had recently retired from the professional ranks. With first-time assistant coach George King, they were still young and athletic enough to get out on the floor and offer pointers and tricks that most other coaches couldn’t.



King played on an NBA championship team with the Syracuse Nationals, and West recalled going up against him many times in the old Field House.


"Maybe where I developed a little bit of confidence was because George King was there, and I used to play against him," he noted. "He was very experienced and very smart, and I found out that I could play against him okay, and that it wasn't going to be embarrassing for me.


"It was a great environment for any of us who wanted to learn, and more importantly, to engage with two people who had played basketball at a different level than any of us had ever played."


Team building was the secret to Schaus’ and King’s success in coaching, something Jerry clearly learned during his career.


The great things West accomplished later with the Los Angeles Lakers, Memphis Grizzlies, Golden State Warriors, and Los Angeles Clippers as an executive had their roots in those well-rounded West Virginia basketball teams of the late 1950s. 


Schaus convinced Akers that he was better off being a supporting player to Jerry West at West Virginia University than being the leading scorer at Virginia Tech or Wake Forest, where some of the other top players in the state went.


Willie had one simple desire when he chose to sign at WVU and play basketball with his buddy Jerry West.



"I wanted to win," he said.


So, he came to WVU and teamed with Lloyd Sharrar, Bobby Joe Smith, and Jim Ritchie to grab rebounds and play defense while guards Joedy Gardner, Don Vincent, Bucky Bolyard, Ronnie Retton, and Lee Patrone handled the basketball. Jerry made the tough shots and rose to the occasion whenever required.


Every player on the team would knock over their grandfather to get a loose basketball; that’s how driven they were.


"We were very, very competitive kids," West recalled. "Just because some of them were fun-loving doesn't mean they weren't competitive. They were great people and for someone as quiet and shy and backward as me, it made for a completely different situation in terms of kind of getting out of my shell and making me laugh a little bit because I wasn't going to change my demeanor. I was much more serious."


I witnessed Jerry West’s seriousness firsthand when I was once part of a speaking program that included West in Lewisburg, West Virginia.


Jerry was promoting his new book, and I had just written "Roll Out the Carpet," so I was to warm up the crowd for half an hour before West took the stage.


After sharing some funny Hot Rod Hundley, Wil Robinson, and Levi Phillips stories, I headed back to the Green Room. There, I crossed paths with West, shook his hand, and said hello in a somewhat flippant manner.



He looked at me, shook my hand, and nodded, but his focus was already on the task at hand. He had the concentration of a prizefighter about to enter the ring, partly because his book was so personal and revealing and he was about to answer some very uncomfortable questions. It was then I realized there are common human beings and elite human beings.


Jerry West was an elite human being. He was the person we West Virginians aspired to be, and he understood the heavy responsibilities that entailed.


For everyone out there in the Mountain State (and beyond) reading this, do yourself a favor and study Jerry West’s life. Study how he treated others with empathy, dignity, and respect. Study how he honored his commitments and conducted himself professionally.


The blueprint for a successful life is contained within Jerry West’s personal story—the successes, the failures, the good times, and the heartaches, all wrapped into one.


He epitomized all the values we West Virginians hold so dear, which is why it’s so difficult for us to say goodbye.


In the meantime, lower your West Virginia flags until after West Virginia Day on June 20th in honor of West’s memory because there will never be another Jerry West—ever.