COLLINWOOD HIGH SCHOOL

15210 ST. CLAIR AVENUE
CLEVELAND, OHIO

May
Nineteen
1942

OFFICE OF THE PRINCIPAL

Mr. Forrest Cc. Allen, Director
Physical Education and Recreation
University of Kansas

Lawrence, Kansas

My dear Phog:

Your letter of May 12 is at hand in which you promote me to assistant superintendent
of Cleveland public schools. Thanks for the fine promotion. However, I have not
been officially notified of it yet end I am only the principal of Collinwood High
School to date.

Aut The copy of your letter addressed Gwinn Henry and signed by George Edwards, dated

| April 5, and your reply of Mey 8 constitute very interesting reading. I am particu-
larly interested in the last paragraph of this letter to Edwards which I quote for
you simply to save you the trouble of looking it up. “Undoubtedly the N.C.A.A.
executive committee has killed the N.CeA-A-e tournament by grebbing everything within
sight. The N.CeA.A. basketball committee has also dme irreparable harm by their
administrative supinity and rules-concocting at the meeting in New Orleans. There
are more politicians on the committee than there are men of vision. One year they
put the high school federation in power to meet the ends of their own purposes, and
the next year they make them the goat endeavoring to please a few eastern coaches."

It is needless for me to comment further than that upon the situation other than

to say that it was my own decision not to be a candidate for chairmanship of the
Rules Committee again this year. I have felt, ever since my elevation to that po-
sition that to have both Porter and myself officers of the committee gave too much
weight to the high school representation. While I believe that the sniping that

was going on was directed at Porter rather than at myself, I feel that Forter's ser-
vices on the committee were more valuable than my own and, therefore, voluntarily
withdrew. Getting into my present work, I find that there are other things which
appear to me to be far more important then basketball rules legislation and, there-
fore, am glad to withdrew as en officer of the association. If my present feeling
continues, I shall ask the. National Federation not to reappoint me as a representa-
tive on the Rules Committee. This may be due to a reaction which is simply a con-
comitant of the times. In other words, during my stay in New Orleans I had an
opportunity to visit with my son who is 4 lieutenant in the Medical Corps at Camp
Shelby. I was impressed with the possibility of his being sent to foreign service
and to the fact that he might never return. In addition I could not help but
multiply that feeling by the hundreds end thousands of young men who will never
return, and with this. n mind, the whole set up from the machinations of the Nation-
al Basketball College’ “Gerri ttee to the petty politics of the Rules Committee itself
which I have enjoyed immensely over the past year seemed so inconsequential and
played so small a part in the desparate situation in which we now find ourselves
that it required about all the self-control that I had, on a number of occasions, to

gat