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In Winslow,
they haven't forgotten the amazing way he lifted the unheard of Eskimos
from the tiny Pike County school to within striking distance of the state
basketball championship . . . and at Indiana University, they still refer
to Farley as the man who led the Hoosiers through their greatest era, an
era which included winning the NCAA championship in 1953
The "Farley Years" at Winslow added up
to 83 wins and only eight losses as the lean bomber carried the school of
some 250 students to the title game of the Bloomington semistate
tournament in 1950 - the greatest moment ever in Winslow athletic annals.
At Indiana, while Farley was holding down a
forward spot in a lineup filled with bigger names, the Hoosiers won two
Big Ten championships, a national title and went 59-13. The icing on
the cake came in 1955 when Farley, one year out of college, was the sixth
man for teh Syracuse Nationals, champions of the NBA.
Farley's wife - now Mrs. Marge Kennedy - lives in
Carmel, IN and they had five children, Steve, Karen, Kathy, Tim and
Fran. She says, "I've never known a person as intense as Dick
when it came to competition. It was always there . . . when he
played for IU, when played with the pros, and when he was a business-
man in Fort Wayne. "Even in golf, when he was down, it
would only intensify his endeavor to win . . . he was always able to light
the spark and reach back for something extra that the rest of us always
lacked.
"His terrific desire to do the job right was
almost too much for him in his last season of professional
basketball. Dick had played two years with Syracuse, then went into
the Air Force for almost thress years and the layoff was to much. . even
for him. But Red Rocha had become a very close friend and when Red
was named the coach at Detroit he asked Dick to play for the
Pistons. He tried so hard and took the game so seriously that he
actually was sick and by the end of the season he was down to 160 pounds.
"But he came back strong at Fort Wayne two
years later. He took a small business which was far in debt and
built it into a great success . . . and I was so happy that he lived to
see it."
Few southern Indiana basketball fans of the late
forties and fifties have forgotten Winslow's Dick Farley, but there are
some followers of big-time college basketball who may not remember
him. At Indiana, he played alongside 6-10 Don Schlundt, smooth Bobby
Leonard, sharpshooting Burke Scott and clever Charley Krack.
But, when it was all over and after Indiana had
won its national title and two Big Ten crowns, Hoosier Coach Branch
McCracken heaped the praise on the "Winslow Wonder."
"Dick Farley is the most under-rated basketball player Indiana
University has ever had," McCracken said. "He was a
great one . . . the wheelhorse of this ball club . . . the type of ball
player I could assign to a 6-foot-7 or a 5-foot10 scoring star and forget
all about him because Dick would tie him in knots. "He was one
of the greatest defensive players to ever play in the Big Ten."
And his teammates - Schlundt, Leonard, Scott -
said, to the man, "You know what Mac said . . . Dick Farley was a
great one . . . a lot of people just didn't realize it."
Schlundt to this day, is convinced Farley "was the most unpublicized
basketball star of all-time."
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