2 EST TALL RTT OTN

to

 

Dre James Neismith, inventor of basketball, who came to the
University of Kansas in 1898 and taught here until his death on November
28, 1959, said of basketball, "It is a game easy to play but difficult to
masters" So liere is your challenge, you men of the Ninth Division, Fort
Bragg, North Carolina, soe if you oan master this great game that a modest
man originated for 18 troublesome athletes at Springfield College, way back
in 1891.

Young Naismith, left an orphan at eight years of age in Almonte,
Canada, was raised by an old bachelor uncle, Peter Naismith. In early youth
youmg Naismith fod that necessity was the mother of invention, Those

 

rugged northmen did much skiing and skating. Naismith, having no money, took
two old files and clamped them between wooden supports for his first pair of
-Skatese ile was always an inventive genius, a noble gentleman, a generous
competitor but a tough man to whips

One June day in 1926 I sat with Dre Naismith under a spreading : :
Cemadian Maple at Bennie's Corners in Almonte, Canadee Hore I met Uncle Peter
who reared young Naismithe I even saw the casket which Uncle peter, after the
fashion ot Canadats frugal pioneers in their northem woods, had skillfully
built and polished so that it would be in readiness for the time which would
inevitably overtake hime Of late, Uncle Peter had taken to sleeping in his
casket-=perhaps to get accustomed to a * ol.

Tt ean be said of such men,that only those who can accept and meet
& great challenge are worthy to be great leaderse A man who could claim |
that group of contemporaries for friends could not have been an ordinary mang
Robert Tait McKenzie, Dr. Luther /Gulick, his classmates, Anos Alonzo Stagg and

& host of otherse From them, as well as from his genteel origins, he learned
the manners of a gentleman and the glories of unselfish achievement.

 

 

ERLE