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Capital Kings
The 25 Greatest High School Players from Washington, D.C., and their Stories
By Josh Barr, Bob Geoghan AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2015 Josh Barr
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4772-7332-6
CHAPTER 1
Lew Luce
Yes, it is true, Lew Luce says. He used to dribble a basketball nearly everywhere he went as a teenager.
And yes, it is true, the three-sport standout at Wilson High during the mid-1950s did have the unusual pregame routine of napping in the locker room.
But wearing pajamas under his clothes to the locker room before games to be more comfortable for his naps? That, Luce says, is legend.
"I'm a different type of person," Luce said with a laugh.
Of course, nothing was too far-fetched for Luce, whether it was success on the football field, basketball court or baseball diamond, or hosting the party of the weekend at his family's home in the Chevy Chase neighborhood of Northwest Washington.
Who else would start his college career with a two-day or two-week (depending on whose version of the story one is to believe) stay at one school before – unbeknownst to his parents – transferring to another school?
Who else would captain the Penn State University freshman football team and, once ready for the spotlight of the varsity, quit school to get married and start a family?
Who else, after three years of trying to find his way academically, could get a tryout with the Washington Redskins and then make the team?
Who else, after taking such a long route to become a professional athlete, would leave halfway through his rookie season, fed up with teammates teasing him while he was injured, according to newspaper reports at the time?
"The Redskins had a hard-line coach named Abe Gibron and he says, 'Luce, every time I talk to you I get convinced your first name is not Lew," said Martie Zad, the former sports editor of The Washington Post who was a reporter covering high school sports when Luce was at Wilson. "Because you have a screw loose!"
This was, after all, a guy who was offered a scholarship to play sports at St. John's College High School. But first he had to interview with school officials.
"I lived pretty close to St. John's, so I went over there," Luce said. "Back in the old days, I remember, the priest brother and [basketball coach] Joe [Gallagher] were there. And they asked, 'What does your father think about Catholicism?' Joe said it a couple times. And I told him, 'I don't know, but my father doesn't like Catholics very much.'"
Naturally, a few years after he graduated from a high school other than St. John's, Luce married a Catholic, Mary Lou (not Lew) Gardiner, and they raised their three children as Catholics.
Despite his rather interesting interview, St. John's still would have taken Luce. Gallagher, to this day, calls Luce "the second-best all-around athlete ever from the area," after Jack George.
But in the mid-1950s, one's neighborhood was a galvanizing force. And one of Luce's buddies told him, "Yeah, you go to St. John's, but just don't come back in this neighborhood. You go to Wilson or get out of the neighborhood."
Luce listened. He would be a three-sport star for the Tigers.
As a junior during the 1954-55 school year, after missing five weeks because of a shoulder injury, Luce threw a thirty-yard touchdown pass to John Webster that lifted Wilson a 7-6 victory over Theodore Roosevelt to clinch the Interhigh's West Division title.
That winter, he began his scoring binge on the basketball court. The six-foot, one-inch guard had thirty-two points in a victory over St. Anthony's and twenty-seven in a victory over Landon (one of its players was Donald Dell, who went on to be a highly successful tennis player and sports agent). For the second season in a row, Luce was second among Interhigh scoring leaders, averaging twenty-one points per game. He was named second-team All-Met by The Post.
As a senior, Luce continued to shine in football. He caught a sixty-five-yard touchdown pass with seventeen seconds left to beat the Roosevelt again, 14-9. Against Coolidge, Luce rushed for one hundred thirty-five yards and two touchdowns on six carries and intercepted two passes in a 27-7 victory. He threw two touchdown passes in a 19-13 loss to Cardozo in a game that decided the Interhigh division title.
Luce was named third-team All-Met by The Post, but later won the Joseph T. Sanford Memorial Award, given by the Touchdown Club of Washington to the area's best high school football player.
In basketball, Luce was even more dangerous during the 1955-56 season, scoring forty-seven points in a loss to St. John's and earning first-team All-Met honors.
Luce was a standout in baseball and wanted to run track, too. "But the rules wouldn't let you do two sports at the same time," he told The Post's Alan Goldenbach a few years ago when Goldenbach was writing a story about Sherwood High two-sport standout Deontay Twyman.
At the same time, Luce was known around town for his easy-going attitude and an ability to host seemingly world-class parties. While Washington remained a segregated city, Luce often could be found in Anacostia playing against black opponents. He did not care much about race, willing to go anywhere and do anything. Willie Jones, the high-scoring Dunbar star, remembered borrowing Luce's car to take his date to the prom.
Jones "would come up to my neighborhood to a party and it was fine," Luce said. "And I went down to a party in his neighborhood and it was super. I used to love going down there in summertime."
Yes, Luce was a bit of a free spirit.
"He used to leave the keys in his car in front of his house," said Tom McCloskey, who went to Gonzaga and joined Luce on the 1955-56 All-Met basketball team. "A couple of guys knew this and would take the car home and bring it back in the morning."
But as much as he succeeded on the playing fields, Luce struggled in the classroom. While many in the Wilson senior class of 1956 headed to college, Luce needed a year at Bullis Prep in Silver Spring, Maryland.
"They said if I came to Bullis, I didn't have to pay, that they wanted the publicity," Luce said. "They wanted to use me. I had to play all three sports, which I was going to do anyway, plus I had to board there. They really improved my College Board scores. They used that later to get kids to go there. We had the Number One prep school basketball team in the United States."
After Bullis, Luce accepted a football scholarship to play for the University of Miami, beginning in the fall of 1957.
"I got really p----- off at this guy Andy Gustafson," Luce said.
Gustafson, unfortunately, was the Hurricanes' head coach.
"So I left and came back, and the funny thing was I was afraid to talk to my father," Luce said. "My old football coach [at Wilson] Pete Labukas called [Coach] Rip Engel at Penn State and said I had changed my mind."
A few days later, after Engel had taken Luce at Penn State and the player had arrived in State College, Pennsylvania, Luce phoned his father.
"How are you getting along down at Miami?" inquired Llewellyn Luce, a former football player at Montana State University. He was also a high-powered tax attorney and once defended Al Capone.
Chuckling at the other end of the line, Lew had a quick response: "I'm at Penn State!"
As with many of his teenage and early-twenties endeavors, Luce's tenure in State College was short-lived. Though he had success playing for the freshman team during the 1957 season, Luce still did not have much interest in academics. He left after that season to get married and return to Washington, where he enrolled at D.C. Teachers College, playing football and basketball for two years.
Joe Paterno, Luce said, "was the off ensive coordinator [at Penn State] when I came back," Luce said. "I was screwed up at the time."
It was a matter of debate at which sport Luce was best.
At one point, he was going to pursue a career as a center fielder with baseball's Pittsburgh Pirates. He went to play for the Pirates' minor-league team in Kingsport, Tennessee, in the rookie-level Appalachian League. He stayed there three weeks before returning to Washington to reconsider his options, thinking the Pirates would send him to another minor-league team in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
"But a guy called and said they were going to send me to South Dakota," Luce said. "My wife said, 'You go ahead, I'm going to stay here with my mother.'"
That was the end of Luce's pro baseball career. And it looked like the end of his professional athletic career.
Lew and Mary Lou had two children and subsequently moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he enrolled at Broward Community College. Then he got the tryout with the Redskins in the fall of 1961, where he proved his worth as a hungry player eager for any chance.
"The thing is, basketball was probably my favorite sport," Luce said.
But by late October, having played sparingly, Luce left the team and returned to Florida. He played in two games, had three carries for a total of one yard and returned four kickoff s for seventy-seven yards.
"I had a hamstring problem, and I kept going to the doctor and they kept making me go out on the practice team," Luce said. "Back in those days, it was different. ... It was a big thrill for me to make the team, but it was a bad time for me."
Luce returned to his family in Florida and soon found himself back on the football sideline, but in a much different capacity.
"Then I got the biggest break I ever had, which really got me squared away as far as my education," Luce said. "I was at a banquet with [Florida State University] Coach Bill Peterson. We got to talking and I told him I had not graduated yet. And he said, 'Why don't you come to Tallahassee and help me in spring practice and go back to school?'
"The guy did not know me from the man in the moon, but I took him up on it. Then another guy left the coaching staff. I stayed in school, became a [graduate assistant] and the head freshman coach. I got my master's degree there in education and administration."
One of the Seminoles' assistant coaches was none other than Bobby Bowden.
Luce left Florida State to coach at Brandon [Florida] High for two years, compiling a 16-4 record. In 1966, he returned to Washington to teach and coach football at Wilson, replacing Labukas. From there, he moved to Bullis to coach football, basketball and baseball and be the school's athletic director. Then Luce moved to Montgomery County Public Schools, where he taught at various schools and got into officiating high school and college basketball, working his way up to do games in the Atlantic 10 and Big East conferences.
"I loved that," Luce said. "I loved that more than a lot of things."
Lew and Mary Lou subsequently retired to Apollo Beach, Florida. Lew still had the coaching itch and worked as an assistant high school coach for ten years before giving that up five years ago. Not surprisingly, Luce never told his fellow coaches about his wild career; he simply wanted to be part of the team again.
"Everything has always worked out for me," Luce said.
CHAPTER 2
Ed Hummer
At the time, it seemed like the right choice. Ed Hummer was twenty-two years old; he had graduated from Princeton University a few months earlier and subsequently was drafted by the NBA's Boston Celtics.
That September night, in the middle of training camp, he had gone to see Red Auerbach, the Celtics' general manager, seeking assurances he would make the team. Hummer had been admitted to Georgetown University's law school and, if he was not going to make the Celtics' roster that season, he wanted to go to graduate school.
Auerbach, as was his nature, declined to make any guarantees.
So Hummer left Auerbach's stately room in the Lenox Hotel, left Boston and enrolled at Georgetown.
"It was the worst decision I ever made in my life," said Hummer, who starred at Washington-Lee High in Arlington in the early 1960s, then played on the Bill Bradley-led Princeton team that reached the Final Four in 1965 before losing to Michigan.
After all, the odds were in Hummer's favor to make the team.
For starters, Auerbach had a soft spot for players from his adopted hometown. Auerbach had seen Hummer play against St. John's one summer during high school down at the Jelleff Summer League and Hummer had "the best game of my life. We lost something like 37-35 and I wasn't that much of a scorer, but out of the thirty-five, I had thirty-one. Red came up and even spoke to my father after the game."
Auerbach also was fond of players from strong college programs and players who knew their role and did not demand the spotlight. Furthermore, the NBA had just expanded from ten to twelve teams, adding the San Diego Rockets and Seattle SuperSonics. There were roster spots to be had.
Auerbach told Hummer that he was likely to make the squad.
But without a sure thing, Hummer did not want to take any chances.
"So I went back to law school," he said. "Think about it. What I regret is if I had stuck it out, I think I would have made the team. I'm quite sure I never would have played. I think I would have been on the end of the bench. That would have been a thrill -- don't get me wrong.
"Looking at the whole picture – the money, the career thing foregone and delaying law school – at the time I made the stupid decision. After practicing law for ten years, I went back to business school to get my MBA. Looking back, what was I thinking?"
As if Hummer needed further reinforcement that hindsight has twenty-twenty vision, the 1967-68 Celtics won the NBA title. Hummer tried out again the next off season, but knew he stood little chance as Auerbach was unlikely to make changes near the bottom of the roster. Making matters worse, during tryouts, Hummer tore his Achilles tendon.
Had he played that 1967-68 season, he thinks, he would have had a spot on the 1968-69 team, which also won the NBA title, in Bill Russell's final season as a player.
"That was his nature -- he was always too cautious," former Washington-Lee teammate Lynn Moore said. "Law school was the surer thing."
Instead of wearing around a pair of NBA championship rings, Hummer could look forward to his third year of law school. Hummer does have another pair of championships -- Virginia state titles – that today he can look back on. Back in the early 1960s in Arlington, Ed Hummer was a dominant player, completing his scholastic career by leading the Washington-Lee Generals to thirty-nine consecutive victories.
Born April 10, 1945, in New York City, Ed Hummer was the middle of three children born to Edward Hummer and Lucy Fulwiler. Edward was an FBI special agent and the Hummers moved to Northern Virginia when Ed was one year old, eventually settling in North Arlington. Growing up, Ed enjoyed playing basketball over at the Lyon Village playground; although not a standout, he soon realized he had potential on the court.
"If you needed an indication in life that somebody thinks you might be a decent player, for me it came in seventh grade," Hummer said. "They got some guys together – I wasn't one of them – and they did a draft. All the captains had one hundred points. I was the top draft choice: Someone spent sixty-three points on me. I thought it was ridiculous at the time, but I was tall. There weren't many tall guys at the time."
Hummer would get taller still. He made the Stratford Junior High team but played little as an eighth-grader. Finally, as a ninth-grader – having grown six inches from when he entered Stratford and now standing six-four – Hummer played a significant role as Stratford won the Fairfax County junior high championship.
Although he grew considerably, Hummer's game did not change. Despite being the tallest on the court, he never was a true post player, always more comfortable putting the ball on the floor instead of having his back to the basket. And while many of his peers bounced from one sport to the next, Hummer focused squarely on basketball, although many mistook his serious demeanor for a lack of desire to play.
"Unlike today, you played things seasonally more then," he said. "I was never good at anything but basketball. My mother did one of the nicest things anyone ever did for me. In junior high, I needed permission to go out for football and my mother refused. So I became a basketball player. I would have just gotten my bones crushed in football."
By the time he reached Washington-Lee in the tenth grade, having put in plenty of time practicing, Ed Hummer had blossomed into quite a player on the basketball court. The Generals were a good team that 196061 season, finishing 18-5, with three of the losses coming to Wakefield, another Arlington school, which won the Virginia Group A championship. That also was the season that Mount Vernon center Marty Lentz scored seventy-four points in one game.
By his junior season, Hummer was a leader. He grew an inch per year in high school and now stood six-six. He scored a game-high fifteen points in a 53-32 victory over Marion in the quarterfinals of the state tournament. In the semifinals, he had 10 points and 16 rebounds in a 61-49 comeback victory over Andrew Lewis. Finally, Hummer scored a game-high seventeen points and Washington-Lee capped its 23-1 season with a 49-37 victory over Maury in the state final. Hummer was the only junior named to The Washington Post's All-Met, joining John Jones and John Austin of DeMatha, Dave Bing of Spingarn and Sonny Jackson of Blair. (Jackson would ultimately make his mark in baseball, playing 12 years in the major leagues as a shortstop and outfielder.)
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Capital Kings by Josh Barr, Bob Geoghan. Copyright © 2015 Josh Barr. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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