block circled the court, the six lanes covered the ground-level the track here has a Tartan to 1972 it was dirt. housed house cheers on its a late-1990s game. newest fieldhouse floor is a huge centerpiece man on the court makes on the new floor, unveiled in August 2003.
Photo by Courtney Kuhlen/KANSAN
FORMER USHER
FRED PLANK
MISSES HIS DAYS
AT ALLEN
FIELDHOUSE
THE SMILE IN THE STANDS BY FRAN
Fred Plank visits Allen Fieldhouse, his workplace of 46 years. Plank is still remembered at the fieldhouse for his helpful attitude and friendly smile.
Photo by Emin Droste/KANSAN
Fred Plank tightly grips the red rail to his right as he trudges up the stairs to the second floor of Allen Fieldhouse. He doesn't walk slowly, but he does walk carefully. At 85, you have to be careful.
He sits in section one, row one, seat 15, in the second tier of the north student section. Since 1958, Plank has been to nearly a thousand games, but he has never sat in this or any other seat. He moves his hands to either side of his body, gripping the edge of the red bleacher for support.
He talks in a pleasant Midwestern voice. One story leads to another, and as he speaks he glances around the empty fieldhouse, occasionally pointing to a section for clarification as to where some event occurred.
A white banner reading "Pay Heed, All Who Enter. Beware of the Phog" looms over his right shoulder. Lists of pass All-Americans, Olympians, Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame members and Academic All-Americans hang on blue, crimson and white banners below. Legendary names are inscribed on them: Wilt Chamberlain, Jo JO White, Raef LaFrentz, Darnell Valentine, Walt Wesley and many others. Plank saw most of them play.
BY FRANK TANKARD
Plank worked as an event staff member at Kansas men's basketball, football, baseball and truck events for 46 years, until Crowd Systems Inc. took over the handling of Kansas ushers
from Manpower Inc. earlier this season.
A few young men dressed in polo shirts and khakis briskly walk back and forth to all ends of the court below, shouting to each other and into walkie-talkies. They seem to be testing a piercing alarm that keeps going off. They pay no attention to the old man up in the stands.
Plank still has plenty of friends in Allen Fieldhouse, old and young. He still has Mary, his wife of nearly 60 years, and their two children. He also has memories. After nearly a half-century, Plank is a walking Kansas sports encyclopedia.
He remembers budding under the announcer's stand for shelter from a downpour with Jim Ryun at the KU Relays. He remembers working all night at Memorial Stadium with former track coach Bill Easton to dry the cinder track following a heavy rain the night before the KU Relays.
"We were about ready to start the races the next day at eight o'clock," he says. "They got lined up, and it opened up and poured again, leaving about two inches of water on the track."
Mostly, his memories are from the building he's in. While he's raking, he frequently smiles. He has a big, majestic smile. The corners of his eyes wrinkle and he accompanies it with a low, easy laugh. Fred Plank
is famous for his smile. Ask almost anyone in Allen Fieldhouse.
Holding onto the bleachers, with the overhead lights glaring off his large bifocals, Plank sheds 46-plus years. He was 39 years old in the fall of 1958. A dirt track enriched the court, resting under the courtside bleachers during basketball games. Tickets were cheap.
"When I first started, I think as long as it wasn't reserved seats, you could probably by a ticket for five bucks," he says.
Forty years later a man would offer him $100 just to get into Late Night after the doors had closed. "He didn't eat in," says Plank.
Plank was more than a decade removed from his two-and-a-half years of service in World War II. Returning home, he bought an appliance store in Baldwin City and named it Baldwin Appliance. He and Mary spent much of their time chasing their two children, Tom and Susan, around the house. He and some buddies formed a bowling team in a Lawrence league. One of the men on the team was LeRoy "Sarge" Morgison, the sergeant major of ROTC at the University of Kansas. As chance would have it, Morgison was also the man in charge of ushers and parking at Allen Fieldhouse.
Morgison asked Plank if he wanted to volunteer as an usher and Plank, having been raised on Phog Allen basketball in Garden City, Mo., said. "You bet."
When he showed up for his first basketball game, a former assistant to Phog Allen, Dick Harp, coached the team. There was no threepoint line, and the arena was newly constructed and considered enormous.
"When it was built, it was a landmark, actually," Plank says. "It was one of the finest in the nation."
The 1950s gave way to the 1960s, and student unrest was spreading through campus Plank points to the west reserved seats, where he remembers a group of hostile students who wouldn't get up for the rightful ticket holders in the late 1960s. It was a time when songs of protest filled the air, activists more concerned with social issues than basketball protested even within the stands of the fieldhouse, and victorious teams coached by Ted Owens provided the entertainment.
Many of Plank's most vivid memories spring from this decade. His job was to help ushers out with any problems they had. And trouble with the fans occurred often.
"They were protesting a little bit of everything," he says.
Plank recalls an incident at the KU Relays in the late 1960s.
He was working during the meet when a mob of 5,000 protestors suddenly descended from Campanile hill on the south side of Memorial Stadium, marching toward the meet,
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