The Wizard of Willpower : John Wooden Almost Lost Desire to Live When Wife Died, but Great-Grandchildren Have Helped to Restore His Spark

On his 80th birthday today, in a routine that he follows every Sunday, John Wooden will attend services at First Christian Church in Santa Monica and visit the grave of his wife, Nell, at a cemetery in the Hollywood Hills.

This afternoon, the greatest coach in college basketball history--maybe the greatest coach ever--will join his family and several of his closest friends for dinner at the home of his daughter, Nan Muehlhausen, in Reseda.

All the while, thoughts of his beloved Nell, his wife of 52 years and “the only girl I ever went with,” will seldom leave him.

But they will not overwhelm him, as they threatened to for a long time after her death in 1985.

In recent years, newspaper and magazine articles have portrayed Wooden as a lonely, depressed man, all but consumed by his grief. The man who prepared his teams so thoroughly--Wooden’s players brought their own pillows on trips to get a better night’s sleep--was himself unprepared for the inevitability of his wife’s death.

The portrayals were accurate, Wooden indicated, but his outlook has since brightened.

The reason can be found in the smiling faces of his four great-grandchildren--Cori Nicholson, 5; Symon Bernstein, 4; John Impelman, 4, and Tyler Trapani, 5 months--who remind him of Nell’s commitment to family.

“Without them . . . I don’t want to sound morbid or anything, but I doubt if I’d care to be here,” Wooden said. “They’re really a reason for living.”

And for a long time after Nell’s death of pancreatic cancer and related lung ailments, Wooden searched for just that.

The former UCLA coach, who led the Bruins to 10 national championships in 12 seasons before retiring in 1975, believed that his reason for living was gone.

“Immediately after, I was very concerned,” Nan said. “It was like he had lost his wanting to be here. It was very devastating for him, and it was very difficult for him to go on without her. They were very, very close.”

Because her mother was sick for several years--at one point, Nell lapsed into a coma for three months--Nan expected her father to be prepared for her death.

“But he really wasn’t,” she said. “He really never thought that she would leave him before he left her. It was just very, very sad. He felt like he didn’t want to go on.

“I never totally worried that he would do anything to facilitate that, but . . . many couples who have been together a long time--one of them goes and then the other goes because they are so tight.”

That wouldn’t be so bad, Wooden once thought.

“Nellie and I were married for (almost) 53 years; we were sweethearts for 60,” he said. “When I lost her, it was difficult, and I didn’t want to do much for two or three years. I was not what I perceive to be a recluse, but bordering on that, perhaps. Not from my family (I wasn’t), but I didn’t care to do things. Anything, really. I just sort of existed. . . .

“I don’t think I was preoccupied with death (but) I’ll say this: The loss of Nellie is responsible for the fact that I have no fear of death, where perhaps at one time I did. That’s the only chance I’ll ever have, if my sins are forgiven, to be with her, so why should I fear?

“I’m not trying to hurry it along--I’m not contemplating suicide, or anything of that sort--but I’ve lost any fear, and there was a time when I had fear.”

As his fear of death subsided, Wooden’s will to live increased.

“It’s been a slow process, but a very encouraging process,” his daughter said. “The last few years, he has become a lot more gregarious--as he used to be.”

At the same time, his arthritic knees and hips have slowed him.

The only person to be inducted into the Hall of Fame as both player and coach--he was a four-time All-American at Purdue, national college player of the year in 1932--Wooden no longer walks five miles a day, a regimen he started in 1972, when a blockage was found in an artery leading to his heart.

At his peak, he covered the distance in an hour, but a year ago, it took him the same amount of time to walk about half as far.

He still would like to walk 2 1/2 miles, but more often he makes it only to a nearby doughnut shop, where he orders coffee and a plain or buttermilk doughnut and, he said, “visits with some cronies.” Sometimes, when he can’t make it even that far, he returns to his condominium in Encino and drives to breakfast.

Friends have urged him to have his hips and knees surgically replaced, but Wooden is reluctant. When Nell, who suffered from emphysema, underwent a hip-replacement procedure in 1982, she suffered a heart attack and fell into a coma.

A teetotaler who hasn’t smoked since he gave up cigarettes in 1955, Wooden follows the same routine almost daily, friends say.

After returning home from the doughnut shop, he catches up on his correspondence. Although this college basketball season will be the 16th since Wooden’s retirement, his mail is considerable, his autograph as much in demand today, perhaps, as it was during his 27 seasons at UCLA.

Wooden has stayed in contact with most of his former players, including Bill Walton, a frequent visitor, and speaks often with his closest friends, among them Jack Tobin and his wife, Virginia, and Ed and Henrietta Powell.

Jack Tobin, co-author of Wooden’s autobiography, “They Call Me Coach,” was introduced to Wooden by former Notre Dame football Coach Frank Leahy in 1941, when Tobin was a student at Notre Dame and Wooden was the basketball coach at South Bend (Ind.) Central High and a frequent visitor at Leahy’s practices.

Ed Powell played for Wooden at South Bend Central and later was an assistant under Wooden at Indiana State and UCLA. Henrietta Powell also graduated from South Bend Central, where Wooden was her English teacher.

No longer interested in traveling much, Wooden has cut back on his speaking engagements, but still makes about 50 speeches a year. His retirement package from UCLA doesn’t provide enough for him to live on, he said, but he earns more money now than when he coached.

But then, he never made more than $32,500 a year at UCLA.

Asked if he believed he was compensated fairly, Wooden said: “I stayed. I had many extremely attractive offers to leave. But I stayed. I didn’t ask for more. I never quibbled about things like that. So, it would be for someone else to say if I was fairly compensated. In comparison to others? No. But as long as I didn’t ask for more or put up a scene . . .

“If you’d have asked my dear wife, she would have said no.”

Wooden has tried for several years to drop his summer basketball camps, but promoters keep making offers he can’t refuse. Do them one more year, they tell him annually, and we’ll provide an annuity for the college education of a great-grandchild.

Wooden said that last summer’s camps were his last, but a granddaughter is due to deliver a fifth great-grandchild in December, and Wooden won’t rule out the possibility that he might conduct two more camps next summer.

Wooden has always enjoyed sharing his knowledge.

“I don’t miss games,” he said. “I miss practices. I enjoyed practices always. I considered myself a teacher. I love to teach. It was never a chore.”

Wooden considers himself a sports fan, “but not an avid sports fan,” he said. “I’m not up-tight when anyone wins or loses.”

He attends almost all of UCLA’s home football and basketball games, sitting in the second row directly across the court from the Bruins’ bench at Pauley Pavilion.

Wooden was a great admirer of Walter Alston, a former Dodger manager who, like Wooden, grew up on a farm in the Midwest.

Baseball “always was my favorite sport,” Wooden said.

He is not a fan of the NBA, but “I’m amazed at the ability of the players,” he said.

Not surprisingly, given his belief that basketball is a simple game, his favorite pro player is John Stockton of the Utah Jazz.

“He’s the least spectacular, and maybe that’s the reason I like him better than most,” Wooden said.

He is concerned about the direction of college basketball, he said, for several reasons:

--The game is too physical. “Basketball is a game of beauty, finesse and maneuverability, and the more they let it become physical, the more it takes away from those things,” Wooden said.

--Players and coaches too often favor style over substance. “To me, there’s entirely too much showmanship,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any question about it: There are coaches who play to the cameras, just as there are players who are wrapped up in (showing off).”

--Television wields too much power, mandating where and when games will be played and disrupting the flow by adding timeouts. “I don’t like those things happening to the game,” he said. “But I also know that television income probably has been the savior of women’s athletics and many non-income-producing sports, so there are always pluses and minuses.

“But from a basketball point of view, it’s been detrimental.”

The team Wooden follows closest, of course, is UCLA. Unlike many fans and alumni, however, he said he was never distressed by the direction of the Bruin program, which fell into decline in the 1980s and, of course, has not approached the same level of success it enjoyed under Wooden.

“People say, ‘Well, the program’s back now,’ ” Wooden said. “I say, ‘It’s never been away.’

“I’m kind of amused by comments that the program fell into disarray. I haven’t heard anything about USC’s program being in disarray, and yet USC finished last in the conference, or tied for last, for four or five years.”

Still, Wooden said that had it been up to him, he would have chosen Denny Crum of Louisville as his successor.

Gene Bartow was picked instead, but left after two seasons, citing the pressure of succeeding a legend and setting in motion a revolving door in Westwood. Five more coaches have followed Bartow, including the latest, Jim Harrick.

None, of course, has measured up to John Robert Wooden.

Still, Wooden said firmly: “I’d like to be remembered as a good teacher and a good person, not as someone who won a lot of basketball championships.”

Ultimately, he will be remembered as all three.