OKLAHOMA CITY ? What I remember most about Prentice Gautt is the way he shook hands, and, believe me, he grasped more mitts than a presidential candidate.

Perhaps you read his obituary on page 4B of Friday’s Journal-World. A Lawrence resident, Gautt died unexpectedly Thursday at the age of 67.

Over the years, I’ve known Gautt in two bailiwicks — as an administrator for the old Big Eight Conference and later in a similar role in the Big 12, and as a member of First Presbyterian Church, where he could be described — even though it’s a cliche — only as a pillar.

A quiet man with a perpetual smile, Gautt would greet you with a grin and a double-clutch handshake delivered at once with force and grace. And he maintained the grasp seconds longer than most people do.

Gautt’s passing was a much bigger story in Oklahoma than it was in Lawrence. Gautt’s obituary made the front page of The Daily Oklahoman, the largest newspaper in the Sooner State.

As the first black football player at Oklahoma University, he was an icon in his native state. OU was segregated until 1950, and final restrictions on undergraduate enrollment were not dropped until 1955. Gautt, who grew up in Oklahoma City, received an athletic scholarship two years later.

“His moral courage helped to bring racial justice, not only to our state and to intercollegiate athletics,” OU president David Boren said, “but also to our entire nation.”

Gautt went on to earn a masters and a doctorate in psychology from the Norman, Okla., school. At Kansas University, the student-support-services department is named after a contributor. Oklahoma’s equivalent is called the Dr. Prentice Gautt Academic Center.

Boren recalled the day in 1999 when Gautt stood on the 50-yard line at OU’s football stadium and was recognized as the academic center’s namesake.

“It was the longest ovation I have ever witnessed in the stadium when it was announced the academic center would be named after him,” Boren said.

The Daily Oklahoman also quoted OU athletic director Joe Castiglione, who described the noise as deafening. “And it went on and on,” Castiglione said. “All of us were standing there, and the tears were running down our cheeks. I get kind of choked up thinking about it.”

Brewster Hobby, a former teammate, told the Oklahoma City paper that “anyone less of a gentleman than Prentice and anyone with less fortitude would have not allowed the black man to have a chance at Oklahoma.”

If he had continued to reside in Oklahoma, Gautt surely would have become a living legend, sort of like former Negro League baseball player Buck O’Neil is in Kansas City or like former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden is in Los Angeles.

But instead, Gautt lived a low-profile life outside the Sooner State. He and his wife moved to Lawrence several years ago when she became an administrator at KU. While Sandra Gautt worked on Mount Oread, Gautt commuted to the Big Eight office in downtown Kansas City, Mo.

When the Big Eight morphed into the Big 12, and the office shifted to Dallas in 1996, Gautt was the only member of the league hierarchy who wasn’t required to make the move. He didn’t want to, and he didn’t particularly need to because his main task was to visit the conference campuses and conduct reviews of the school’s life-skills programs, interpret rules and administer the drug-testing program.

Gautt’s legacy always will be that he was the first black football player at Oklahoma University, yet I’m sure he would have preferred to be remembered as a man who was more concerned about others than he was about himself.

His schooling in psychology and his religious faith often dovetailed and made him a respected and highly sought counselor. He was also a Stephen minister, a layman trained to help the ill and troubled deal with their pain.

I haven’t talked to anyone who knew Prentice Gautt who doesn’t feel a genuine sense of loss. I know I do.