Bill Rutledge Shares How James Naismith Created Basketball

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Kim Monson
pleased to have on the line with me Colonel Bill Rutledge. He’s retired United States Air Force and 96 years young he is a man Maybe I might say a renaissance man a man who is so interested in so many different issues and people and places. And we are just honored that he will share his wisdom with us. And he said, Kim, as we are getting into March, and March Madness, which is always great fun, college basketball playoffs, he said we should do something doing a show on on Naismith, and who was really the founder of basketball.

That’s James Naismith. So Colonel Rutledge, welcome to the show. Well, good morning, Kim. It’s good to have you.

And why do you think? Why did you think it was important that we have a conversation about James Naismith?

Bill Rutledge
Well, one reason is that several years ago, we were talking about the Heisman Trophy. And we generally concluded that most people didn’t have any idea who Heisman was. And even some of the people who were given the award in New York City, I heard them on the television say, who was John Heisman? And so we did a show on Heisman.

And I thought, well, that was appropriate at the end of the football season. But we’ve never done anything on basketball and most people don’t know anything about the origin of the basketball and how it has evolved to what it is today worldwide. And it was actually invented almost accidentally.

Kim Monson
Well, and how did that happen?

Bill Rutledge
Well, in 1891, James J. Smith had already graduated from McGill College up in Canada. He was a native Canadian and he was older. He was in his late 20s and he had gone to college and gone to theology school and he was trying to decide what to do.

So he found that the YMCA was a great program It had started in England and spread around the world. And he found that they were doing a great job servicing young men as they got away from home and went to work. And he was interested in the physical health of these people. And so he started And he finally found someone who told him, he says, well, you know, there is a school down in Springfield, Massachusetts, and it’s called the International YMCA Management School.

And it sounds like it might be something that would be appropriate to your background and your interest. So he went down, and this was about 1890, and during his first calendar year there, they did many sports outside and he was also a good gymnast. He was a fencer. He was an all-around athlete.

And his boss said, well, Jim, we need to have some sort of a sport in the wintertime for our athletes because it’s too cold outside. So Let’s develop something and try to use a ball in the process. So this was in late part of 1890. And so he kept thinking and thinking, and he was running out of time and his boss was putting the pressure on him and said, look, just put something together.

So he got together with the secretary and dictated 13 rules that he thought would be appropriate for starting a game. But he really wasn’t sure. He knew he wanted to be inside. They had a small gymnasium.

They had a rugby ball, which they used for football. Rugby, of course, was a transition to American football. So the ball was shorter and fatter, and it wouldn’t bounce. So it had to be something that could be thrown through the air.

So Jim looked all around and he came up with the idea of throwing the ball from one end of the court to the other and having teams play against one another. And the teams initially, they even didn’t establish how many would be on a team just to start with. And so he was trying to figure out How can I move this ball and where can I put it? Well, he thought that he would use the ball because that was the one he was told he had to use.

And he would try to put it in a container somewhere up on the side of the wall or up elevated. So he went in to talk to this person who was a janitor. And he said, do you have any kind of containers here, box or baskets or anything that I could take out and nail up onto the wall. And he said, yes, I have two peach baskets.

And so Jim took those, and he took them out, got him a ladder, and put one of them, he nailed it up onto the side of the wall in the gym. And it was just they had a gallery that ran around a little bit over 10 feet high, so people could be up there and watch the sports. So he nailed it just below that. So it was approximately 10 foot high on one end of the gymnasium.

And then he took it, the other basket, and went down there and put it the same elevation. The idea in his mind was that somehow we’re going to propel this ball to go in the basket. And then somebody is going to be up there in the gallery area. And he’ll get the ball out and throw it back down to us to put it back in play.

So this was his first concept on it. And so it turned out that by coincidence that they were nailed up there approximately 10 feet above the floor level. The gym ceiling was not real high, but it was OK for them to throw it. Plus, they weren’t worrying about arching the ball.

They were going to throw it sort of like a pass in football or rugby. So this was just the starting point. And he had to sit down and write rules about how to do it, which he did. And it was no one would associate basketball today with what he had had written out in December of 1891.

Everything’s changed, but it was the start.

Kim Monson
Well it’s pretty remarkable that he just wanted to put this together so that they’d have something in the cold weather to play and I’m sure he would never have ever thought that it would evolve to where we are today. So what then happens? He creates the game, does it start to gain in popularity or what happens?

Bill Rutledge
Well one of the early things they of course experimented with fellow students at their school. Most of them, of course, were older men. Most had college degrees and they had come there because they aspired to work in the YMCA system. The YMCA system at that time was probably more extensive than the college system was in that same period.

because it was expanding all over the world and especially in the US it was expanding as the railroads started to develop because this was long before there were cars people couldn’t move very fast except by trains so consequently YMCA’s were located all around and so the idea was we’ll develop these sports and then our people as they finish at our school will then go out and become managers at the YMCA’s and then they will introduce sporting activities and other social activities to the young men who will be living in the YMCA buildings and James was always very very concerned about health and physical conditioning. And he felt that athletics was the greatest way to create this health, good health through the competition.

And so he worked with them. And then as they develop the game, some of the funny aspects of first of all, is it while they were still in Springfield, they started trying different things on the floor. And so they couldn’t bounce the ball. The original rule was you couldn’t bounce the ball.

And you couldn’t run with the ball, but you could only move it if you pass the ball to another member of your team. Ultimately, the only way you’re going to score is someone is going to have to throw the basketball and put it into the peach basket. So they did that. and what they found shortly was that most of the time there was nobody in the gallery to get the ball.

So they had to start putting a ladder down there and then they’d get the ball. Someone finally came up with the idea, well let’s just cut the bottom out of the basket. So they did. They cut the bottom out of the peach basket and then the ball would fall back through it and it was It was a funny, funny game situation.

It took them from 1891, approximately eight or nine years before they finally evolved from a peach basket to where they use a steel rim mounted up on the wall and then with netting like we do today. But they kept the 10 foot elevation because it was it was just coincidental that that’s how it happened. So that became the basis for the location even today. It’s one of the few common denominators between 1891 and 2025.

And we’ve often speculated that if he hadn’t gotten the basket, what if the janitor had given him a box and he put the box up there? Would they call it Box ball? Box ball? What would they call it?

And it was just a transition. In fact, he had the game. He did not have a name for it initially. So one of his friends, who was a classmate, they were talking one day.

And the friend said, well, what’s the name of the game, Jim? And he said, I don’t know. And so his friend said, Well, we’re putting a ball in the basket. So why don’t we call it basket ball.

And that was how the name came about.

Kim Monson
That is absolutely fascinating. We’re talking about James Naismith, who is the founder of basketball, the creator of basketball. And we’re getting into March Madness, which is so fun. And before we go to break, I did want to mention Hooters restaurants.

They have five locations, Loveland, Aurora, Lone Tree, Westminster and Colorado Springs. and a great place to get together with friends to watch March Madness and more information about how I got to know them. It’s a really important story about freedom and free markets and capitalism. You can find that at KimMonson.com.

We’ll be right back with Colonel Bill Rutledge.

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Kim Monson
Welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. We are talking with Paula Sarles.

She is a Vietnam-era Marine veteran. She’s raising money to help remodel the memorial out here in Golden, Colorado. How can people help you out on that, Paula?

Speaker 10
Well, they can buy a brick or they can participate in the Echoes Challenge for the Echoes of Our War book and make a donation at the site, and it’s usmcmemorialfoundation.org. And if you buy a brick, you get a great certificate for your father for Father’s Day. It’d be a great gift.

Kim Monson
It’s a great gift. I got one for my father. Okay, let’s continue on. Tom Jacobs is on the line, a Marine veteran, Vietnam veteran, and he contributed a chapter in the book, Echoes of Our War.

Tom, continue on. You said that you were going to try to get the machine gun and actually out of the four guys, two of them were killed and one of them was injured and somehow they missed you. Do I have that correct?

Speaker 12
That’s correct.

Kim Monson
Okay, take it from there.

Speaker 12
Well, a fellow named Vincent Matthews, who was wasn’t really part of our platoon, but he was a rocket man assigned to us. He fired laws and kind of like little bazookas. Well, he came running up and through this kill zone and fired three laws into the uh… in placement of the north vietnam the north vietnamese work and he got the machine gun and started running back and it gave us some time to try to move out of the kill zone uh…

to make a long story short it was about a twelve hour ambush according to uh… you know, historical documents that were written. Operation Granite, we finally got down to the bottom of the hill. There were only three people left from my squad.

John Quinn, Sergeant John Estes, and myself. During that operation, there were, according to records, there was 103 Marines wounded, 26 or 27 that were killed, and three more that died later. It was a horrific day for me, I mean, for any 20 year old kid. Anyway, we survived, I became a squad leader because I was as a Lance Corporal, I was the highest ranking guy in my platoon that was left that wasn’t wounded or killed.

And so I became a corporal and became a squad leader. And, you know, from November, December, January, it was just we were back up on the DMZ, patrolling, etc, etc. And then to make things short, in Tet of 68, on February 22, I was at a place called C2. which was just a little bit south of Can Thien and the border of North Vietnam and I went out at like 2.30 in the morning and was checking my men in their fighting holds and a rocket or artillery or something came in and next thing I knew I was up in the air and and down in the ground and I didn’t realize I was hit.

I checked the man that I was checking on and he had been wounded so adrenaline just rushed in and I jumped out of the hole and started running for the command post to get a corpsman to help you know my one of my members of my squad and when I got to the to the bunker I got shot and then fell in the knee and my lieutenant and a corpsman pulled me down into the bunker. After that, for some reason, I wasn’t medevaced. They couldn’t get me medevaced until the 25th of February, the morning of the 25th, and I was hit on the 22nd.

I have no idea of why I wasn’t medevaced quickly because usually they get you out pretty good.

Speaker 4
But

Speaker 12
anyway, they flew me down to Da Nang, triage, because I’d been wounded like two and a half days earlier, my wounds started to become gangreous. And they got me in a CH-34 helicopter and flew me out to the Repose hospital ship where I had my first operation. And then I was there, they saved my leg and other invaluable parts of my body. And then they sent me to Yakuska, Japan.

And I was in the hospital there for about four and a half, five months. and then on August 5th, they sent me back to the States. And the next nine months, I just did physical therapy. I mean, my career was over basically.

And so it was, I look back at it as now as it’s You know, I’m glad I survived. I wish more of my friends would have survived, because I only have two that are still alive now from my platoon. And that’s kind of sad for me. But I’m sure every veteran that’s in combat, true combat, Well, there is always true conduct, but I mean, like, face-to-face, hand-to-hand stuff, goes through the same things I do.

You know, in ending, the Marine Corps, and my tour in Vietnam, and my small tour in Cuba, made me into the man I am today. Made me, I think, a much better human being. and more on, even though I have, you know, some of my problems, I’ve always said that I’m never going to let anyone say that I’m one of those, you know, nerdy, well, drunken, drug addicted veterans. Uh, so I always hold true to the, to the Marine Corps code.

And, um, it’s, I’ve had a wonderful life since I, you know, I went back to college, got my degree, at the University of New Mexico, started some businesses, which are still running. And my sons have taken over the businesses. And I’m really happy now. I mean, terrible times for everybody.

But it certainly made an impression on me of human nature and and how to act and react in stressful conditions and just be a good human being. You know, that’s, that’s pretty much what I strive for since I got out of the Corps. Uh, and so that, you know, that was my time in Corps. I mean, there was a lot of, you know, firefights and stuff like that, but those were the two main things was that huge ambush, uh, uh, in October of 1967, and then being wounded, and literally, I was out of the Corps.

I mean, all I did, I was in hospitals and rehab stuff. And then I, you know, I’m 100% disabled. I don’t think I’m 100% disabled, but the government does. and so I have a nice pension from them and I’m still very active with, you know, Cooper’s Troopers and the other fellows, the other nine fellows that wrote chapters in the book.

We all, you know, the colonel did a great job in putting this all together and, you know, all we did was write a chapter apiece, but I think it’s a great book. I think it opens eyes to people who really were not involved in that war. And I try not to, I’m not much of a joiner, but I do try to stay in contact, especially with, you know, our luncheons that we have twice a month and with other Marines and corpsmen. So I’m very fortunate, you know, I’m fortunate because I’m alive and I’m fortunate that the Marine Corps in Vietnam made me into a very good person, I think.

I’d like to think so, at least.

Kim Monson
Well, I really think so, Tom Jacobs, that from the guys that I’ve met at Cooper’s Troopers that you are accomplishing that. Very quickly, you have a business that I know people would love to check that out. What is your business?

Speaker 12
Well, after I graduated from college, I went into business. I owned restaurants. And right now, at the young age of 74, I actually don’t work too much in the restaurants. But my sons do.

And the two restaurants here in Denver are called Tocabe, T-O-C-A-B-E, an American Indian eatery. I had married an Osage woman, and we were married for 40, I think about 43 years. We have four beautiful children and all went to college, graduated, and two of my boys now run the business. And our northern store, which is on 44th and Lowell, has been open for almost 13 years and then the Southern Store over on Arapahoe Road has been open about five years, I think.

And we specialize in American Indian food. Everything we make is basically Southern Plains dishes. We have our own, we’ve purchased, we have our own buffalo herd now. And we’ve started a new packaging business because of Corona where We package products and mail them out to people to buy them.

I don’t do too much anymore, but the boys do a wonderful job and it’s a very successful business. In 2018, we were awarded the American Indian Business of the Year, which was quite a feather. Okay, well

Kim Monson
Corona did a lot, didn’t it? Tom Jacobs, we are out of time, but thank you so much. Those restaurants are Takabe, right? Am I saying that correctly?

Speaker 12
Correct, yes.

Kim Monson
Okay, Tom Jacobs.

Speaker 12
Go

Kim Monson
ahead.

Speaker 12
No, I just said just type in Takabe on your computer and it’ll show you menus and where they are and a little bit of history of the stores.

Kim Monson
Okay, very good. Tom Jacobs, thank you so much for joining us today.

Speaker 12
Thank you very much.

Kim Monson
And we’ll be right back with Paula Sarles and C.R. Cusack.

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I love

Kim Monson
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. And I wanted to mention the Center for American Values, which is located in Pueblo, Colorado, a great place to make sure that you support.

They do several different things. One is really terrific on values presentations on a regular basis. They’ve got a great educational program K through 12, focusing on the values of honor, integrity and patriotism. American Value Center.org Colonel Bill Rutledge, a retired United States Air Force, regarding James Naismith.

And we just got to the point, he was living in Denver, he was managing the YMCA, and he’s gone through medical school, he’s gotten his degree there, and you said it was Amos Alonzo Stagg who recommended that he be contacted by the University of Kansas. Wasn’t there a Stagg field in Chicago?

Bill Rutledge
Yes, when Stagg first got there, they had no football field, but he built a field. And then later it became a stadium. And the University of Chicago, under Stagg’s coaching, became one of the powers in the Big Ten. On occasion, he won the Big Ten championship several years.

was a national champion at least once, and the first person who ever received the Heisman Trophy was a running back from the University of Chicago in 1934. His name was Jay Berwanger. And he was so good that he was offered a job to play for the Chicago Bears. But he turned it down because he said, you don’t pay enough.

He became an attorney and an investor and did much better financially and was not injured. There are a lot of parallels. And one of the small, really small ones, when I was a lieutenant in the Air Force, We had a track meet in Stagg Field. Now it was no longer a football team, but the field was there.

So we went up and they had a trophy case. It went in and I went in to look at it and it reminded me that one of the habits in the early days of football was that the winning team would get the football and then they would paint on the football the year and the score of the game. And so this big case had a lot of footballs and it was interesting.

And while we were there, somebody asked me, he said, well, would you be interested in knowing the origin of the atomic bomb? And I said, well, this is 1954. And I said, yeah, but what’s that got to do with Stagg Field and football? He said, well, they cracked the first atom under the stands and at this stadium.

He said, would you like to go down and see where it was done? I said, yes, sure. So I went down and it turned out it was they were using it for handball and racquetball and a few other sports. But that’s where they had the first time when they cracked the atom.

So there’s there’s so many things that come up that are parallel and especially between people who are in the athletic field. So Amos Alonzo Stagg and Jay Burton Naismith were very, very close friends their whole lives. And so anyhow, Stagg is what who got Naismith to Kansas. But now he comes to Kansas.

Now he’s a wife and children. And he got there. And remember, His background is YMCA, but he invented the game of basketball and it had evolved and it was now being taught all around the country by other graduates of the college program back in Springfield. So he was hired not for basketball.

He was hired to do several things, one of which, though, was to have that student Bible period at lunchtime. So some about some time after he’d been there a year or two and he’d started intramural basketball. Somebody asked him said, Well, did you come here to become a basketball coach? He said, No, I came here because I could pray.

Kim Monson
Wow, boy, that is fascinating. So different from college campuses today. Colonel Rutledge.

Bill Rutledge
Yes, very, very different. It’s different even at Christian colleges. They have their independence, but unfortunately there’s a lot of the morality that is not still a part of either the curriculum or the opportunity for people to share values and share their personal experiences.

Kim Monson
So he’s at the University of Kansas, and these are some very famous people. I think you also said he was friends with Stagg and then also Fogg Allen, right? Did I catch that?

Bill Rutledge
Yes. Fogg Allen was really an interesting one. What happened was that he started the first year they did the intramurals, and then they found that there was enough interest in the basketball game that they decided to sort of consolidate and build a team, put together a team. By this time they were using five players and had modified the game enough and they were getting where it was, it had made a huge transition.

So there were, they got a round ball so the ball could be balanced and now This can make it a much more interesting game, a faster game. So he formed a team. But the opposition was from cities in their region. And they were playing other YMCA teams, not college teams, YMCA teams.

So they did this for a couple of years. then one of the two of the smallest colleges in the area started evolving. And then in the very early 1900s, it was interesting that Fogg Allen came, he had played, he had learned the game at a YMCA. So he came to the University of Kansas as a freshman, and he was clearly far superior as an athlete than anybody else.

and so he played and of course Naismith was coaching him and Allen decided he wanted to help one of these small colleges develop their program because they had mentioned that they were looking for someone to become their coach and he’d gone over and done it part-time while he was still playing in his first year there at Kansas and he was very good. So he came back and Naismith made the wrong statement. He talked to Fogg and he said, you’re a great basketball player, but you can’t be a basketball player and also be the coach.

So Allen quit Kansas. And he went over to the other school and became the full-time coach. Now he’s probably 19, maybe 20. And he had a lot of success at this small college.

And so he was actually gone for a number of years, developing his ability as a coach. And then Naismith stayed on as the coach until about 1909. And by this time, he was diversified in so many other areas that he had become, been appointed as the, not the intramural, the director, physical education dean of that school. It wasn’t that big, but he was the department head.

So his principal concentration was in the academics, teaching physical education, teaching more diverse sports, also teaching health and other related subjects. So he was more an academician. And one of the other things which was odd, although he was still technically the basketball coach, he was more concerned about competition and did the young men learn from the sport. So it was almost like one of those famous writers, I guess it was Grantland Rice, one of them, years to come, which made a comment.

It wasn’t whether you won or lost the game, it was how you played the game. And this was his philosophy. So winning wasn’t that key to him. And the irony is, that in a hundred and twenty four, twenty five years that if you’re the coach of Kansas, you are one of the top coaches in America and you have a huge winning background.

Speaker 1
It is

Bill Rutledge
Smith

Speaker 1
is

Bill Rutledge
the only head coach of the University of Kansas who never had a winning record when he quit coaching only coach because That wasn’t a part of his philosophy. That is fascinating. And when he left, he hired someone else for a few years. And then meanwhile, Fogg Allen was getting better and better and bigger and bigger.

And so then Allen comes back to Kansas. And for the next 40 years, he was running up tremendous records in his staff. And he was a friend of Naismith, but he was also somewhat of a competitor, because their philosophies were entirely different. Allen’s concept was, if you play the game, it’s to win.

And that was a change in concept. And fortunately for the University of Kansas, that became the theme. And it was a key to their huge success which followed on and how ultimately the main big stadium there is named for Allen and not for Naismith. But if you go to the ballgames and you look around the court, it’s painted all around the perimeter.

Naismith floor or Naismith whatever. Yeah.

Kim Monson
Well, and yeah, so the it’s called Allen Fieldhouse, but they the nickname is the fog. That’s PHOG. And interestingly enough, it’s on 1651 Naismith Drive in Lawrence, Kansas. So these men are so connected.

And I’ve been there for KU basketball game and it is it’s something to behold Colonel Rutledge and the college kids make sure that if they have a ticket that they’re in the field house before the game really starts because the the technology, the getting everybody ramped up for the game and the history and the visuals that they have. It’s fascinating. And so it’s something to behold if you can do it for sure.

Colonel Rutledge, excuse me.

Bill Rutledge
Well, it’s ironic that actually college basketball really owes its origin to University of Kansas. because it was there and it evolved from that and then it became one of the great basketball centers of America. And one of the interesting aspects is that their tie with the University of North Carolina and a little bit also to Kentucky because Rupp played for Kansas in the 1920s before he went to Kentucky. And then he was the most dominant coach at the University of Kentucky for over 40 years.

So competition between Kentucky and Kansas and North Carolina was almost like a triumvirate of people and only torn up for a short time when UCLA was dominant for about 10 years. in the 70s and 80s. But other than that, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Kansas, those are the three biggest success programs in basketball. And one of the interesting things about connection and connecting it with the audience that listens to KLZ is that there is a connection directly from the University of Kansas and the Air Force Academy.

One of the players there was Dean Smith. Dean Smith played at Kansas. He took ROTC in the 50s. And he was appointed as the assistant basketball coach at the Air Force Academy in the mid 50s.

And I remember meeting him in the locker rooms. And his boss was Colonel Spear. And Colonel Spear was a very good coach. He had been a pilot during the war.

I don’t know all of his background in basketball, but he was always successful. In the three years that I was there, which was 57, 8, and 9, he was the head coach. But Dean was his assistant coach. Dean left there and went to the University of North Carolina

Speaker 1
as an

Bill Rutledge
assistant coach. and then he became a head coach there so then he again with his origin in Kansas transposed over to North Carolina and North Carolina became a national championship champion team for years and years. Unfortunately, Smith developed early Alzheimer’s and died in his, as I recall, his 70s. Wow.

Colonel

Kim Monson
Rutledge

Bill Rutledge
high. Yeah,

Kim Monson
this is fascinating. We need to go to break. We’ll be right back with our final segment with Colonel Bill Rutledge.

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From the mountains to the prairies

Kim Monson
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. We’re talking about a remarkable man, and that is James Naismith.

He is the creator of basketball. We’ve talked about his connection to Denver, University of Kansas. But this is our America’s Veteran Stories show. And he was in the military.

So let’s talk a little bit about that. Colonel Bill Rutledge.

Bill Rutledge
Yes. Naismith always had an interest in the military. Actually, when he was a college student in Kansas, he had actually joined one of the reserve units in the Toronto area. There was no war going on, but he liked the association and he was a very disciplined person.

As things progressed internationally, he basically had stopped his coaching by 1910, but things got really hot in 1914 when the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated and it was the start of World War I. He, before that, immediately before it was ironic because He had also been interested in just being a member of the Guard. So he joined the Kansas National Guard in 1916. And

Kim Monson
he was not a young man, though, at that time.

Bill Rutledge
Oh, no, no, no. This time he was in his mid 40s. And but he joined it not to be in a combat capacity, but rather to be the chaplain, because he had a degree in theology and he had done all sorts of things over the time where he would go out and actually be a contract preacher in some of the rural areas in Kansas, sort of to keep his hand in.

So anyhow, he joined the Guard. And in 1916, Pancho Villa who aspired to become the president of Mexico. There was a military incursion down there where he and his associates came up in the southern part of New Mexico to Columbus, New Mexico and killed a number of Americans. Well, at the time, then the president decided that that wasn’t going to do, that we’re going to have to send military force down there.

So he appointed General Pershing, who was a one-star at the time. And Pershing had previously been stationed at Francis C. Warren Air Force Base, which was then called an Air Force Base. Then it was called Fort D.A.

Russell. And he was a 10th Cavalry Commander, and the cavalry was all black cavalry. And so they call him Black Jack Pershing. And that’s how that name evolved.

Well, anyhow, Pershing had had a very favorable military background in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. So he was picked and he went down there with a number of people. But he also needed backup. So Kansas National Guard provided some of that backup.

And what they did, they went, they did not cross the border. They stayed down to protect the southern border. It’s almost like what’s going on now. So they were in southern Mexico, New Mexico.

And he was down there as the chaplain for the Kansas Guard. So this gave him some experience But remember now, he’s still a Canadian by birth and by citizenship. So, but he, when the incursion situation was resolved, or it just sort of faded away in 1916, now 1917 comes along. And it looks like we might get involved in the war in Europe.

So Naismith decided he wanted to be a part of this. But to do that, first he tried to enlist. And they said, well, you can’t do it. The rules have since changed.

But at the time, he was told he had to be an American citizen. So he did. He went through the citizenship project so that in 1917, he became an American citizen. And then when the war started, he wanted to go over early.

So he did. He went in 1917 before we even had the first division in combat, but he went early and he went in the role as a noncombatant military chaplain in the US Army. So he was over there for 19 months. He was there for mid 1917, all of 1918 into early 1919, even so that he was where he could go over into the edge of Germany to get some ideas of that society and how the war intervened and so forth.

And then he was in Paris for a number of times, but he was never seriously threatened in combat. And so in 1919, he returned to the University of Kansas. And by that time, his position, of course, was chairman of the Department of Health and Physical Education. Okay.

Kim Monson
So hey, Colonel Rutledge, we are out of time on this remarkable story. And you’ve buttoned it up really, really well regarding Dr. James Naismith. Colonel Rutledge, as always, I so appreciate you.

Bill Rutledge
Hey, listen, I appreciate the opportunity to share some of the stories.

Kim Monson
Okay. And indeed, my friends, we do stand on the shoulders of giants. So God bless you. And God bless America.

Announcer
Thank you for listening to America’s veteran stories with Kim Monson. Be sure to tune in again next Sunday, three to 4pm here on KLZ 560 and KLZ 100.7.

Speaker 5
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