Cody Nespor: Former WVU basketball coach Bucky Waters remembers unlikely friendship with Franco Harris

Dec. 31—The world of sports can bring people together in the unlikeliest of ways. Take, for example, how former Steelers Hall of Fame running back Franco Harris and former WVU basketball coach R.C. "Bucky " Waters forged a friendship not on the gridiron or the hardwood, but on golf courses and tennis courts.

Waters, who coached the Mountaineers from 1965 to 1969, came to know Harris through playing in celebrity golf and tennis tours after each of their respective athletic careers had concluded. When Harris passed away unexpectedly overnight on Dec. 20, a lot of those memories came rushing back to Waters.

"I was very taken back, " Waters told me during a recent phone interview. "It was a loss and it brought back a cavalcade of times and experiences (with Harris)."

Waters, 87, said he waited a few days before trying to give his condolences to Harris' family.

"I called the number I have for him and Dana, his wife, answered the phone and before I said a word she said, 'oh Bucky, it's so good to hear from you, '" Waters said. "My eyes leaked because that was a lot of years ago and we hadn't been in touch in a long time and I was still on their phone. That meant a lot to me because I know how popular he was and how in demand he was."

Waters first met Harris while playing on a celebrity charity golf tour put together by Hall of Fame baseball catcher Johnny Bench.

"Over a period of 10-12 years, we must've made 15 or 20 events together and he was just an amazing individual, " Waters said of Harris. "With the fans, he was just so cordial. Sometimes those NFL football players can be a little short (with fans) but he had time for everybody. It was just a joy to be around him."

Waters said Bench's tour, which traveled the country raising money for charity, attracted a lot of big names over the year, but no one was more engaged with the fans than Harris.

"He was very accessible, he'd sign everything, " Waters said. "He just was there to do his job to make it an event these people were paying for, he was so gracious. Sometimes we had people like Joe DiMaggio, Bob Cousy, Mickey Mantle, who were big names and drew a crowd but they maybe weren't always as patient. Franco just seemed to have a gift for being accommodating."

Later, Waters and Harris ended up playing on a celebrity tennis tour sponsored by Pringles geared towards raising money for charity and bringing more exposure to women's professional tennis. On that tour were two of the greatest women's tennis players of all time, Martina Navratilova and Chrissie Evert, both multiple-time major winners and former World No. 1s.

"It was unusual why they would pick us, Franco and I, to go with the women pros, " Waters said with a laugh. "They made us look good, we felt like we were players, and then Martina would raise her eyebrows and point to her watch, which meant it was time and the party was over. And now the balls began to go under our armpits and between our legs and showtime was terminated."

Waters explained the tour went to a dozen cities where they would play tennis in big arenas while being wired for sound so everything they said would be broadcast through the stadium for all to hear.

"It was made-to-order for him, we would go into town on Friday and have dinner with all the top executives of supermarkets in the area, " Waters recalled. "Then in the morning, we would play hit and giggle (non-competitive tennis) with the executives and their wives and in the afternoon we would play in a big stadium and we were wired for sound. The best part of my tennis game was my commentary, I'll have to admit."

After coaching at WVU, Waters became the head basketball coach at Duke before venturing into a nearly 40-year-long broadcasting career. He also became the Vice Chancellor for Development at the Duke University Medical Center, where he tried to recruit Harris' son, Dok, to become a Blue Devil.

"He's a brilliant student, and I tried to get him to go to Duke, " Waters said. "Not to play sports, but just to take his presence there. He went to Princeton and then to Carnegie Mellon and got a law degree. He was an exceptionally bright guy and I knew he had a great future."

Waters' Time in West Virginia Sports not only forged an unlikely friendship between Waters and Harris, but it also brought Waters, a New Jersey native and NC State alum, to West Virginia.

"A guy named Red Brown was the athletic director and he hired me out of nowhere, " Waters said. "I wasn't a star player at North Carolina State, I was just on the team. I was (an assistant coach) under Vic Bubas at Duke and we went to three Final Fours in four years and that sort of put me up so I was visible and Brown had the courage to hire me when nobody in West Virginia had ever heard of me.

"I was 29 years old and had never been a head coach. I went up there and inherited their first integrated team and inherited their first losing season in 20 years."

WVU had gone 14-15 in the 1964-65 season prior to Waters' hiring, the Mountaineers' first losing record since going 8-11 in 1943-44. Waters remembers Bubas asking him if going to WVU was the right choice, but Waters said they were offering him $13, 500 so he had to go.

On Waters' first team in 1965-66 were Ron "Fritz " Williams, Ed Harvard, Norman Holmes, Jim Lewis and junior college transfer Carl Head, the first African-American basketball players in WVU history.

"If you look back, our first year (1965-66) was pretty memorable, " Waters said. "We ended up playing Duke in February when they were No. 1 and undefeated and we beat them. We just had a wonderful experience at West Virginia."

Waters had a 70-41 record in four seasons at WVU, including three straight 19-9 campaigns and a Southern Conference Championship and NCAA Tournament appearance in 1967.

Waters lived on Dogwood Avenue near Star City and watched the WVU Coliseum be built from the ground up.

"From our home, you could see the new Coliseum coming out of the ground, " Waters recalled. "I worked really hard to try to bring that about but, as it turned out, I never got to coach a game in it. I did a lot of TV games in it, but I never got to coach in it."

Waters coached all of his WVU games in Stansbury Hall, where the Mountaineers played until the Coliseum was opened in 1970, the season after Waters had gone back to coach Duke.

Waters celebrated his 87th birthday last week at his home in North Carolina and said he and his wife have very fond memories of their time in Morgantown.

"We're living in a fantasy land here in our 80s and we still have wonderful memories of West Virginia, " he said. "I'd love to come back (to Morgantown). For years, West Virginia did a (basketball) reunion and I looked forward so much to going back. I'm in touch with many of my former players and they're getting old and we're losing some of them."

Waters said the reunions have been put off in recent years due to COVID, but hopes they come back in time for him to make it back to WVU a few more times to see his old team.

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