My brother, Jim's Article for Christmas week's "The Scioto Voice with some KY basketball

High Notes 12-24-2014

Here’s is some sad news to report:  Tommy Dale, the 85-year old professional musician, born December 30, 1928 in Gallipolis, Ohio, and who played trombone with the Columbus Jazz Orchestra, along with local saxophonist, Gary Billups, in many local concerts in Oho and Tracy Park in the summertime, died on Wednesday, December 10 in Columbus.  Tommy had played music professionally since the age of 16, and eventually formed his own band, the Tommy Dale Orchestra as well as playing with the Jerry Kaye Orchestra for many of the Broadway musicals and other music events travelling to Ohio.

He also taught instrumental music in the Columbus Public Schools from 1949 to 1979 and retired as band director of Columbus North High School in 1979.

Mr. Billups, the semi-retired Scioto County music teacher, and professional performing musician, reported that a special Celebration of Life for Tommy will be held on Sunday, January 4, 2015 at 2:00 p.m. in the ballroom at the Aladdin Shrine Center, 3850 Stelzer Rd., Columbus, Ohio, according to Mr. Billups, a long-time friend of Mr. Dale.  Interment took place at Sunset Cemetery, Galloway, Ohio, with arrangements by SCHOEDINGER NORTHWEST CHAPEL.

An extensive obituary was published in “The Columbus Dispatch” Dec. 13, 2014 edition.

Way back in the 1950’s in what I call the Adolph Ruppazoic period of college basketball, I was able to listen to Kentucky Wildcat basketball as Cawood Ledford, soothed me to sleep with his wonderfully mellifluous, and indigenous-to-Kentucky, voice.  The word “mellifluous” broken down is interesting…mell in Latin means “honey”, and Ledford’s voice would flow like newly collected honey on a hot Kentucky afternoon.  His tonetic regional dialect was at once exciting, entertaining, and nearly hypnotic to an impressionable teenage Ohioan who loved the game, and Wildcat basketball.

I grew up in Portsmouth, Ohio, on the point where the Scioto River pours into the mighty Ohio River, and which historically the Shawnee Indians lived and made forays into their Kentucky hunting grounds.  In those 1790’s post-American Revolutionary War days, the Indians were still using the shores of both states to maraud against the thousands of pioneers who were floating down the mighty Ohio to settle.

Portsmouth, and for that matter, all of Ohio loves the game of basketball, but nobody, anywhere in the entire U. S. A., can match the intensity of the citizens of Kentucky, and the fondness for the U. K. Wildcats.  Oh yes, I remember when one of Portsmouth Ohio’s great basketballers, Mike Haley, after helping his 1961 high school win the Ohio State Championship, attended Ohio University at Athens, and in the mid-sixties played on a Bobcat team that upset the Kentucky Wildcats in the NCAA tournament.  I attributed that victory to Haley as pay-back for the fact his Portsmouth Trojan team lost to the Ashland, Kentucky Tomcats, in 1961.  Ashland, also won their state’s high school championship that year.  And, the Cincinnati Bearcats, without Oscar Robinson, defeated the Jerry Lucas, John Havilicek led Ohio State team to win their first of two straight NCAA tournaments over the Buckeyes, in 1961 and 1962

The Buckeyes won the NCAA tournament in 1960..

1961 is the year my brother, Sam, got his metallurgical engineering degree from the University of Kentucky, at Lexington and since that time, Sam has been a well known Wildcat fan, who now boasts his own computer blog with a decided round-ball bent.  If Ohio has a more ardent Kentucky Wildcat basketball fan than Sam, I don’t know who it could be.  Of course, Jeanette (Weddington) Sam’s wife, who has been with him since he met her at the Ohio Theatre (late 1940’s) in New Boston, goes to the games, and is nearly as passionate about Kentucky basketball as he.

I love Kentucky Basketball, but I consider myself a true tri-state fan, because I follow the Cincinnati Bearcats, the Marshall Thundering Herd, Miami at Oxford, OU, Xavier, OSU, Morehead, and West Virginia too.  It is a great year to be a Buckeye and a Wildcat fan, they are both top teams, and they both have great coaches. 

Because of the early deadline for the holiday newspapers over the next couple of weeks, I am writing this column early so it can be submitted by Monday, December 22.   It is Friday evening, and I am looking forward to both the OSU, and North Carolina, and Kentucky and UCLA games Saturday, the 20th.  I’ll keep this paragraph in if they both win, which I do expect to happen.

 Go Cats!

 Go Bucks!