Editor’s note: In the Colorado Classics series, The Denver Post takes a weekly look at individuals who made their mark on the Colorado sports landscape and what they are doing now.
Considering it was 1948 and Fred Howell’s world wasn’t much larger than Brooklyn, his question wasn’t that unusual.
“Where’s Denver?” Howell blurted out 58 years ago in the family flat in Brooklyn.
Little did he know Denver would become his basketball home and fodder for a thousand stories, any of which can pour out without notice and are told with a Brooklyn accent.
“My father says, ‘Denver’s way out there past California,”‘ Howell said. “‘It’s way out there.”‘
The geography lesson was triggered by the arrival of Ellison Ketchum, the basketball coach at the University of Denver. Ketchum was in New York for the 1948 Olympic basketball trials at Madison Square Garden and was scouting players for DU. He visited the Howell home.
“I had seen Denver play St. John’s in the Garden, but otherwise I didn’t know anything about the school,” Howell said.
But he came west, learning how to drive along the way. When he arrived, Vince Boryla was DU’s basketball star. He left after the 1948-49 season to join the New York Knicks, but Leonard Alterman, Bill Weimar, Dick Yates, Dale Toft and Joe Hughes remained to fill DU’s basketball roster. Howell played for Ketchum and Hoyt Brawner while with the Pioneers.
It didn’t take long for Howell to lock horns with Regis College coach Larry Varnell. Regis was DU’s archrival and, as luck would have it, Howell beat the Rangers on a last-second blind shot with his back to the basket. Varnell was furious because he claimed the shot came after the buzzer. Howell told Varnell years later that he knew the buzzer had sounded, and Varnell was furious again.
After leaving DU in 1952, Howell joined the Central Bankers of the National Industrial Basketball League. He met up with Varnell again, but this time he was Howell’s coach. Howell remained at Central Bank as a loan officer, retiring in 1988.
But in 1954, Howell took on another duty on his basketball odyssey: running the official shot clock for all of the important basketball games. He still is on the clock for Nuggets games at the Pepsi Center.
“I was asked if I could run the clock until they found somebody else,” Howell said. “Nobody ever showed up.”
One of Howell’s best stories involved Pinky Flood, the boss of the crew that worked the scorer’s table. The national AAU tournament was taking place at the Auditorium Arena. Flood was a fixture in Denver basketball circles. He was feisty, but his bark was worse than his bite. He insisted on using a starter’s pistol to signal the end of the half and the game.
Weimar and Howell were working the table with Flood, but when it came time to signal the end of the half, the gun misfired. Howell jumped to his feet to signal the half was over and Flood grabbed the gun. It discharged, blowing off the end of a finger on his right hand.
“Everybody was jumping around and we called for Dr. (Dave) Garland,” Howell said. “Pinky didn’t care about his finger, but he wanted the stone back from his ring.”
The following year, when Denver’s team had become the D-C Truckers, they were playing the Russians. Truckers coach Johnny Dee called a timeout and the Russian coach came to the table, asking how many timeouts were left.
Flood held up his right hand, trying to signal two, but the message didn’t add up. Howell urged Flood to use his other hand, but quickly was reminded by Flood to mind his own business.
Howell’s work at the scorer’s table traces Denver’s basketball from the old Auditorium, to the Auditorium Arena, to the Denver Coliseum, to McNichols Sports Arena and to the Pepsi Center.
“In all those years, I’ve never gotten a championship ring,” Howell said. “I told Kiki (former Nuggets general manager Kiki Vandeweghe) that I thought maybe this year we might have the horses to do it. It didn’t happen.”
As Howell looks back, he realizes many of the coaches, players and administrators he knew are gone. He remembered a poignant telephone conversation with Bankers teammate Frank Kuzara, who was living in Las Vegas.
“Frank said not to come,” Howell said. “He said: ‘I got this cancer. Freddie, I’m not going to make it. Good luck to you, Freddie. We had some great times together.”‘
Kuzara died shortly thereafter.
Howell still is a kid at 78.
“I’m always getting into trouble,” Howell said.
A couple of weeks ago, he was playing the par-3 course at Kennedy Golf Course. As he walked past the ninth tee on the main course, he thought it would be an opportune time to try a new driver.
He broke in the driver, but it also brought the course ranger. He suspended Howell for a month where he has played almost as long as he has been in Denver.
That’s his version, anyway.
Howell, his parents, eight brothers and six sisters lived in their New York apartment.
“We had one bathroom, and it was a project getting ready for school,” Howell said. “My mother made up all of the lunches, and we picked them up as we went out the door.”
Irv Moss can be reached at 303-820-1296 or imoss@denverpost.com.
