THE DEATH OF HANK GATHERS : Loss Casts Shadow Across the Campus as Loyola Mourns

By MARK HEISLER

March 6, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

There’s something wrong here. The day after the death of Hank Gathers comes up dazzling, bathing the Loyola Marymount campus in sunlight. It’s as if they’re going to take the annual picture for the cover of the brochure.

Look again.

The American flag is at half staff.

On a doorway to Gersten Pavilion, someone has taped a note: “Hank, We (Love) U--LMU.”

A student wears a black armband with Hank Gathers’ No. 44 on it.

Most of the students walking on campus are coming back from classes, most of which have been canceled. If everyone’s trying to go through the motions, that’s all they are, motions.

There are 3,500 LMU undergraduates and it seems that every one knew Hank or Bo Kimble or someone who knew them. This little miracle they pulled off, turning a tiny school in Westchester into a nationally ranked basketball power, was their collective pride.

And then part of their inspiration died, before their eyes, at the height of his glory, at 23.

“Like everybody said, he was our leader,” said Terrell Lowery, the guard who passed to Gathers for his last shot, a dunk. “He was our guy. He was it for us. We thought he was invincible. I still think he’s invincible.”

Lowery stood in a parking lot outside Gersten Pavilion, wearing an LMU baseball cap with his number on it and a warmup suit, surrounded by reporters.

Next to him stood Kimble, Gathers’ childhood buddy, high school teammate and best friend, with whom he made the journey from Philadelphia to USC to LMU, surrounded by more reporters.

“We didn’t have that kind of conversation about the future,” says Kimble, a possible NBA first-round draft pick, as was Gathers. “It might come up in a joking way, but we weren’t concerned with that. We weren’t concerned with agents. We weren’t concerned with anything but playing basketball.”

Basketball set them on this road, basketball was going to be the trip.

In December, Gathers fainted during a game and an irregular heartbeat was detected. Cleared by doctors to return, Gathers returned. No other option seems to have been possible for him.

“There was doubt (on Gathers’ part), I’m sure,” Kimble says. “There were doubts that he had. But he was going to be out there on that court, no matter what. There’ll always be a piece of him with me, I know that. I played with him so long, I don’t know how it could be any other way. As long as the ball is in my hand . . .”

Kimble says he slept about 30 minutes Sunday night. He spent most of the night with the Gathers family, who had come for the West Coast Conference tournament that figured to propel Loyola into the NCAA tournament. Gathers’ mother was there, along with an aunt and a brother. Another brother attends Cal State Northridge.

University officials tried to shield the players from the media, but the players wanted to talk.

“There was a time today that I didn’t really feel I could talk about it,” Kimble says. “Right now, I want to let everyone know how wonderful my friend was. If I have to stay here all night, I’ll do that.”

John Veargason, an ex-teammate who graduated last spring, remembered Gathers as a “fun-loving guy” who had a serious side.

“He would really concentrate on certain things,” Veargason says. “You could tell that. Basketball was his lifeblood. Whatever he had, he had to earn. Everybody compares Hank and Bo. Bo, they say, is a shooter and a scorer. Hank was a scorer. He wasn’t a shooter, as you could see from his free throws. He scored because he had the desire and the will.

“You could see it on the floor after he collapsed: ‘I’ve got to get up.’ I remember him on the track in conditioning. He was a horse. The man could run forever. I never knew if it was ability or if he just wouldn’t let you see he was hurting. He’d never show that, especially on the court. He wouldn’t back down from anybody.”

On campus, a guide leads a prospective student and his family on a tour, but it’s not anything like business as usual.

“I would say 90% of the teachers are letting everybody out,” says Jim Newquist, a sophomore. “We’re in mid-term exams and I know of two cases where people said they couldn’t take their exams, and the teacher said, ‘OK, come back and take it Wednesday.’

“Everybody’s improvising what to do, because nobody feels like doing anything.”

Dauoud Ismaili, a staff member in the school of communications, says school is basically out.

“Four of my workers haven’t shown up today,” he says. “They haven’t even called. It’s probably because of this. What a tragedy.”