FAYETTEVILLE — I expect I'll hear the question in the coming weeks: What would Orville Henry think about being chosen for the Southwest Conference Hall of Fame?
It's a great honor for my father, but one he'd probably wonder about. He did not think it appropriate when he was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame as a non-athlete. He'd probably say that again with the SWC Hall of Fame.
But it's hard to argue that he wasn't a great part of the SWC. He had an impact with the intimate way he covered the head coaches both in football and basketball throughout the conference. He could phone any head coach and they'd respond.
Everyone talks about his Monday morning columns where he'd break down the previous week's game, but the midweek stories after interviewing that week's opposing head coach were wonderful, too.
As a youngster, I can recall answering our home phone and it would be Darrell Royal, Great Teaff, Hayden Fry or any of the other SWC football coaches. They generally knew my mother's name or something else about my family, and clearly considered my father their friend.
Years later when Bret Bielema was hired at Arkansas, I called Fry, who was Bielema's coach at Iowa and had been retired for several years. He spoke fondly of my father and my mother. He had been at Arkansas only for the 1961 season, but the bond with my father continued through his time as SMU head coach and into his time at Iowa. There was always trust.
The trust went beyond the coaches. The sports information directors throughout the SWC all knew they could count on him for honest, fair accounts. He would write the truth without damaging those on the other side.
Jones Ramsey, the great Texas SID, would spend a week's vacation at my dad's house in Little Rock. They devoured one gallon of vanilla ice cream every night, but their conversations were hardly vanilla. I listened as they discussed the league's rich personalities in detail.
The relationships that my father built covering Arkansas included hundreds of great coaches that ended up scattered across the college and NFL landscape and all were his friends, all had his trust. The in-depth way he covered football – the Xs and Os and the personalities – made him a must-read throughout the league.
I remember the days when it became obvious that Arkansas was headed to the SEC and that the SWC was going to eventually be gone. He was saddened, but there was always a positive twist in everything he did. He had been around the old Southern Association as a baseball writer covering the Arkansas Travelers in the 1940s and '50s. He had friendships all over the South and looked forward to renewing some of those relationships.
And, he had a warning: the SEC would be like playing Texas every week. That turned out to be true.
Maybe that's why some long for the old SWC. I don't know if my father worried about that, but he understood it. He said he'd miss trips to Texas.
Why I asked? His response was not about the relationships, although I knew that would be some of it.
“I'm going to have to find a whole new set of places to eat,” he said. “Can you get good huevos rancheros in Athens and Gainesville? I'm probably going to have to remember how I used to doctor up grits with grape jelly and butter.”
There was an ability to "doctor up" those personalities in the old SWC. He didn't worry about having to start over in the SEC.
When you are comfortable building relationships, it's going to be easy to write something tasty.