ATLANTA -- This really was getting out of control, but it was fun. Along with me, you had Danny Hall (pictured), the multiple award-winning baseball coach at Georgia Tech, and his assistant, Tom Kinkelaar. The three of us kept wiping tears from the corners of our eyes while laughing so often and hard.We were telling Miami University stories in Hall's office about our days in Oxford, Ohio, during the 1970s at Hepburn Hall.
Remember Steve Kramer, somebody asked? For the last three years, he has been recognized by the publication Best Lawyers in America. His peers voted to give him such an honor courtesy of his prolific work in employment and labor law, corporate law and sports law around Knoxville, Tenn. Among other things, he was chairman of a local economic development board for 10 years.
I mean, Steve Kramer? Let's start with this: Noted political satirist P.J. O'Rourke is a Miami alumnus from the 1960s. He also is the former editor of National Lampoon, and he shared many of his experiences at Miami with those who developed the magazine's movie called Animal House.
Consider this: Steve Kramer was John "Bluto" Blutarsky before John Belushi -- and not only because Kramer was a highly charged player back then on Miami football teams that went 32-1-1 with bowl victories over Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
"It's the middle of the night at Hepburn Hall, and Coach [Hall] and I are asleep, with his bed on one side of the room and my bed on the other, and Kramer is drunk, and he just pounds in our door," Kinkelaar said, as we try to keep our sides from splitting between chuckles. "He comes in and he's like this crazed guy, saying, 'AHHHHHHH.'
"Then he looks around as Coach and I are in a daze, and he comes over, picks me out of the bed, lifts me high in the air over his head and starts spinning me around like an airplane, and then he just throws me back into bed."
With tears rolling down our checks, Hall said, "And then [laughter] Kramer just sort of stumbles out of the room."
So this was the part of Hepburn Hall that I didn't tell you about during the previous two Wednesdays. It occasionally was a zany place, and other times, it was even wilder than that as a residence hall that housed about 270 or so folks with all kinds of different majors, quirks and backgrounds.
There was a dominant theme, though.
"We say it all the time with our teams here at Georgia Tech, and that is, you can have a lot of fun, but you have to answer the call the next day," said Hall, in his 17th year at Georgia Tech, where he has taken the Yellow Jackets to 14 straight NCAA Tournaments, including three trips to the College World Series.
Hall laughed, recalling his days on Miami 's baseball team with Kinkelaar. Then the three of us laughed together, after Hall added, "You learn that it doesn't matter what you've done the night before. You better take care of business. You had to do that at Miami , because it's a great school academically, and the bottom line was that you had to produce in the classroom. You were held accountable for your actions.
"Just like when I played at Miami, [former baseball coach] Bud Middaugh used to make us practice at 6:30 in the morning on Saturdays, because he knew what we did on Friday nights. And if practice was over at 8:30, we were back in bed at about 8:35."
Such a work ethic at Miami applied to the baseball team, the football team, the other teams and to those who weren't part of any team. It definitely applied to our Hepburn Hall, which wasn't an athletics dorm, but it nevertheless produced a few during our time inside its three-story, Georgian-styled structure ...
Three national coaches of the year (Ron Zook and Randy Walker in college football and Hall in baseball). A member of the NFL All-Rookie team who was a prolific runner in the league for a decade (Rob Carpenter). A starting second baseman for a dozen years in the major leagues (Bill Doran). A veteran pitcher who helped set the foundation for the Atlanta Braves' record 14 consecutive division titles (Charlie Leibrandt). An offensive coordinator for the Washington Redskins who was among the original playing icons of the Seattle Seahawks (Sherman Smith). An accomplished minor-league manager for three decades with the Los Angeles Dodgers (John Shoemaker). An athletics director at Saginaw Valley State (Mike Watson).
We also like to mention Randy Ayers, the former Ohio State and Philadelphia 76ers head coach. He joined Zook, Walker and Hall as a national coach of the year, but only in college basketball. Although Ayers lived next door at Swing Hall, he was a Hepburn Hall regular. He was the star of the Miami basketball team that upset second-ranked Marquette in the first round of the 1978 NCAA Tournament despite Marquette serving as defending national champions with four returning starters.
Then there are these other Hepburn Hall folks -- you know, like a national sports columnist for FanHouse, along with my roommate, who is a nuclear physicist for the United States Army intelligence division.
I'd give you his name and location, but then he would have to kill you.
As for others from our Hepburn Hall, you have Randy Gunlock, who is so prosperous as a real estate guy based in the Dayton, Ohio, area that Kinkelaar described Gunlock's primary residence as "Southfork Ranch." Gunlock has developed a slew of Wal-Mart stores and retail centers throughout the Midwest .
There also is Dr. Christopher Breuleux, who joined Kramer and Gunlock on those exceptional Miami football teams during our Hepburn Hall years. As the founder and president of Medical Wellness Association, Dr. Breuleux lives in Houston, where he is internationally acclaimed for providing wellness services to more than 300 hospitals and global organizations on four continents.
On and on, it goes. The names and the stories.
We laughed some more in Hall's office.This time, the story involved the annual block party on a large field behind fraternity row, which was on the street across from Hepburn Hall. And fraternities and sororities are huge at Miami since the first ones were founded on its campus.
"Anyway, at these frat parties, the trick was to take your own cup over there, so, of course, we would take our cups," said Hall, laughing, while stretching his arms high and wide. "We'd been over there for a couple of hours filling up our large cups and drinking, of course. So now we're coming back across the street, and we're walking down the hall at Hepburn. Here comes Mel Edwards and Petey Rome [a couple of football players], and Kink [Kinkelaar] sees them. He throws one of the empty cups down the concourse of Hepburn and yells, 'FUMBLE!.'
"Kink goes diving after it, and these two football players are standing there with a shocked expression and going like, 'Whoa!' "
But, seriously, folks. Miami also is noted as the Cradle of Coaches, which I'll tell you more about this weekend. The list of Hall of Fame coaches from this southwestern Ohio school range from Paul Brown and Woody Hayes to Weeb Ewbank and Bo Schembechler. Not only that, legendary Dodgers manager Walter Alston also was a Miami graduate, and he lived up the road from Oxford in Darrtown.
I once visited Alston at his home.
What about Hall or Kinkelaar?
Hall laughed. Another story was on the way, along with a few more happy tears from the trio. Said Hall, nodding while responding to my Darrtown question, "Well, I do remember that we drank in the bar over there."
After more laughter, Hall said, "Somebody told us, 'You know, Smokey Alston lives around here,' but I don't think we ever got a chance to meet him."
That's because Alston didn't live in Hepburn Hall.
Terence Moore, Class of '78, was part of Hepburn Hall, a dormitory at Miami (Ohio) University that produced a slew of prominent sports figures. He will conclude his four-part series on Saturday when 10th-ranked University of Cincinnati comes to Oxford, Ohio, for the latest game in the oldest football rivalry west of the Alleghenies.
