The night my dad saw Larry Bird play—The History in Green

My dad was born a few years before the Boston Celtics, in 1943, and he grew up playing basketball in the small town of Forestburg, South Dakota.

His parents had traveled with his father’s construction crew in his early years, but settled down near the farm where his mother grew up when he reached school age.

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He was a point guard for the Forestburg Buccaneers, who were coached by Quentin C. Miles, a legend in South Dakota basketball circles. Born in 1921, Q.C. grew up playing the game when there was still a jump ball after every made basket. Miles, who also taught physics and chemistry, coached Forestburg into the state’s B tournament in 1958, where my dad saw limited action as a freshman.

Dad watched basketball on TV whenever he had the chance, and that’s how he became a Celtics fan. They were televised fairly often, and dad wanted to play like Bob Cousy.

Life, of course, intervened. Dad went to Augustana College in Sioux Falls, where he took a degree in mathematics and then a Master’s in the same subject from the University of North Dakota—at the same time that a very young Phil Jackson was tearing up the hardwood there under the direction of Bill Fitch and Jimmy Rodgers.

He spent a year teaching at Minot State before being drafted into the Army. He spent three and a half years in Arlington, Virginia, where he met my mom, before returning to Minot State.

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Things didn’t work out in Minot, and my dad ended up looking for work back home in South Dakota. He would later joke that the typical response at job interviews to his Master’s in math was, “so you’re an accountant…?”

He eventually landed a gig with the state doing budget projections and data analysis for the Department of Social Services, and proceeded to raise a family of six kids in a white ranch style house with black trim near an elementary school on the east side of Pierre.

Mostly he was home every night a little bit after 5:00. There were occasions when he’d have to work after hours, and sometimes we’d get to go to the office and see where he worked on those weekends or evenings.

But, again, mostly his job was a 40-hour a week…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/night-dad-saw-larry-bird-083800402.html

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Publish date : 2026-07-12 08:38:00

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