To the editor:

Congratulations to the Kansas University basketball team, the university, Lawrence, and the great state of Kansas. At the final buzzer last night, I whooped and yelled and then said, “I wish Daddy was here to see this!” My father, Milton Beach, was a Jayhawk basketball fan almost since Naismith days. (Well, not quite.)

He was born in Clinton, moved to Lawrence at age 9 with his brother and widowed mother, and worked his way through high school and KU at the old ice plant. He graduated in 1934 with a law degree. One of he highlights of his life was watching Danny Manning lead KU to win it all. (One of the lowlights of his life was getting cut from the Lawrence High School basketball team in the 1920s.)

Dad lived in Kansas all of his life until he moved out here to Seattle to be closer to me when he was in his 80s. In the several years he lived here, we watched almost every televised Kansas basketball game together. He subscribed to the daily Journal-World, and read every article about the team. He loved the game and the team and the school, every year.

Even though I’m a K-State grad myself, Dad made a KU basketball fan out of me. Go Wildcats! Go Jayhawks!

Jane Beach Soder,

Seattle