The Rivalry That Never Was; Part 2

Part 2

Coach Ozzie Osbourn’s basketball pedigree proceeded his arrival at Holy Rosary. In the 1950’s many small communities sponsored a “town” basketball team. Monroe City’s local entry, the Osbourn Steers was a good one, led by player-coach Ozzie Osbourn. The Steers didn’t lose often.

1954 Gym Construction

Osbourn hailed from the small Ozark Mountain town of Houston, MO, born in 1923. He came north to play basketball at Hannibal La Grange junior college and never left, marring a local girl. Prior to taking on the Holy Rosary job, Osbourn had been a very successful young coach on the collegiate level at his nearby alma mater, H-LG. Many were surprised he didn’t build a career by moving up the collegiate coaching ladder. He was a natural. Instead, he joined his wife's family cattle and grain ranch business. It became so profitable it took too much of his time to continue to head a successful collegiate level team. So, for a few years Ozzie didn’t coach.

But every morning he would view his hoops less world with the restless satisfaction of a man who has reached his goals too early in life. He was too young, still too full of vigor and a passion to share the beauty of the game with impressionable boys - almost men - to completely stay away. It didn’t take much of a sales pitch for local businessman and unofficial Holy Rosary Athletic Director Pete Ritter in the summer of 1956 to convince his friend to again air up his coaching whistle. No one seems to either know or remember if Ozzie even got paid for the Trojan gig, but most doubt he did.

Ozzie Osbourn’s reputation for his knowledge of the game of basketball immediately set him apart from his predecessors at Holy Rosary. “He was the first real coach we ever had,” recalls 1958 grad Chuck Kendrick. “And we hung on every word he said. Before we would have a dad, or some local who maybe had played in high school, volunteer to coach us and it just wasn’t working. When Ozzie came over, we knew immediately we had something special.”

Like a furnace, every time you open its door, a little of the fire escapes. Successful coaches are passionate about their job, but the smart ones learn to protect their passion.  You can only give so much. A coach must know how to restoke the fire. Osbourn knew instinctively how to protect both his passion and those of his players without pushing too hard. He kept the game fun.

Tom Watson was too young to play for Osbourn, but his older brother, John Paul, was a star on Osbourn’s 1959 team. Later, Tom had many business dealings with Osbourn. Like a man stepping on stones to cross a shallow stream, throughout his life, says Watson, Ozzie went from one successful endeavor to another. 

“He was passionate, but not in a way that would overwhelm you. He was excited about a project and that got you excited. People liked to do business, to buy from Ozzie because he kept things light, fun. People trusted him. He was also, (later) for the same reasons, a very good politician.”

Osbourn had a sharp tongue and a sarcastic humor, but what was more important was that he set a new tone, a winning tone for the team. He was not big on strategy, not too caught up in X's and O's. But according to VanMarter, Osbourn’s teams were always organized. But not so much as to complicate the game, overloading his players brains. Instead, he simply let them play - play hard. And VanMarter remembers his mentor knew how to pick his battles, certain things he would go to war over, sure. But others he just let run off his back. Ozzie never stalked the insignificant. “I always remembered that about him, learned that from him” Hoppy says today. “It is a lesson that has helped me throughout my life.”

Ozzie Osborn

Coach Ozzie was a people person. A coach by trade, a promoter and salesman by inclination. He served, after ending his coaching career, multiple terms as a state representative for northeast Missouri.  There is a similarity between good politics and good basketball—you can't do either one without a lot of early work, preparation. Osborn loved to campaign.  Before entering politics, he for a short time sold cars. 

As a coach, Osbourn became honey to the media bees, always good for a quote. VanMarter recalls the team never lacking for ink. “The area papers covered us well, Ozzie was well liked by the sports writers.”

Dick Aldrich is a long-time news and sports reporter from the Northeast Missouri area. "Ozzie Osbourn was a State Rep. from 1966 to 1985, serving ten terms. He passed away from cancer in 1985. His wife, Lois, then served out the remainder his term in the house," Aldrich states. Lois Osbourn, after her serving out her late husband term, was herself then re-elected. According to the veteran reporter, Osbourn was a perfect fit for his adopted hometown. "When I worked at KHMO Radio in Hannibal, I talked to Ozzie weekly during the legislative session. He was a great guy and a great representative for the area." 

Osbourn died of leukemia less than six months after he was diagnosed. At the time of his diagnosis, he stated he intended to continue to serve in the state house of representatives. "The doctors assure me I can still talk as well as I always have," he said at the time. He was 61 years old when he passed away and was buried in Hannibal. 

"Coach Osbourn coached a very physical game,” states VanMarter. “When you set a pick, you set a hard one. He taught us how to use our elbows, how to back your opponent off with a good elbow to the side of the head. Man, how the rules have changed, and I guarantee you Ozzie is turning over in his grave every time he looks down and sees a player today ejected for throwing an elbow. It was back in our day just another weapon and Ozzie taught his players how to use the elbow well. He never cussed, but I remember one saying he had, ‘when I see that ball on the floor loose, I better see a bunch of butts diving for it.”

And he loved to be in the gym. Osbourn had his new squad shoot enough jump shots that first summer their stroke became as natural as a politician's hand wave. And it would prove to be time well invested.

Osbourn was like the rare preachers who could use the same sermon for 40 years and never need to go looking for a new church. “A smile and a handshake," Ozzie would say, "go a longway in life." His positivity carried over to his team’s growing confidence. He never dwelled on mistakes. After a mistake, he would immediately inject, “Next play.”  Chuck Kendrick says as a scorer, his coach taught him to have a short memory. “I hated to miss shots,” recalls the retired health department worker.  “I remember him saying, 'next play, next play. Stay aggressive.' It gave me confidence.”

Holy Rosary

“Everybody loved him,” VanMarter says today from his home in Columbia, MO. “He could be quirky, maybe a little stubborn at times. But the parents, the school nuns and especially us players, we just loved him, would have run through a brick wall if he asked us to. He just had this huge personality. He was a mentor to many of us. We all wanted to be just like him. That is why he was so successful in everything he ever did. Ozzie just took Holy Rosary basketball to a whole higher level.”

On Wednesday, October 17, 1956, the Ozzy Osbourne era began with a road game at Center. Preseason projections were for the Center squad to be salty. They had handled the Trojans the year before with ease. Ozzie told his players before they boarded the bus for the 30-minute ride, “If you do not have every expectation to go down there tonight and win, don’t get on my bus.” Since the essence of conviction is to convince, he then reminded them of the manta he had driven home since their first summer meeting five months previous, “Boys, I don’t lose.”

Joe Campbell scored 26 points and Holy Rosary crushed a surprise Center squad 68 to 47.

The next week the Trojans tasted defeat for the first time, once again on the road, losing to a solid Shelbina team by a score of 52 to 46. They were not there yet, but the players were starting to believe, starting to feel the confidence grow within. Area fans began to note the upturn. 

The week before the Monroe City tournament, in late November, Holy Rosary picked up another confidence building win, 68 to 59 over Philadelphia. Philadelphia had been seeded ahead of the Trojans in the upcoming tournament. Jerry Campbell led the home team in scoring with 21 points and Jerry Campbell and Chuck Kendrick kicked in 17 each. Only five players scored. This was not a deep team and Coach Osborn would only go to his bench when foul trouble dictated the move.

A highlight of the season was capturing first place in the Mark Twain Holiday tournament, played over the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, and hosted by McCooey Catholic of Hannibal. Incredibly, Holy Rosary had never in the history of the school won a boys' basketball first-place tournament trophy. When the two rival Catholic schools, HR and McCooey would meet, the testosterone was high and the game near always a barnburner, and this one was no exception.

The score was tied four times in the first quarter alone. In the second quarter the lead changed hands 10 more times with Holy Rosary holding a slim 33 to 32 halftime lead. The third quarter saw the score continue to pinball back and forth on the ancient Hannibal Armory scoreboard. The game was tied three more times. McCooey went into the final quarter ahead 50 to 47.

McCooey immediately stretched the lead to five points which would prove to be the widest margin either team would lead by. With two minutes remaining, Holy Rosary tied the score at 54 to 54. With just under a minute remaining, two free throws by Jerry Campbell gave Holy Rosary a 60 to 59 lead. The Irish successfully connected on two free throws of their own to take the lead back, 61 to 60. With 30 seconds left in regulation, Jerry Campbell again tied the score at 61 with a single free throw. After a missed McCooey field goal attempt, Joe Campbell hit a field goal to put Holy Rosary ahead to stay, 63 to 61. After another McCooey turnover the Trojans tried to run out the clock, but the Irish stole the ball with five seconds remaining. After an ensuing foul that almost but Coach Ozzie in an early grave, McCooey missed two free throws, the second intentionally, and the Trojans celebrated a long-awaited tournament championship.

Chuck Kendrick led the scoring with 21 points.

Coach Dan Mudd was a decorated athlete and then a very successful coach of the Trojans from 1959 until the school’s closing in 1966. He told me that every time the Trojans would meet McCooey, something would always go against the favor of Holy Rosary. It was almost uncanny he said, if it could go wrong, it almost always did.

The Holy Rosary Trojans desperately needed a win over McCooey. The “rivalry” had become too one sided. And they got it and under the sweetest of circumstances; accepting on the home floor of their nemeses host a long-sought championship trophy; the first in the long history of the school. Quite a night!

Monroe City RR Tracks

The Trojans won their first three games after the Christmas break before losing in the semifinal round of the Shelbina Tournament. Osborne’s squad defeated Higbee 60 to 48 in the first round and Atlanta 66 to 49 in the second. The Trojans would fall in the semi-finals to Paris, 70-51; before rebounding to defeat LaGrange for third place, 72-63.

A mid-February rematch at home with McCooey would prove to be the low point of a very rewarding season. The home squad led throughout the game and entered the fourth stanza with what appeared to be an insurmountable 55-37 lead. Ozzie would have converted to the Republican party before accepting his boys blowing an 18-point 4th quarter lead, none the less, at the Holy Dome. But incredibly, that is what happened. The Irish roared back on a 23-5 4th quarter run to tie the game at 60-60, then claimed the overtime win, 62-61. Considering the bitterness of the rivalry between the two neighboring Catholic high schools, it was a very disheartening loss for a team whose confidence had been steadily building throughout the course of the long season.

But Ozzie would not allow the malaise to last. "Next play, next play."

One week later Holy Rosary entered the class S regional with a record of 17-9 and a number three seed. They knocked off Center in the first round 71 to 49, then Philadelphia in the semifinals 52 to 37, to set up a regional championship tilt with a strong Winfield team.

Holy Rosary trailed throughout the game, 16 to 14 after the first period and 32 to 25 at the half. Winfield stretch the lead to 61 to 45 entering the fourth. Joe Campbell led the team in scoring with 23 points as the Trojans came up on the short end of a 78 to 65 score to complete a 19 and 10 turnaround year.

Ozzie's opening act had produced too gallant of a season to be too crushed by a regional final loss. The Trojan had a new strut about them. The 1958 season bore great potential.

Two weeks later, the MC Panthers closed out their record setting year with their only loss in 34 games, but it came early in the post season, in the state round of 16. Coach's Kirby's first Panther team had expected to play deep into state, maybe even winning the top prize - not to fizzle out in the opening round and limp home to answer questions of, "what happened?"

However, a year later, by March 1958, a Panther team who was early in the season a major rebuilding project, had come together as a unit and was playing its best basketball of the year. There were whispers around town that this March there could be two caravans of local fans "headed for state."

TO BE CONTINUE

 

The Rivalry That Never Was, Part 1

PART 1

Like most small towns of the time, the Monroe City, MO of 1956 was clannish. If you were Protestant, you lived north of the railroad tracks that dissected the once whistle stop town. If you were Catholic, you lived south of the railroad tracks. The only exception being the two streets that ran parallel, one each side of the tracks. That is where the town’s black population of the day domiciled. 

Over at that public “Protestant” high school on the north side, they were coming off a 30-5 basketball season. Over the previous five years those heathens had won an unholy 152 games. Heck, at the rate the local Catholic boys at Holy Rosary were staggering along, there would be a man on the moon before this cadaver of a team ever won 152 games. Something had to be done. How desperate were the Catholics to catch up? They hired a Baptist for their coach. 

Depending on who you ask but there are those who will claim within two years this miracle worker had HR caught up. Coach Ozzie Osborn had been hired to turn the Holy Rosary Trojan hardwood fortunes around. “We knew right away,” says Hoppy VanMarter, “things were going to be different.”

1957 MC Panthers

Perhaps it is not the kind of question that would bring a man bolt upright in bed, staring into the night seeking an answer. But it is worth asking: Who would win a basketball game played in either the 1957 or 1958 seasons between the two Monroe City, MO high schools of the day? A group of boys who shared a hometown of only 2500 composed the rosters of the two dominant teams in the area. The two never played. Because there will never be a way to definitively know, it makes this story a fun one to dive in deep.

Why didn’t they play? No set answer but lots of opinions. If you care why and are old enough to remember when March Madness referred to Spring Break at the Kennedy Compound, you probably subscribe to one of these opinions: Two different size classifications. The larger public school had everything to lose and nothing to gain from such a contest. Both school’s administrations feared an over tense atmosphere that could lead to trouble spilled over to outside of school. It was more fun to wage good natured arguments over who was the best than to allow reality to destroy the fun. 

They just did not. 

But the players wish they could have. They respected each other, even if from afar. Holy Rosary star of the era, Chuck Kendrick remembers a star public school player, Jerry Burditt. "He was one of the greatest shooters from those great teams R-1 had," says the 1958 HR grad. "It was a gift. He could not only shoot but shoot from far out. And he was as an excellent passer, too. I wish we could have played them." 

Burditt roomed at Northeast Missouri Teachers College with Holy Rosary grad Hoppy VanMarter. “Jerry had a great career at Kirksville,” VanMarter states. “His senior year the team won the regional and qualified for the national tournament in Evansville, IN. I rode out to watch with his parents. Jerry and I have been very good friends for almost 70 years.”

It was the summer of 1956. VanMarter was in between his freshman and sophomore years at Holy Rosary. The summer game plan for his ball playing buddies was an endless “American Graffiti” three months of hot rod cruising, nights of baseball games and long-legged girls. But this new basketball coach had other ideas with an intent to put wings on the previously flat-footed Trojans. “Boys, I will get you in shape,” the cocksure newcomer told his assembled team. 

1955-56 Schedule

“When Ozzie first met with us, he said, ‘boys, you lost more games last year than you won,”’ Hoppy recalls. ‘“You been doing that for a while now and you have gotten used to it – losing. Boys, I don’t lose. Whatever plans you have for the summer, they are now canceled. You will be in this gym four nights a week all summer and you will learn to win. Cause boys, as you will learn, I don’t lose.’”

There was no mutiny, not in the simpler pre-social media days of 1956. No flash mob of protest. In 1956 coaches still had the first, last and only word. Period. “We were just so glad he wanted to coach us,” remembers VanMarter. Ozzie had never asked a boy to come out for basketball and he was not now about to start begging them to play. With this group, there was no need to.

By that summer of ‘56, across town, the public MC bunch had been on quite a run. In the fall of 1946, Coach Morrie Schroeter came to town. He found a community ready for some fun. Over a decade of the Great Depression and four years of World War had taken its toll. Students entering high school as freshman in 1946 had known nothing but national crisis their entire lives. It would be a brief reprise in the storm, as conflict in Korea was only four years away, but for the time, if not a lasting peace, at least peace in time.

Schroeter’s first team recorded a record of 25-10, his second 36-8, falling one game short of the 1948 state tournament. Schroeter’s final two teams in 1951 and 1952 both won 30 games; 31-8 and 31-11 respectfully. The 1951 team fell to University High of Columbia, the eventual state champs, in the semifinals of the regional. Schroeter would stay one more season.

In the fall of 1952, Billy Key moved up from Wellsville and took the helm of the Panthers. His tenure was for four years, and he would compile a record of 106-27. 

Key departed not only Monroe City in 1956, but the high school coaching ranks, as well, taking the head coaching position at Harris Stowe College in St. Louis, MO. He would later spend 23 years as the head coach at the University of Missouri-Rolla. In 1988 he was elected to the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. 

Key's final team at Monroe City would finish their 1955-56 season with 30 wins against 5 loses and were defeated 78-57 in the state quarterfinals by eventual state champs, Pembroke Day of Kansas City. Jerry Burditt scored 18 points for the Panthers and Gene Mudd added 12. The private school from KC was an all-boys school. The following year, the Missouri State High School Activities Association imposed a rule that said an all boys school would, for classification purposes, have its enrollment doubled. (In 1956 girls high school athletics did not have a state wide organization.) This rule in effect in 1956 would have bumped up the team that defeated MC to Class L, the state's largest. 

Jim Gottman was a star player and a MC 1957 grad. He played for both Coaches Billy Key and Frank Kirby, who followed Key. The catholic boys, he is sure, over at Holy Rosary knew well the corporal wrath of a no-nonsense nun’s ruler, but Gottman says the nuns were sandlot wannabe sluggers compared to the Micky Mantle home run stroke of Coach Billy Key. “Coach Key was a disciplinarian,” recalls Gottman, a long-time area farmer. “You did not want to cross him. He had a rod, a stick, he would carry around with him and he didn’t hesitate to use it on your rear end, if he thought he needed to get your attention. I remember one night we were playing Palmyra. At half time he was really upset with how we were playing. He got out the stick and he stung our butts good. And yeah, we did come back and win,” Gottman says with a laugh.

At MCHS, 1955-56 was a school year of change. Panther teams had always, until 1955, taken the basketball floor in their traditional colors of Black, Gold and Caucasian. 

From their inception in 1925, when the team went winless in five games, through the 1955 season - the same year Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Birmingham, AL bus and the year after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial school segregation was unconstitutional, Monroe City maintained segregated high schools.  

1958 HR Trojans

In the fall of 1955 Donald Scott racially integrated the Panther’s hoops team. Scott missed a significant part of the season when he was felled by an appendectomy. He would go on to a military career, retiring a US Army Brigadier General.  He was later appointed Deputy Librarian of Congress and served as Chief of Staff for Atlanta mayor and civil rights icon Andrew Young. 

Coach Key left a lot of talent for his replacement, Frank Kirby. Jerry Burditt was the only mainstay lost from the 1956 team. Many rank Kirby's first team, 1956-57, as the best in the history of the school. 

“I don’t remember much change with a new coach for my senior year,” recalls Gottman. “I guess there could have been, but Coach Kirby was a pretty laid back guy and he was smart not to come in and try to change a lot of things. We had all been together  for so long and always won, so he just let us play.”

The Panther juggernaut rolled unimpeded and unbeaten through the regular season, 33-0, reaching the state Class M state tournament round of 16. In 1957, the sixteen regional winners amongst the Class M schools all gathered in Columbia, MO for a single elimination weeklong tournament. The teams were seeded by a tournament committee. Geographic location, which had determined the regional assignments, played no role in the state level bracket. Monroe City would face off in round one with Gainesville, representing the Ozark Mountain region of southwest Missouri. Despite owning the best record in the sixteen team field, the Panthers were given the 9th overall seed. According to an article in the Moberly Index, the tournament committee had not been impressed with the level of regular season competition MC had faced. Gainsville, the 8th seed, brought with them to Columbia a 22-6 season mark. 

Kirby’s team stormed out of the gate against Gainesville, racing to a 24-7 first quarter lead. They maintained a solid advantage through the second quarter, leaving the floor for halftime with a still comfortable 41-26 lead. But the tide of momentum would soon shift. Disaster stuck MC in the third quarter, going over five minutes without scoring. Monroe clung to a now slender 47-44 lead as the now close contest entered its last 8-minute quarter. Monroe City again went into an offensive deep freeze, not scoring for over one half of the final 8-minute stanza. Gainesville won going away 70-57. Gene Mudd led Monroe in scoring with 19 points and Kenny Sullivan added 13. Gainsville was led by the one two punch of Louis Joe Scott who scorched the nets for 32 points and Ronnie Goodwyn with 28. The combo outscored the entire Monroe City team., 60-57. Goodwyn was a perfect 14-14 from the free throw line. 

I heard from several that the flu had hit the Panthers at the wrong time and the team just wore out in the second half. Gottman does not remember it that way. “I was not sick,” he says today, “and I don’t remember anyone else being sick. No, to be honest, Coach Kirby was just pretty young, and I do remember them with a real good press in the second half that we didn’t handle it well, No adjustments from the bench.”

Gottman says the schedule stayed the same, but the competition dropped off for the 1957 season. “The area had some good teams our junior year (1956), but a lot of teams lost a lot with graduation that year. Even though we beat them three times in '56, including the regional finals, Palmyra was good that year. All three games were close. We always said we were glad we didn’t have to play them a fourth time. Palmyra was not near as good our senior year, really, we didn’t get pushed much by anyone and I think that hurt us when we got into state.”

When Ozzie took over at HR, the town’s other team, the Panthers, had won 30 plus games in five of the previous ten years, punctuated with four regional titles. The Trojans over on the south side of town, according to Hoppy, “didn’t even know how to set a proper pick.”

D. Scott, Coach Key

1956 was the summer of the Russians and the sputniks. You go along, go along, go along and everybody is doing fine and being a good guy. Then along comes a fellow who isn't content to be a good guy. POW.  Now we have a space race to the moon. The Russians have got sputniks flying all over the sky above America. We got scared. It was the atomic age. Our national pride was hurt so we got serious about this race to the moon, did more work in one year than we had done the previous 15. Ozzie approached his challenge to equal the basketball success of the local public school with the same “it is time to get to work,” mentality, not content to be a “good guy,” who just maintained the status quo. Ozzie always was on the hunt for that, “lanky, raw, hungry kid with that special look in his eyes.” He had some strapping boys at Holy Rosary who wanted to win, and he knew it.

Holy Rosary also had a new gymnasium, opened in time for 1955-56 season, the Father Connolly Gymnasium. A man whose passion was athletics, Fr. Connolly was an institution at Holy Rosary who by 1956 had served the parish for nearly a half century. The stately looking priest, born in Ireland, had snow-white thinning hair and a well-seamed face that could break easily into a grandfatherly smile or just as quickly set severely into an expression of elderly disapproval. 

He had coached every sport the school had ever offered – football, baseball and basketball, boys and girls – had led the drive for the new gym, built by and on land bought by the local Knights of Columbus. The Quonset hut structure now bore his name and was deemed worthy of hosting a regional basketball tournament. It would also provoke cries of “homer” unfairness by area competing schools. 

Tom Spalding is a Holy Rosary High grad. Like most HR students he was terrified of the ancient priest with a sharp tongue. A nervous mistake by an altar boy would elicit from Connolly an admonishment of, "what the hell." 

“I once accidentally walked into Msgr. Connolly's bedroom," Spalding recalls today, "thinking I was going downstairs to the basement. Msgr. was in his underwear and said to me; ‘What the HELL do you want!’ I went to confession.” Spalding’s penance? The usual, “5 Hail Mary’s and 3 Our Father’s.”

Coach Osborn was a demonstrative coach. I heard the rumor, never confirmed, that once so incensed with an official he ripped off the offending ref's whistle and hurled it into the stands. How did Father Connoley react to his coach indulging in conduct unbecoming a catholic institution of learning? "He loved Ozzie," shares Hoppy. The Trojans had needed a new coach, not a new Pope. 

The Holy Dome, as the structure would became affectionately known, was ahead of its time. Even the hotshot Panthers over at the public school and their bandbox size “gym on a stage,” looked with envy at what Fr. Connelly’s boys had for a home court. It would be another decade, until the 1960’s, and the zenith of area rural school consolidation until huge, clean field houses began springing up like Levittowns to replace northeast Missouri’s many tiny bandbox gyms.

Fr. Connoley

Is Duke almost unbeatable at their cozy, on-campus Cameron Indoor Coliseum because of the home court, or do they just have better players? Holy Rosary 1958 grad Chuck Kendrick told me the Holy Dome mystique was just that, a mystery to him and not a secret, at all. “We won because we had better players.”

Long-time Paris coach, Donnie Williams, in time just accepted the Trojan’s home court advantage. “You were 10 down when you got off the bus,” he once groused, in only the way the rough around-the-edges, burr haircut Williams could. “Then you go inside and see the crucifix behind each basket and figure with God on their side, there goes another ten points. Now it is 20-0 and we are not even in the locker room, yet.  Then when the officials walk in wearing their Knights of Columbus hats, you just figure what the heck, let’s just get back on the bus and go back home.”

TO BE CONTINUED

High School Rivalry Games

 

The two rural Missouri towns are huge rivals, 20 miles apart. Although the local leaders will tell you different, the rivalry is edgy.

A true fan must love rivalry games. Sports should not become routine. It should be about passion, always. However, the relationship between two good high basketball programs, like Monroe City and Palmyra, who are year after year bitter rivals is one of complexity. School administrators are on constant vigil knowing they are one misstep away from bad blood spilling over into the educational process. That cannot happen.

Civic leaders in the communities of Monroe City and Palmyra claim the competitive climate between the two neither generates nor harbor any bitterness. The two sides support each other, often as economic and social allies. Marriages between a MC grad and a PHS grad are common. Two years ago, when popular Monroe City coach Jamar White died in a traffic accident, the show of support for MC from the Palmyra school and community was overwhelming and heartfelt.

However, don't kid yourself. Bottom line, they really don't like each other.

Often troubled former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson once announced at a post-fight press conference, after losing his crown to Lennox Lewis, that it was time for him to “fade into Bolivian.” Tyson’s most famous quote, though, was when he told the world how he fueled his pre-fight rage, “I’m just ferocious. I want your heart. I want to eat your children.”

There are no cannibalistic intentions on either side of this local rivalry, at least not one that was ever prosecuted. Still, one can sense neither side would hesitate to grab the last piece of barbeque at the company picnic, leaving the other standing in line with an empty plate.

When Dreams Meet Reality

Engulfed in despondency, it was not supposed to end this way. This was to be a team of destiny. But Providence shrugged and “The Dream” was shattered. 

Coach Brock Edris and the Monroe City Panthers, since a sectional round loss in March 2019, had tamed March Madness with two thrill packed dream runs to the enchanted land of the state tournament Final Four. And they did it both years with a roster dominated by underclassman. 

For two post-seasons, game after game, one shining moment after another, the MC gang confidently rolled through every March playoff obstacle as they climbed up the playoff rung. Most impressively, was the way they did it:   impeccable preparation with a focus on the most minute of details, highlighted by a hardnosed brand of old fashion basketball that placed a premium on unity - sharing the ball, guarding like maniacs, and always having each other’s back. 

Courtesy Muddy River News

A high school basketball season is always an audacious journey. To reach a state final four requires a 12 long weeks push that follows a trail attached to a slippery slope. Despite endless possible pitfalls, each of the past two years that Panthers had come together, emerging—as final four teams always seem to do—through trial, torment, talent and, mostly of course, sheer will. And with a few fortuitous bounces of the ball along the way.

In 2020, in a race to get to the state tournament before Covid-19 turned the world upside down, the Panthers traveled to Kansas City for a state Class 3 quarterfinal match up and upset a street savvy bunch from KC Central High. Nursing a one-point lead, in as hostile of an environment one could find this side of the Roman Coliseum, Sophomore Josh Talton stole a pass intended for a Blue Eagle opponent primed and cocked to knock down a game winning last second buzzer beating shot. Panther Coach Brock Edris called it the most excited and dramatic moment in his career, as either a player or a coach. For this sophomore dominated team, it was off to a state final four appearance for a program who had not been in such rarified air in 25 years. 

In 2021, the state quarterfinal game was played before a Covid limited crowd in the Monroe City gymnasium. Under normal circumstances a state quarterfinal game would be played on a neutral floor. There was nothing normal about Covid. No doubt, the Panthers got a break by having the game played on their home floor.

The opponent was the heavily favorite private school power from the Metro St. Louis area, the O’Fallon Christian Eagles. Edris said his team, based solely on talent, “didn’t even belong in the same gym,” with an urban program not bound by any enrollment area limits and who had soundly knocked his Panthers out of the 2018 sectional round of state play. 

With 3:40 remaining in the 4th quarter, Christian held a 48-42 lead. With 1:21 left, Josh Talton converted two free throws, giving Monroe City its first lead, 49-48, since early in the game. 

With the score tied at 49 and seven ticks left on the scoreboard clock, Monroe City called timeout to set up the last play of the game. Josh Talton drove hard to the rim but was fouled with two seconds remaining. However, it was only Christian's 5th foul of the half and the ball was put in by MC from it's own baseline. Panther Jaedyn Robertson was a secondary choice on the play but he managed to catch the ball and shoot it one motion. He was fouled on the shot with 1.1 seconds left to play.  The Junior, who earlier in the year had come precariously close to being dismissed from the team, never changing expression. Robertson, not a particularly good free throw shooter, strutted to the free throw line, literally ripped the ball out of the official’s hands and without hesitation nailed both free throws. Edris said before his very eyes that night he watched the wayward child grow up. Cool story. A now junior dominated team was for the second year in a row back on the road to the state final four.

This group had for two years refused to genuflect before its elders. Team leader Josh Talton told me this past November, “Every time someone says we can’t, we can.”  All that was left to punctuate a storied career was come March a net draped around his neck and confetti in the air.

Courtesy Muddy River News

When the basketball gods finally changed allegiance, the downfall for the talented Panther senior class of 2022 was cruelly swift. In a state sectional loss to Duchesne on a Wednesday night in a half full Francis Howell Central gymnasium, Monroe City made more mistakes than a boy on his first date and their dream season fell apart. This team had too much small town Hoosiers in them for it all to come crashing down in a dank gymnasium smack in the middle of suburbia; but it did.

One disastrous tipped rebound and numerous missed what should have been easy put back shots throughout the game doomed a team that, all year long, had managed to dodge potential disaster, always finding the needed offensive basket, the needed defensive stop, and always at the most opportune times. All year, this seemed a team of destiny.  A club with four starters returning from a squad who the previous March had taken second place in the Class 3 state tournament, losing the championship tilt to a team that graduated nine of its top ten players – well, this year’s goal was obvious to all - the program's first state basketball championship.

But it was not to be. For the nine seniors to end their careers in this unexpected and un-Panther like fashion was heartbreaking. In the sectional lost to Duchesne, when they needed to zig, they instead zagged, landing them square in the cross hairs of the basketball gods of fate. The result was cruel and harsh; something the players and coaches will never really get over. Sure, they tell you it will pass, but it never will, not completely. This group had too much invested, came so close, to ever have this disappointment completely exorcised from their competitive souls.

The class of 2022 will forever be known as the group that never lost to a Clarence Cannon Conference member. Who won four straight district titles and 12 consecutive regular season tournaments. Beat hated rival Palmyra 17 consecutive times. Let me say that again so as to sink in for the true Monroe faithful who from cradle to grave curse the color Orange – 17 straight times. 

The last four years will be recorded in this basketball crazy town as the best of times, capped by one bad night. Still, for the barber shop experts, Duchesne game be damned, the past four seasons will be memorialized as a golden era, maybe the best, of Monroe City boys’ basketball. 

This was a team so connected to its fans that home games took on the focus of a Neighborhood Watch group. Don’t mess with our boys. The team and town were sewn together. Woe to the one to try to tear the two apart. The feel in the gym, it had the MC thing going. The joy, the exuberance.  It is the sense you feel with the flow rolling over the beat - when tradition, atmosphere and talent converge to form community. When a whole small town unites in such a way over its schoolboy stars, well, it is just uniquely special.

“Those are some remarkable accomplishments,” Edris told the Hannibal Courier-Post. “In addition to their success on the basketball court, they made a tremendous impact on our youth. They were great teammates and will go on to be successful in life.”

Edris says this group has a sense of gratefulness for things that a lot of young people take today for granted. “They are just grateful that they are able to play." Edris paid tribute and gave credit to the parents of his Class of 2022. "I put a lot of stock in parenting, and our parents of this year’s seniors have shown me what positive parenting is all about."

Edris commented to me on the maturity of the Class of 2022. "They have good heads on their shoulders," says the Coach. "These are kids you don't mind doing things for because you know they appreciates it. There's no star syndrome. They always think team first.”

The locker room after a hard-fought season ending loss is always tough. This one is brutal. There is nothing left of “The Dream” but the pieces—pieces of youth, pieces of hope, bits of fraternity, scraps of melancholy, shards of humor, shreds of a cohesive bond. All around lies scattered breakage. Perhaps these pieces—diverse, disconnected, dispelled—can someday be put together whole again to tell the story of this great run by a record setting band of brothers. But not this night. Tonight, in this locker room, disappointment boarding on grief abounds.

Edris seemed almost in shock. He looked around the locker room and saw a group that had grown so tight, now in tears, never to be a team again. For the seniors it was the jarring moment when you realize it is over. It really is over.  A string of sweetly remembered non-moments flashes by and suddenly the realization these amount to some of the best, most impacting experiences of your life. It is bittersweet. 

“It was almost like it really didn’t happen, we hadn’t lost, had we?” Edris recalled a week later, as he prepared to depart for the state tournament, for the first time in three years as a spectator. “It was just so sudden. One minute we had the lead, we were feeling confident. We had done this before, two years in a row. No way this felt any different.” Until it did.

By design, high school sports are cruel. Most former high school athletes will remember their final game or contest as a time of defeat. Unless you are a member of a squad that wins the state championship your senior year, your career will end, as it does for over 99% of us, in defeat.

Chiseled deep into my coaching consciousness are yearly devastating bus rides home after a crushing playoff defeat. It happened every year I coached but twice. On those solemn rides, I mourned for our seniors. For them, it was over, short of our dream of returning as conquering heroes, dismounting the steps of the bus to be overwhelmed by cheering crowds of worshipers. Instead, these young men who had devoted so much and who now cried tears of unfulfilled dreams, slowly walked through a dark and empty parking lot and away forever from the role that until now had so defined their very young lives. 

It is now the first week of March 2022 and every night in towns large and small all over this great nation, with each post season playoff defeat, childhoods are ending, and dreams are dying. A young athlete has such a small window of opportunity to be the “hero,” to capture a slice of March Madness – one shining moment. A few do and they become legends, a favored son who in the eyes of the hometown fans will remain forever young; perpetually enshrined on the top shelf of local lore as a champion. 

The opposite is also true. The President of the local Bank may on the surface appear as the successful businessman, a pillar of the community who serves on all the important committees, owning membership to all the influential clubs. But to the true partisans of the local hoop scene, he will be forever the kid who misfired on a wide-open jumper at the buzzer of the one point Regional loss back in ‘81, a year the hometown team finally had the talent to win it all. It is a burden to be carried to the grave.

So, what went wrong against Duchesne?  Until the last quarter neither team had any offensive rhythm. Both sloshed through a first half that saw the Panthers hold an ugly 16-11 intermission lead. For the first quarter, the Panthers attempted only five two-point field goals, misfiring on all five.

Edris said his team was focused defensively but never could find it’s, offensive legs. “They run a lot of set plays and we just totally shut them down in the first half,” observed Edris. “I thought defensively our kids really locked in on the scouting report and we did a great job defending. We just couldn’t get anything to go on offense.”

An incredible stat for the game was that the Panthers had no points off transition. “If I had seen before the game, I would have thought we would have been beaten badly,” said Edris. “We had no easy points, zero. That is just hard to believe. Points in transition has been such a big part of our success with this group. I can’t explain it. I thought in the second half, after we shut down their set offense in the first half, they went to a lot more of almost a free-lance type of offense. That seemed to work better for them. They were depending on their size and their athletic abilities to break us down off the dribble.”

The Pioneers of Duchesne did provide some match up problems for Edris’ team. “They were long and athletic. They put a lot of pressure on Josh, but he handled it well.” It was if the team from St. Charles County was saying, let Josh Talton have his, we will shut the rest down. “We isolated Josh on our last two possessions,” said Edris, “and he hit two big shots. The last to put us ahead and on that one he was tripled teamed.”

Throughout the season Monroe City used its tenacious man to man defense to create offensive points. Against Duchesne, the Panthers had only five steals. “They did a lot offensively off the dribble. Our kids are good at stopping the dribble, but tonight, they were quick and especially in the second half, we had to help a lot to stop the dribble. That had a lot to do with us not getting steals. It also opened the three-point shots and they hit three big ones in the 4th quarter. We couldn’t get our hands on the dribble, and they didn’t pass much so we didn’t get our hands on passes, either; didn't get the deflections we normally do. They were rugged and it made the game ugly, rough and tumble and that seemed to be how they were more comfortable playing.”

For the game, over one half of Monroe City’s points were scored by Josh Talton. He finished the night with 23 points. He alone scored all the Panthers 12 third quarter points. Normally, seniors Josiah Talton and Deion White could be counted on for double figure scoring. Against Duchesne they totaled three points. Combined, they attempted only two shots. Edris deferred some of the limited shots to Duchesne game plan. “For most of the game they defended Josh tight, but with only one player. Our guys feed him the ball.”

Monroe City hit a season low 13 field goals, with almost half, six, from behind the three-point arc. Only five made field goals were assisted by passes. The five assists were less than a third of what MC had averaged for the season. Normally, a good high school team will set a goal of two assists for each turnover. This 2-1 margin would indicate a good floor game with crisp passing leading to makeable shots. The Panthers had a season worst assist to turnover ratio in the sectional loss, committing 13 turnovers, with only the five assists.

But even with MC’s statistical Armageddon of a meltdown, it took a last second shot to beat them. That only makes the result harder to accept. 

Nathan DeGuentz was the Duchesne unlikely hero. He rebounded a wild and wayward shot and off balanced threw in a winning layup with 1.2 seconds left to give Duchesne the 45-44 victory over Monroe City. 

“The ball just landed in my hands and I just threw it up there,” DeGuentz honestly told the press minutes after his game deciding shot, as his teammates and school chums piled back slaps upon a player who entered the game averaging in single figure points per game.

Edris called timeout immediately after DeGuentz basket to set up a desperation last second shot. Incredibly, it almost worked.  Josh Talton’s half-court heave hit the back of the rim head on and then spun out, mere inches from a miraculous game saving rescue of a shot.

“I thought it was money as soon as I shot it,” Talton said, speaking to the media immediately after the game’s conclusion.

Monroe City who had led most of the game, appeared dug in after three quarters with the score in their favor, 30-27. “We have been here before, done this before,” was Edris’ message as he sent his team back on to the floor for the game’s final eight minutes. It would prove to be a punch and counter punch dual to the finish, the win, ultimately, to the one with the last punch.

Finally, in the game’s last stanza, for both teams, the scoring pace accelerated. Josh Baker Mays 3-pointer with 2:05 left cut the Monroe City lead to 39-38.

After Josiah Talton was fouled and made one of two free throws, Amorion Oliphant made a second-chance 3-pointer off an offensive rebound to give the Pioneers a 41-40 lead. Josh Talton countered with a layup 22 seconds later to give the lead once more back to the Panthers. On the ensuing possession, Cam Lee drew a foul and dropped in both free throws with 40 seconds left to give Duchesne a 43-42 lead. 

With 25 seconds left, Joshua Talton, following a MC timeout, made a contested 10-foot jumper to pin ball the one-point lead, for the final time, back to the Monroe City side of the scoreboard. 

Duchesne got the ball into the hands of Lee, their leading scorer and the 6’3” senior erratically free-lance dribbled around the Panther defense, searching for an opening to allow him to penetrate to the rim. MC's defense was rock solid. With 5.6 seconds remaining, and the Pioneer offense breaking down, Duchesne wisely called its last timeout. 

Edris, who after seeing the Duchesne offensive set after their timeout, used a time out of his own to set his defense. Off the baseline, the ball was inbounded to Oliphant. The Panthers were in perfect defensive position to defend the inbounds play. Once again, the scouting report had paid off. Oliphant threw towards the rim an off balanced shot from behind his head, a desperate attempt to get a shot, any shot, up to the rim. The ball stuck the bottom of the rim and caromed straight down and into the floor. Panther Deion White appeared to get two hands on the bouncing basketball, but it slipped from his hands. If White could have just batted the ball, the game would have been over. He was so close but could not gain control. Instead, the ball bounced once off the floor again and into the hands of a very fortuitously placed one Nathan DeGuentz. 

Instant hero. 

The Monroe seniors, who only minutes before had been at the apex of their careers, cashing in on all the years of hard work in perfecting their skills, had now suddenly swollen the ranks of former Panther players. 

With three minutes to play, the script of another clutch post season win seemed to be taking shape. Then, in less time that it would take to go to the concession stand for a bag of popcorn, the seniors found their careers over. Since 3rd grade, learning the nuances of the game had dominated their lives, molded their self-identity, always a constant reminder of who they were - Monroe City Panther basketball players. Most will never again play in an organized basketball game.

Edris gathered himself well. He told the assembled media, as reported by the Hannibal Courier-Post online edition, “It’s been awesome to watch them from the time when they were coming to basketball camps and were so young, and to watch them go through junior high and eventually into high school. They are the ultimate competitors. Practice is awesome because you can split up teams and they can go after it and have fun.”

“The teammates that they are and the impact that they have on little kids in Monroe City, that’s the legacy you would want them to leave. They’re such good role models and everything you would want from a dad if they were one of your sons. The parents should be very proud, and I know they are. I know our community is proud.”

“This is going to sting for a while, especially for the kids, but we told them that nothing that happens today is going to change the way we feel about them. We love these guys, and relationships last a lifetime.”

Time will pass. The world will change. They will depart, some soon this town, all, eventually, this life. But these boys are forever linked by their dreams, by Dr. Naismith's wonderful game.

Monroe City can be at times, hard on basketball coaches. The locals expect to win. Edris can point with pride that not only has he won more career games than any other coach in Panther history, 206, he has also survived long enough to amass the most losses, 99. He is the only coach who has figured a way to extend his Panther coaching tenure beyond 7 years, a previous mark first set by Jerry Cochran almost a half century ago and tied by current assistant coach Rick Baker. Edris just completed his 11th season at the helm of the Panthers, all with Baker as his assistant. 

Edris signed on at a time the Panthers had lost 40 consecutive games. His first varsity team promptly ran the string to 44. But a rebirth had been peering cautiously from the hole of irrelevance that had become MC Basketball and Edris says he knew in his gut that he could build here something special. Football players were no longer told they could not play basketball. He brought Ed Talton back to the fold and some of the old school Monroe City toughness with him and three sons who surely helped. The blocks began to fall in place. In 2012 Edris' first team won four games. In 2014, a winning record. In 2017 a district title. In 2019 a Clarence Cannon Conference crown. In 2020 a final four, followed by another in 2021. 

Edris entered as an outsider the fishbowl that is coaching high school basketball in a small town. He came as a hired gun entrusted by a small prairie town with the best of its sons, given the knee shaking responsibility of leading them to hardwood glory. Edris, by his performance, has earned a level of acceptance few coaches in small towns ever do, the mercenary tag of an outsider has been removed. He is today the unquestioned master of Monroe City Panther basketball fortunes, valued by an appreciative adopted hometown and a total refutation of the age-old premise that nice guys must finish last. Monroe City basketball is again a feel-good story.

The Lord's Servant: Sister Sue

One day soon, the front door to the school will close tightly to the evening darkness of the final day of her life’s calling. Sister Suzanne Walker, as she has every day since 1975, will pause to take it all in and give silent thanks to her Lord for her worldly blessings before starting the short walk to a Convent she has called her home for 47 years. That is 47 years of watching, from the same threshold, the setting sun over the small northeast Missouri town, her hometown, of Monroe City. The sight, she says, gives her passion and we all need passion in our lives. Sister Suzanne recently announced this will be her last year as principal of Holy Rosary school. “I just know it is time for me to step aside,” she says.

When pressed, Walker will admit she takes only a momentary nightly reprise to admire the spirituality of what has become her personal nemesis, the setting sun. And then only on the rare days when she departs her office before that sun has sunken below the western horizon. The rest of her day is spent in a race against her rival, a race she always loses. There are never enough hours in her day. For truth be told, she is at the school most days before the sun has risen. She seldom is home before 7:30 pm, some nights much later. “I guess I am just a slow worker,” she says. Co-workers chide her for her habit of digging out lunch leftovers to heat in the school cafeteria microwave for her evening meal. 

Walker has seen both sides now. An eye-defying 75 years old, she has been a Dominican nun since 1967, when at the not so wizened age of 21 years she took her solemn lifetime vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. 

They say graveyards are full of indispensable people- we can all be replaced. Holy Rosary parishioner after parishioner tell me Walker's impending retirement will be a good candidate for the first exception of such wisdom. She is today undeniably a Holy Rosary school institution and a small-town treasure. 

Sister Sue, as three generations of students have known her, is a Holy Rosary High School graduate herself, Class of 1964. She says she led the typical life of a small town 1960’s high school girl. Played sports, worked a part-time job. Only once as we spoke did I see any hint from within her of the seven deadly sins, in this case pride, but I admit I entrapped her. “I read you were all-conference in basketball,” I prodded. The temptation was too great. “I sure was,” she affirmed with an ear-to-ear grin, a small concession to pride, I guess – but not exactly giving the devil his due, either.

The high school closed its doors in 1966 and since then Holy Rosary has focused on educating the parish students through the 8th grade.  For the last four decades plus seven years, Sister Sue has been, for the Holy Rosary community, the face, the spirit, and the keeper of the faith; always the rock, always the leader. 

Born in Monroe City in 1946 at the inception of the Baby Boom explosion, she is the second in a close-knit family of ten children and the oldest girl. Her rank on the family food chain explains her natural paternal instincts. “For as long as I can remember I was involved in caring for my younger siblings. That is the way it was done in large families back then. We were not a farm family with farm chores for the kids to do; but there was still plenty of help our parents needed and we were expected to kick in and help.”

Her parents ran a well-known local furniture store. All nine of her siblings are alive and six live in the immediate Monroe City area. 

“I knew from a very young age,” Walker states, “that I wanted to be a nun. By 4th grade I knew I had a calling from the Lord, a vocation to the Dominican Sisters was my future.”

At first, Walker said she had thought nursing would be her mission. But an adolescent late-night dream changed her life’s path. “I'm not really one who believes strongly in dreams,” she today says. “But I did have a dream when I was about 14 that I had become a teacher and not a nurse. I took that as a strong sign from God and began to prepare myself to teach.”

Like all high school graduates, the summer after receiving her diploma from Holy Rosary was a time of change. “After I graduated in the summer of 1964 I enrolled at the Dominican School, in Sparkill, New York. It was about 30 miles north of New York City. Obviously, a lot different from the area I had grown up. But I don't really remember being homesick, I did miss some things, for sure but I felt such a strong calling to God and that's where he intended me to be and what I was to do with my life. I was focused on preparing myself for my calling, learning to be a teacher.”

“I graduated in three years in; the fall of 1967,” Sister Sue recalls. “I then began teaching the first grade at Saint Anthony's in the Bronx, New York. I had 52 students in my class, my first-year teaching,” she says with a laugh. “Fifty-two students. All. Day. Long. Let that sink in. But with the Lord’s help, we made it. I learned quickly that I had to find lessons that would hold the attention of my students. And of course, not all my students would be on the same learning levels, especially reading. So, I might be teaching to two rows that needed extra help and the next two rows might be working ahead. It was very important to be organized or I would have never survived.”

” It was a very solid, Italian, middle-class neighborhood, and we had a lot of parental support,” Sister Sue continued. “It was a good school and I felt like I was successful, that I had done what God had sent me there to do. It was a good start for me, reaffirmed that my life belonged to God and he wanted me to educate his children.”

After three years in the New York Bronx, Walker saw a chance for a change. “By 1970, a lot of policy upgrades had taken place in the Catholic Church’s hierarchy,” she states. “We were now allowed to request where we would like to go, whereas before you just sat back and you were told by your superiors where you needed to be. I requested an opportunity to get home and closer to my extended family. I was given a job at Saint Thomas Moore Catholic School in (Missouri) North Saint Louis County. I taught first grade and I stayed for five years. In 1975 an opportunity opened that I could move back to Monroe City and teach at Holy Rosary. I jumped at it. It was a dream come true and I have been here ever since.”

Monroe City is a farm town in the middle of the prairie with four bars, 2300 people and one (blinking after 10 pm) stoplight. Sister Suzanne, a lady with the poise of a princess and the daring of a dragoon, fits right in. She can be prim and proper one moment, leading morning prayers; down and scruffy the next, right in the middle of a spirited recess basketball game. 

In Monroe City there are a few haves, mostly legacy farmers, but there are many have-nots, proud people struggling to get by, hanging on to a way of life no one wants to make a reality TV show about. But for Sister Sue, her hometown fits her like a glove. “The people here are good, solid people. Everything I have ever needed for contentment, I have here. The question for me has always been ‘why would I want to leave,’ and I guess I haven't come up with a good answer yet.”

Sister Sue tells me she was blessed to have been with her parents in both their active retirement years and in their declining years. “Many Sisters give up their family to serve God’s calling, maybe even in another part of the world. The Lord never asked me to make that sacrifice. I was blessed in that I could both follow my religious commitment and my desire to stay connected to my family.”

Tim Hadfield was a 1985 graduate of Holy Rosary. This summer he will retire as the Superintendent of the Camdenton, MO public schools. His 30-year successful professional career comes as no surprise to Sister Sue. "I always knew Tim would do well," she tells me. 

Hadfield has throughout his life been influenced by Sister Sue. "She was my second grade teacher," he recalls. "Then she was my 7th grade teacher and when we went into 8th grade, it was her first year as Principal. She was a very soft spoken person, but when she got stern, you knew it was time to listen. She always had our respect, total respect. She just cared so deeply for her students and her love for Holy Rosary was so obvious, even to us at an age when at lot of things aren't always obvious."

With Hadfield chosen career in education, Sister Sue would become a colleague, but still a mentor. "My first job in administration was Junior High Principal in (nearby) South Shelby. We would play Holy Rosary in football and basketball and I remember being proud to speak with her as a fellow administrator. That is the type of influence she had over me, and again, for the respect I had for her. Even as professional equals, I never felt on her level, I still wanted her approval, I still wanted her to be proud of me. To have that type of life long influence over me, for so many years, well, what bigger compliment could I give her. "

Susan Spalding Winking had Sister Sue for a teacher in first and second grade, has had two daughters graduate from Holy Rosary and served a term on the school board. From all angles, her respect for Sister Sue is immense. 

"What she has done, and has done for years," says Winking, "is nothing short of amazing. Her life is the kids of Holy Rosary. They are all her kids. Sister Sue is not a dramatic person; she is very good at deescalating situations. Her calm keeps her in control. The respect she has from the kids is something that has to be earned and she has earned it. All the kids can be in the gym for a program, loud, just being kids and when Sister Sue walks in the whole gym goes stone silent. She does not have to say a word. She is not an intimidating person, actually she is the least intimidating person you will ever meet. The (reason) she is so respected by everyone is because she cares."

Winking, like many I talked with, praises Sister Sues' total dedication to her school. "She is not only the principal, but the athletic director, the choral director, sweeps the floor at ball games, teaches religion classes and if there is an opportunity to make some extra money for the school by selling popcorn at a community event, she will be there selling it."

"Both of my daughters are now teachers," Winking shares. "And I have grandkids that now attend Holy Rosary. Sister Sue has been so important to our family on so many different levels over so many years. If I had to sum up Sister Sue in one word it would be "servant." There is no one else like her."

Everyone in Monroe City wants to talk about Sister Sue but no one in Monroe City wants to talk about Sister Sue retiring. Debbie Quinn says the town is in collective civic shock. Quinn is a retired teacher herself and a Holy Rosary parish member. Sister Sue directed the education of her three children. The community has embraced Sister Sue, Quinn says, because she is like the town itself: parochial, proud, tough, and determined to win in the end. In the local rural vernacular, always a work horse, never a show horse. 

“Sister Sue never lets anything stand before the school mission,” Debbie Quinn observes. “You always know where you stand with her; as a parent, as a parishioner, as a friend; you can count on Sister Sue, always. I still can’t make myself think about the school without her. We will survive and we will continue to thrive, because of her and what she has built, but that doesn’t make it any easier.”

A small-town work ethic goes well with what Holy Rosary has stood for: always work hard, always serious about academics. They grow up, they get a job, they marry, they have kids. Most have sent their own children to the one who was trusted to educate them; just like their parents and grandparents did - Sister Sue. "It makes me feel old,” she says, “but I taught some of today’s student’s grandparents.” It is a knee shaking responsibility, but “it is what God had planned for my life,” she says.  

Barb Quinn taught 2nd grade under Sister Sue’s direction for 28 years. She retired seven years ago, at the end of the 2014 school year. I asked Barb Quinn what it will take to replace her longtime friend and professional comrade. “Three people,” she responded, without hesitation. “And that is only if all three are not lazy and (are) willing to work 18-hour days,” says the mother of four, all, of course, Holy Rosary grads.

Sister Sue’s cleaning of the school building every summer is local legend. Barb Quinn still shakes her head at the routine Walker developed. “Until the old school was torn down, five years ago, Sister Sue would perform the summer cleaning by herself. The whole building. She would do two whole rooms a week. She was still doing this every day, every summer until she was near 70. And the building had no air conditioning.”

According to Barb Quinn, the annual summer scrubbing was of every square inch of the old building. The good Sister’s stamp of approval was final. When Sister Sue says it was clean, it was clean. “She would strip and refinish the floors every year. Classrooms and hallways. She would carry two five-gallon buckets full of soapy water from the basement up to the second floor. Trip after trip. Her summer cleaning of the school will always be a legend around Holy Rosary.”

Walker today says modestly that it would take, especially as she got older, a week or two to loosen her up for her summer custodial Crusade, but germs didn’t have a prayer once Sister Sue hit her summer cleaning stride. “She had it so organized it was unbelievable,’ says Barb Quinn. “Big pieces of furniture that she couldn't move herself, she would make sure after every Sunday Mass she would latch on to enough men, ‘come on, it will just take a minute,’ she would say, and they would get moved what she needed to get out of her way for the next week’s cleaning.” She would then set her Sabbath indentured servant crew upon the task of moving back the furniture into last week’s now “ready for a new school year” rooms. 

“I knew every inch of that old building,” Walker admits, “that helped me, I was physically connected to every part and that gave me ownership. The work (summer cleaning) wasn’t as hard as they make it sound. I just took my time, and I liked the solitude.” She then lowers her voice and lets me in on a secret. “Sometimes, when I wanted to be left alone cleaning, I would pull the shades and turn out the lights and people would think I was gone for the day. Then, with no interruptions, I could really get to cleaning.”

In 2016, the parish raised the funds to build a new school. It was a Herculean task, just the kind Sister Sue seeks out. The fundraising and the successful completion, under budget, is fondly known today amongst the parish faithful as the “Miracle on Locust Street.” 

“We needed a new building for two reasons,” Walker says. “The old school was getting to the point that the maintenance could not be maintained without huge remodeling expenses. We had no handicap access. The heating system was falling apart. But, a new school also sent a signal, ‘Holy Rosary is here to stay. We are not going away,”’ she says with pride.

The deteriorating condition of the old school building made its use for non-classroom space impractical. It had to be torn down. “I thought that would really be hard for me to watch,” say Sister Sue. “My life and soul were in that old building. But once we moved the classroom furniture, the books, the religious statues; it was like the spirit went from the old building to the new building. I felt no sadness the day they tore the old building down. I don’t miss the old building, it was just that, an old building, but I am blessed to have so many good memories of the people who were in it, whose lives spiritually touched mine.” 

At a young age Suzanne Walker made vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. No regrets, she says today. “I have had a wonderful life and now it is time for the next chapter.”

“I intend to stay away from the school for a while. Whoever takes my place doesn’t need me looking over their shoulder,” she says of what will be her relationship with her impending successor. “But I do hope when the time is right, the Lord will direct me back to the school and there will be a place for me, a new way I can contribute.”

Sister Sue does not like to talk about herself. I mention the thousands of Monroe City kids she has influenced, and she changes the subject to school air conditioning and learning styles. I pay compliment to her physical stamina, and she deflects to a lecture on the role of school lunches in the education of pre-teen students. 

She expertly weaves - diverting scenes on the tapestry of her life to so many distracting stitches that you must strain to see the fundamental fibers that make Sister Sue a local treasure. But they are there, her own simple quintessentially American story, testimonials to a life well lived: The faith to commit at an early age to a simple, selfless life. The toughness to stay the chosen course with no creeping self-doubts or second guessing. And now for the closing act, the courage to grudgingly and with grace concede eventual defeat, to some degree, anyway, in her race with the setting sun. For one who has led a life so full of a singular passion, the last is surely the hardest.