photo by: KU Archives

Bill "Skinny" Johnson is shown palming two basketballs in this photo from the KU Archives.

The Feb. 26, 1932, edition of the Lawrence Journal-World left little doubt: Kansas basketball would be “without the services” of star center Bill “Skinny” Johnson in the following day’s conference finale against Oklahoma.

He and his brother Kenneth, also a teammate, had been called two days earlier to return to Oklahoma City following the death of their father, Swan, and were going to miss a game that would decide the Big Six Conference title.

Only the use of the word “may” in a subtitle left an opening for the Johnsons’ return.

Sure enough, by the following morning, the Journal-World sports department was far less certain. There was some faint hope that Skinny, not “husky Pete Bausch, a guard, or Hudson McGuire, better known as a golfer,” the potential replacements picked by coach Phog Allen for the occasion, could be back playing center at Hoch Auditorium that night.

“It may be only one of those gestures labeled psychology,” read an article on page eight of the Feb. 27 edition, “but word spread around Mount Oread that Bill Johnson, Kansas’ virtually indispensable center, might return by airplane from Oklahoma City after his father’s funeral this afternoon.”

What unfolded was a seminal moment in early University of Kansas athletics as the Johnson brothers did indeed hop on a plane from Oklahoma to Ottawa piloted by B.S. Graham of the Curtiss-Wright flying service, take a car to Lawrence driven by KU groundskeeper Dell Davidson and make it to the gym in time for Skinny to boost the Jayhawks to a conference-clinching 33-29 victory over OU that the Feb. 29 issue called “one of the most dramatic titular wins in the history of the sport.”

Lawrence High grad Ted O’Leary was the star with 14 points, but Johnson added eight before leaving the game to what one column called “the biggest ovation we have ever heard given an athlete.”

“For nearly five minutes the assembled multitude roared their approval of the KU center’s play,” read an accompanying story on the game.

The cheers may not last quite that long on Monday, but they’ll be distributed among an entire family when several generations of Jayhawks, 18 of Johnson’s descendants in total, gather at Allen Fieldhouse.

During KU’s basketball game against Cincinnati, Skinny’s No. 33 jersey will go up in the rafters, as was announced in December.

“It was a surprise and wonderfully received,” said Bill Johnson Jr., his son. “It wasn’t that we had in any way expected it.”

KU coach Bill Self got to deliver the news in a phone call shortly after Thanksgiving.

“They were so proud and so happy — and the fact that it’s taken a long time didn’t register — so appreciative, because this place means a lot to their family,” Self told the Journal-World. “I didn’t know that they grew up here. The family grew up here, his son, and many still live here, and so this’ll be a big deal for them.”

Self said they have waited too long to retire the jersey — Johnson died at 68, in 1980 — but that “to see his son and the rest of their family be a part of this will mean almost as much to them as what it would be if Bill was actually front and center and present.”

The 1932 funeral story is particularly “timely,” said Fran Johnson, the wife of Bill Jr., in light of the modern efforts of junior forward KJ Adams, who played extensively for the Jayhawks this season in the wake of his mother’s death, first at the Maui Invitational, then in a heroic performance against UConn immediately before flying home for her funeral.

Fran also said, “I always thought of my father-in-law as this big, can-handle-anything man,” as opposed to the story that depicted him as a “vulnerable kid.”

“There are players that have changed the course of history or made history, basketball history, that we are wanting to honor, and that’s why they picked Bill’s dad,” Fran said.

Johnson, an inductee of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (1977) and College Basketball Hall of Fame (2006), certainly did just that.

Johnson played three years for Allen and helped lead the Jayhawks to three conference titles; he was named an All-American by one publication in 1933. He was tall for the era — “I always thought he was 6-5. He may have lied to me. They’re now listing him as 6-4,” his son said — but also an exceptional leaper during an era of basketball in which jump balls were much more prominent.

“The kind of folklore is that one of the reasons why they got rid of the center jump after every basket (in 1937) is because my dad would win every center jump,” Bill Johnson Jr. said.

Self compared that to Wilt Chamberlain’s later influence on widening the lane.

“Having at least two guys in Kansas play a role in how we see the game today is pretty unique,” he said. “I don’t know if very many places would have that.”

A stained glass panel in Johnson’s honor in the Booth Family Hall of Athletics — originally from the Naismith Hall of Fame’s “Honors Court,” later donated by his son and daughter-in-law, along with a uniform, a scrapbook and more — features the following description: “Bill with his amazing jumping ability dominated most games in the era of the crucial center tap in his outstanding basketball career that was recognized with his selection as (an) ‘all-time great in Oklahoma’ in 1975.”

It also details a bit of Johnson’s amateur career with Southern Kansas Stage Lines, a team for which he won a Missouri Valley AAU title just a year out of school.

Johnson received plenty of his accolades in the 1970s but was just as renowned in his own era. At the conclusion of Johnson’s college career in 1933, one Journal-World reporter wrote of him, “And what a man Bill has been, with his ever present smile, his aggressive playing, his cool and unruffled judgment and his deadly aim at the baskets. He has endeared himself to K.U. because of his dependability and his flight to Lawrence last year to cinch victory for K.U. will never be forgotten.”

Indeed, the Oklahoma game persisted as the defining moment of his career. It was a memorable matchup on the court — KU led 21-6 at the half before allowing 11 straight points, then struck back with an 11-1 run before Johnson fouled out and OU made it close until the end.

“The University of Kansas athletic management should take out insurance on its basketball patrons,” commented the Journal-World’s “Sports Slants” column on the matter, “because games such as the one staged here Saturday night when Kansas won from Oklahoma to retain the championship could easily bring on a flock of nervous breakdowns.”

As it happened, Johnson also had history with Oklahoma. As a sophomore he had said the Sooners had extensively tried to recruit him out of high school.

Instead of OU, though, he picked KU and moved to Lawrence for college.

“He always wanted to move back here, and he got cancer and was not able to do that, so anyway, I moved back for him,” said his daughter JoAnn Trenary, who has also taught at KU since returning to Lawrence. “He was a big influence on what I did in my retirement.”

Trenary added that she knew her father as “the life of the party.”

“The thing that I try and remember about Dad is that he’d come into a room and everybody would turn to him,” she said. “He was that dynamic, as far as his personality, and that’s what I try to remember.

Bill Johnson Jr. struck a similar tone.

“My dad was a big man, but a bigger personality,” he said. “He was a very outgoing, funny presence. He had an aura. And had many, many friends and supporters in the later years. He was well loved, and left a big hole in the lives of many, including me and my wife.”

His family has remained connected to KU in the years since. Some, like Trenary, still live in Lawrence. One grandson, Scott Johnson, wrote a book on the legendary coach Allen. Two great-grandchildren are current freshmen at the school; Trenary said one more could be headed there soon.

As many as possible will gather on the James Naismith Court.

“I asked them, ‘Hey, how do we get you here, and how many?’ — ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll be there,'” Self said. “It’s just one of those things — they were so excited.”

“We never get our whole family together,” Trenary said. “We’ve got 18 people that are going to be on the court. And that’s a lot.”

“It’s going to be incredible,” Bill Johnson Jr. said.

photo by: Courtesy of Fran Johnson

Bill “Skinny” Johnson, far left, with four of his brothers (from left: Clarence, Arthur, Raymond and Ken).

photo by: Courtesy of Fran Johnson

Bill “Skinny” Johnson, third from left, and family at his induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1977.

photo by: Courtesy of Fran Johnson

One of Bill “Skinny” Johnson’s treasures, a signed drawing of James Naismith, addressed to “one of the great basketball players.”

photo by: Henry Greenstein/Journal-World

A stained glass panel depicting Bill Johnson, originally from the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, that now stands in the Booth Family Hall of Athletics at Allen Fieldhouse.

photo by: Henry Greenstein/Journal-World

Bill “Skinny” Johnson’s bio on his stained glass panel from the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, now displayed in the Booth Family Hall of Athletics at Allen Fieldhouse.

photo by: Henry Greenstein/Journal-World

A portrait of Bill Johnson in the Booth Family Hall of Athletics at Allen Fieldhouse.