They've Already Named a Room After 85-Year-Old Paul Morrison at Drake, But He Continues Being aLiving Legend Every Day
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Ten hours after Drake lost a basketball game to Iowa earlier this week, Paul Morrison was on an early-morning airplane flight out of Des Moines.

Paul Morrison

His final destination was Hawaii's Big Island, where the Bulldogs play three games--the first of which is at 11:30 tonight against Hawaii-Hilo.

"I really wanted to make this trip," Morrison said. "I was stationed on Oahu when I was in the Army, but had never been to the Big Island."

So consider his journey to Afook-Chinen Civic Auditorium in Hilo to handle Drake's scorebook duties in the tournament another accomplishment for Morrison, the 85-year-old walking history book for Bulldog athletics.

"I don't know how many Drake basketball games I've seen over the years," Morrison said with a laugh. "I'm afraid to start counting. I can tell you, though, that the first Drake coach I remember seeing when I was a student at the school was Bill Williams. When I began working at the university, the coach was Vee Green.

Williams was the Bulldogs' basketball coach from the 1932-43, and Morrison's freshman year at Drake was 1935. Green coached basketball at Drake from 1944-46 and was the school's football coach from 1933-46.

Morrison has been almost as big a part of Drake athletic history as Drake Stadium, the Drake Relays, football coaches Green, Warren Gaer, Bus Mertes, Jack Wallace, Chuck Shelton and Rob Ash, and basketball coaches Maury John, Forddy Anderson, Jack McClelland and Kurt Kanaskie.

They've already named a room--naturally, called the Paul F. Morrison Bulldog Room--after him at the Knapp Center, and he's been everything from news bureau director, athletic business manager, sports information director and historian/consultant (his present job) at the school.

He's seen 582 Bulldog football games, dating back to his student days.

"When I was at the football banquet the other night, I said I will hit No. 600 in the middle of the 2004 season--if the Good Lord is kind to me," Morrison said.

Morrison still walks to work, shows up every day, has a bicycle/walking workout when he gets there and knows just about everything there is to know about Drake.

One of my favorite stories about Morrison deals with the time several years ago when Southern Illinois' basketball team couldn't fly into Des Moines for a game because of a blizzard in Central Iowa. I was supposed to cover the game, and wondered if a snowstorm had ever kept a Drake game from being played in the past.

He was the only guy who would know.

The only problem was that Morrison was in a Des Moines hospital. But I called him anyway, knowing he'd probably be upset if I didn't. He had the answer for me within 30 seconds.

Morrison was a big part of the athletic department scene when John's 1969 team narrowly missed knocking off John Wooden's UCLA team in the Final Four and clobbered Dean Smith's North Carolina squad, 104-84, when they still played third-place games in the tournament.

"That team, plus the total of three straight that Coach John put into the NCAA tournament were certainly my basketball highlights," Morrison said.

In football, Morrison remembers when Drake played such teams as Notre Dame, Miami, Illinois, Colorado and Northwestern.

Highlighting the Paul F. Morrison Bulldog Room in the Knapp Center are various photographs that illustrate Drake's athletic history.

On one wall are the sequence photographs that won John Robinson and Don Ultang a Pulitzer Prize. In the Oct. 20, 1951 game, the Bulldogs' Johnny Bright had his jaw broken by Wilbanks Smith of Oklahoma A&M,

Morrison, who was sitting in the press box at Stillwater, Okla., that day, said he knew immediately that Smith, a white player, was targeting Bright, a black player. However, Morrison insists it was not a racial incident "because Bright had played against Oklahoma A&M in 1949 and nothing happened.

"But, in 1951, he was a marked man because of his national statitstics. They just wanted to get him out of the game because he was such a wonderful player."

Among Morrison's favorite coaches was Shelton, who had a 40-59 record as Drake's football coach from 1977-85.

"Chuck was the coach in a game that, sentimentally, was outstanding," Morrison said. "It was in 1985, when we won at Iowa State, 20-17.

"We knew something was going to happen to Drake football. You could feel it in your blood. But no one knew what it was going to be. A big bloc on campus wanted football dropped or downgraded. Then Shelton's team beat Iowa State in a game that was no fluke."

Losing to Drake was the beginning of the end for Cyclone coach Jim Criner, who was fired after the following season.

And the 1985 season turned out to be the last at Drake for Shelton. The Bulldogs went to a non-scholarship football program under Nick Quartaro, and it's been that way ever since under Rob Ash.

"I got along with all of our coaches, but I really miss Shelton," Morrison said. "What a great guy he was to travel with. I was even planning the meals for our players in those days, and Chuck had a great sense of humor.

"He'd say, 'Paul, let's have bread pudding for dessert.' So we'd have bread pudding for dessert. He was also the guy who began getting his kids together on Friday nights before games for ice cream at 10 o'clock.

"Shelton liked ice cream and I liked ice cream."

I hope Paul Morrison continues to enjoy the ice cream and continues to enjoy Drake athletics for many years to come.

"I used to have an agreement with our athletic director that when I got to be a pain in the butt they could tell me and I'd get out," Morrison said. "But I hope that never happens."

I hope it never happens, either.