When Coach Adolph Rupp offered me a scholarship to play basketball there I jumped at it. I’d go up there to visit friends of mine I grew up with who were playing football at UK. Lexington was a four-hour drive from Madisonville. There was no television at the time so we all listened to the games on the radio. The discipline was there.ĭuring my junior and senior years at Madisonville High School, the UK basketball team had won the NCAA Championship twice. Because of this we didn’t have any major behavior-related problems in the schools then. If you got in trouble at school the teacher would call your family. At that time, if you misbehaved at school you had to watch out when you got home because the teachers knew you and they knew your family. When I was growing up, the population of Madisonville was probably 5,000.

Consequently you get to know practically everybody in town. Kentucky is unique because it’s a collection of many small towns. When I was five years old we moved to Madisonville and I’ve lived there ever since. Once we reached the train station he’d put the mail in the wheelbarrel and I’d walk back home with him. He was the postmaster and most every day he would push me in a wheelbarrel on his way to the train station to pick up the mail. Joseph Chandler-the father of Albert Benjamin (“Happy”) Chandler, who went on to become Kentucky’s Governor-lived two doors up from us. I was born in the little town of Corydon, Kentucky, which had a population of about 300. In honor of this basketball great, here is an excerpt: In Wildcat Memories: Inside Stories from Kentucky Basketball Greats by Doug Brunk, Ramsey discussed his upbringing and his experience with playing for Adolph Rupp.

Ramsey was a key contributor on Kentucky’s 1951 national championship team and one of the stars of the 1954 team that went a perfect 25-0 but declined an invitation to the NCAA Tournament. Frank Ramsey, a Kentucky men’s basketball national champion, All-American, and UK Athletics Hall of Famer, died yesterday.

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