Billy Lewis, who became the first African-American basketball player at the University of Colorado, died this month in his home in Sarasota, Fla. He was 72.
His sister, Mary Ellen Russell of Minneapolis, said Lewis died of cardiac arrest June 14.
Lewis was an accomplished player when he came out of Denver’s Manual High School in 1956. His first varsity game at CU was in the 1957-58 season. However, his college career didn’t blossom, though he played for three seasons.
After graduation in 1960, Lewis earned a law degree from Howard University and rose to prominence in the legal field. He was a corporate attorney for IBM.
During an interview with The Denver Post in February 2008, Lewis said his diminished role as a basketball player at CU had caused him a great deal of anguish. For 40 years, he blamed CU coach Sox Walseth for his problems on the basketball floor.
Before Walseth died Jan. 28, 2004, he talked with Lewis.
“It was a difficult telephone call for me to make,” Lewis told The Post in 2008. “But it turned out to be one of the most emotional and pivotal things in my life. He (Walseth) said, ‘Billy, I didn’t do a good job coaching you.’ I told him how much that meant to me. But I said that I probably had not played up to my abilities. Sometimes players believe their abilities are greater than they actually are.”
As a student, Lewis was the first African-American elected by the student body as commissioner of the Associated Students of the University of Colorado. He also led students and testified on the resolutions against discrimination in housing and employment practices.
Lewis was inducted into the CU Sports Hall of Fame in October 2008.
Services were Monday at the Caldwell-Kirk Mortuary in Denver and burial was at the Highland Memorial Gardens in Thornton.
Irv Moss: 303-954-1296 or imoss@denverpost.com
This article has been corrected in the online archive to indicate Billy Lewis’ death in Sarasota, Fla., not Atlanta.
