February 2, 1941

Dre WeCe Jessen
Peabody, Kansas

Dear Dre Jessen:

I acknowledge with deep gratitude your very good letter
of February 12 ragarding Hoyt Bakere I assure you you never have
bothered me and I appreciate your kindly insistence that we take more
interest than we have shown in this fine boye °

. I want to be perfectly frank and honest with you. There is
not a member of our basketball team thet has been given any special

consideration from me aside from worke This goes for my twenty-five

years of coaching experience here at the Universitye The fact that

Frosty Cox and Bruce Drake and these. other coaches offer staggering

propositions to these boys mikes it much more difficult for us to keep

our boys here in the State

to

%

you that I would rather have Hoyt Baker on
my team than most any boy that I mow. This applies to the crop in the
-high school in the State of Kansas at the present times

Steve Hinshaw has not been with the University for some five
or six years and there has been no effort to get basketball players to
attend the University. The-only ones that come here are boys who come
for an education or who simply desire to play on the teame There has
been no special inducement offered the boyse

But I do want you to kmow that I am tremendously interested in
Hoyt Baker and I will make arrangements to have his brother drop in to
see més I told Hoyt and his folks that we would give hima job, but you
can see how difficult it is when someone tells me that he can get a $750.00
scholarship at Notre Dame.

I plan, sometime when it is convenient, to drop out and see you
and have a good talk with youe I also want to see Hoyt's parents because
I do want to interest them in an education for Hoyt and not merely a
basketball scholarship or a berth where a fellow can take things easy because
he is an athlete.

I readily understand the Baker family’s probleme The fact that they
have five children to educate makes for a real financial problem. I do know,
however, that this is his State University and we would be mighty happy to have
him here, and I believe it would mean more to him in his own State University
than it would if he went same place where he and the family are not knowne
After all, it is the benefits and the satisfaction that a fellow gets fron an
education rather than the money that is offered.