January 3 2002

     Al Phillips has the videotape. It lasts only a few minutes, and it has been shown many, many times to anyone who will watch.
     Phillips, the girls basketball coach at Bulkeley High School in Hartford, and his wife, Helga, had planned a special summer vacation to mark his 50th birthday and celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.
     Where to go? How about eight days in California? Al could visit his sister, Irene Champaine, and Helga could drop in on an old friend, Judy Peterson, both of whom live in Southern California.
     "Al had no clue whatsoever," Helga said, "that he was about to meet the one person he had always wanted to spend a few hours with."
     The memorable visit was recorded with snapshots and the video clip. Phillips wrote a 2,800-word essay entitled the "Gift of Love" while recovering from a broken leg in the fall. He describes the events of July 27 when he and his wife drove three hours from Southern California, pulled off the freeway and into an apartment complex.
     Here is an excerpt from that essay, which Al Phillips has shared:
     Then, almost as an apparition, an elderly man stepped out from behind a pole and with a very clear voice, as if he was expecting me, said, "Mr. Phillips, I presume?"
     He was wearing a light blue shirt and eyeglasses. His gray hair was neatly combed and along with his words, he had a very warm and almost boyish smile. Using a walking cane, this friendly gentleman gingerly started to walk toward me.
     He had an amazing resemblance to John Wooden ... the "Wizard of Westwood", the coach of 10 NCAA championships, and someone whom I truly admired as a role model for so many years.
     So this is why Helga is videotaping (something she normally doesn't do). This is John Wooden! Why? How? Who cares! We shook hands and I timidly said, "John Wooden?"
     He responded with a smile saying, "You presume correct."
     All I could say was, "This is unbelievable! This is unbelievable!"
     I gave him a hug still wondering what was going on here. I felt as if I was in a dream.
     He chuckled, enjoying his part in this "surprise party" and said, "Your wife spent a lot of time to arrange this. Let's go up to my place."
     And with that, Helga and I followed Coach Wooden up to his apartment and spent the next three hours with a truly warm and wonderful person ... my wish come true!
     Helga and Wooden, who has been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player and a coach, communicated by mail in June through the UCLA men's basketball office. Attempts to reach Wooden at his California home for this story were unsuccessful.
     "I knew at his age (91), he couldn't travel to Connecticut, but he said he would gladly sit down with us if we ever were in California," said Helga, who works as a reference librarian at Newington Public Library.
     "When I wrote to coach Wooden, I told him that besides the Bible, he was the most quoted person in our house. I also told him our daughter, Christina, used his definition of success in her high school valedictory address at her graduation. He wrote back a nice note, saying, `You must love your husband very much to arrange something like this.' It's all about the memories, and he gave us a lifetime of them."
     Al Phillips played at Bulkeley for coaches Lou Bazzano and Joe DiChiara when Wooden's dynasty was in the midst of winning 88 consecutive games and seven national titles in the late 1960s.
     "My career highlight was scoring 34 points against Weaver, and I still have the box score my mother cut out of the paper," said Phillips, a 1969 graduate of Bulkeley, where he teaches biology.
     More from the essay:
     Without knowing him personally, Coach Wooden had a really strong influence on my life and in something I really enjoy, which is teaching and coaching basketball.
     Whether coaching my high school teams or AAU teams, I have always incorporated into my program his "Pyramid of Success" philosophy and emphasis on basketball fundamentals.
     The 2-2-1 press, which was one of his defensive trademarks, and the UCLA high post offense are basketball strategies that I love.
     What attracted me to Coach Wooden was more than his basketball genius. It was his court demeanor. I first saw Coach Wooden on TV back when I was a high school player when UCLA played Houston in the Astrodome. I remember him calmly sitting on the bench with a rolled-up program in his hand as his team was having its very, very long winning streak snapped.
     It's funny to me that my most poignant memory of a game, which had `supergame' status, was the picture of the coach rather than the players.
     My first basketball book was a gift from my wife, "John Wooden's Modern Practical Basketball." His autobiography, "They Call Me Coach," was the only book that I have read twice. His book, "Wooden" (which many coaches who have read it call the "blue book"), is a book with short reflections about life and basketball that I use during the basketball season.
     I pick out a section to read prior to our pregame meeting that, hopefully, inspires and teaches a lesson that might be useful in the game ahead of us. I've read books by former players under Coach Wooden, Bill Walton and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I finished the book "Be Quick! But Don't Hurry!" by Andy Hill, another former but lesser known player, just a few days earlier.
     In retrospect, it seems that anything associated with Coach Wooden caught my attention."
     Al and Helga spent three hours with Wooden.
     "We talked very little about basketball, and that's what made it very special," said Helga (Eisele) Phillips, 49, who graduated from Bulkeley in 1970 and played 6-on-6 basketball at a time before the sport was sanctioned by the CIAC.
     Al and Helga have four children, Sarah, who graduated from Gordon College in May, and Christina, a sophomore at Yale; both of whom played at Bulkeley, where Phillips has coached since 1978. He has coached the varsity since 1985 (147-220 record). Son Mark is a junior at Glastonbury High and John is an eighth-grader at Kennelly School in Hartford.
     "The kids wanted me to videotape, so they could see what happened. But I only filmed the meeting in the garage," Helga said. "I was mesmerized by our visit."
     Back to the essay:
     Most of our conversation revolved around family, friends, faith and his love of poetry, and also some comfortably quiet moments where I just spent time looking at the books, pictures and small collectibles in his apartment. It was like flipping through the pages of an encyclopedia about his life.
     Upon entering his apartment there was an unhung picture of Abraham Lincoln, his favorite president, neatly standing on the floor. Coach Wooden told us that he hasn't changed a thing in the apartment since his wife [Nellie] died 15 years ago. It was neat, cozy, nothing really fancy - just a very simple but hospitable place. His living room was full of framed family pictures. Coach Wooden enjoyed talking about his family very much.
     If the living room was the shrine for his family, the den was like a shrine of his accomplishments and recognition because of basketball. There were pictures, plaques, framed newspaper articles, mementos and stacks of books. ... From a desk in the corner of the room, Coach Wooden pulled out a folder with poems that were special to him. He read a few of them. He really liked the poems written by Swen Nater, who played for him in the early 1970s. He also recited some of his own poetry and said if he writes another book it would be a book of poems.
     Phillips said he was humbled by the care and attention to detail that was required by his wife to pull this off. As he says, he owes her "big time."
     And he was touched by meeting a man who was everything he thought he would be, as witnessed by this part of the essay:
     It was an afternoon spent with a man who is rich because of his love for others and for what he means to others. He is rich in those things that no one can ever take away from you - a faith that keeps him looking ahead, a family life with wonderful memories and strong friendships. What else is there to say but what Coach Wooden said earlier that afternoon, "Love is the most important thing." He really knew how to teach that lesson, and it is a lesson for which Helga and I will be forever grateful. Copyright 2002, Hartford Courant