“His eyes got so wide,” recalled Jay Twyman, Jack’s son. It was a Hall of Fame ring, Class of ’83. It turns out Houston was the one who should have been shaking Twyman’s hand.
The old guy’s story has been seeping back into the news, and it’s sad he had to die for most of us to remember him. “It’s something that happened so long ago,” Jay said. “I think a lot of people have forgotten about it.” Not everybody.
It was 1958. A 23-year-old white guy basically adopted a paralyzed 24-year-old black man.
Maurice Stokes played with Twyman on the Cincinnati Royals. They’d come in together as rookies three years earlier. Twyman was a skinny swingman from the University of Cincinnati with a deadly shot.
In 1959, he became the first player besides Wilt Chamberlain to average more than 30 points a game. Twyman would probably rank as one of the top couple hundred players in NBA history. Stokes was on his way to the top 10 until the night of March 12, 1958. “He was Karl Malone with more finesse,” Bob Cousy once said.
He was 6-foot-7 and 250 pounds of athleticism that had rarely been seen. Stokes had 32 points and 20 rebounds in his first pro game. He made the All-Star team his first three seasons, averaging 17.7 rebounds a game.
In the last game of the regular season, Stokes went skyward and fell backward over another player. The back of his head slammed the court, knocking him cold. These days, Stokes would have been immobilized and rushed to the hospital. In 1958, he was given smelling salts and sent back in.
Stokes did his duty that night. He played the first game of playoffs three days later. On the flight back from Detroit, the big man started shaking and sweating. He had a seizure and went into a coma.
An ambulance was waiting at the Cincinnati airport. Stokes had suffered post-traumatic encephalopathy. The blow had damaged the part of his brain that controls motor function. He would never walk again. At first, all he could do was blink.
“How would you like to be one of the premiere athletes in the world on a Saturday,” Twyman recalled. “Then on Sunday, you go into a coma and wake up totally paralyzed, except for the use of (your) eyes and brain? I mean, can you imagine anything worse?” No, unless you throw in a red-tape nightmare and no idea how to pay for a lifetime of medical bills.
Again, this was 1958. NBA stars didn’t have comprehensive medical coverage, much less entourages and Bentleys. Stokes had $9,000 in his bank account. He was single, and what family he had was in Pennsylvania and in no financial shape to help. Twyman applied to become Stokes’ legal guardian. A judge granted the request. That allowed Twyman to handle the bills, apply for workman’s compensation and chop through the paperwork.
Twyman was far more than Stokes’ bookkeeper, however. He eventually had four children, and Stokes was almost as much a part of his life as any of them.Again, this was 1958. That didn’t matter. “There was no defining a person by the color of their skin,” Jay said. “He basically adopted Maurice.”
Twyman would sit by Stokes’ bed, calling out letters. When he got to the right one, Stokes would blink. That’s how they built words and shared conversation. Twyman spent so much time with Stokes, he worried that he was ignoring his own family. He would bring his wife, Carol, and kids to visit his friend.
Carol became co-trustee of the Maurice Stokes Foundation. Her husband started it to defray Stokes’ medical bills. It eventually expanded into a charity that helped other NBA veterans. It took years, but Stokes slowly regained some movement in his upper body. It took countless hours of rehabilitation. As hard as it was, Stokes never seemed to have a bad day.
He was given a makeshift typewriter one day. With trembling fingers, he typed a short note.
“Dear Jack, How can I ever thank you?”
Twyman felt he was the one who owed Stokes.
