The Ron Bonham Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Tuesday, May 17th, 2005
Red Auerbach would bow out the following season with yet another
championship, the team's eighth in a row. The starting five had an average
age of 31 that season, and many experts felt the team was too old to win
again. How were the Celtics able to overcome the age factor and send Red
off a winner?
It
was the closeness of the guys on that team – it was just one big family.
I’ll tell you, Bill Russell didn’t speak to any rookies or anyone new coming
in. John Havlicek and I had been friends all through college, and I asked
John about that. I said, ‘What’s the deal with Bill?’ And he said, ‘That’s
just the way he is. If you make the team then you’re a part of the family,
and that’s the way this whole team is. That’s the reason we’re so
successful.’ So after I did make the team it was like night and day.
Russell invited us over to his house for dinner, and at that time he had a
little soul food restaurant in downtown Boston. He invited us down there
and treated us to dinner. So it really was like family, and I think that’s
a big reason for the team’s success. Of course, you’ve got to have talent,
and Boston had plenty of that, too. But race was never an issue. It was
just a great environment. The talent was there, the love for each other was
there, and that was really the secret to the team’s success.
Everyone who has played for the Celtics seems to have a favorite story about
the great Red Auerbach. What was it like to meet him for the first time,
and do you have a story that stands out?
He
was a tremendous coach, very knowledgeable. Very knowledgeable of our
opponents. And we always had a good game plan. All the players respected
him. There was always humor in the dressing room – not during our
practices, because they were very heated – but the camaraderie went a long
way towards the success of the Boston Celtics, and Red had a lot to do with
that. He was genius.
Let’s talk about your ABA career – you were a member of the first Indiana
Pacer team.
Well,
for one thing I didn’t like the basketball. It had a completely different
feel. As a shooter, I never did like the feel. It was rubber-coated, and
it didn’t have the deeper groove like the NBA basketball. The first year of
the ABA’s existence was chaos, it really was. I can’t tell you how many
times we stayed in airports all night long. The scheduling wasn’t like it
should have been, and some of the rooms we stayed in were pretty bad. I’ll
tell you, I was spoiled by my time spent with the Boston Celtics. I should
have played several more years, but I’d always had an interest in the
outdoors, and I was an old homebody [laughs]. I don’t know what my phone
bills were when I was living in Boston, but I used to call home several
times a week and talk to mom and dad. I’d talk for several hours at a
time. So I guess I just liked it more back home – I was happier to go back
home and pet my birddog [laughs].
Let's talk life after basketball. What have you been up to in the years
since retiring from the NBA?
I’m
in my thirty-fifth year as superintendent of a 2,300 acre recreational
facility for the City of Muncie, Indiana. I’ve many other opportunities to
make double or triple the money that I make here, but my dad more-or-less
raised me on the river. He taught me how to hunt, how to appreciate nature,
and how to respect the environment. So everything just fell into place when
I had the chance to take this job at Prairie Creek Reservoir. I’ve been
here thirty-five years, and my wife has been working at this same facility
for thirty-four. Anytime you can come to a job and work eight, nine, or ten
hours and wonder where the time went, that’s a job you can stick with. And
that’s what it feels like. Hopefully my health will hold up two more years,
and then I’m going to fade off into the sunset [laughs].
I’ve also been involved in politics – I was the county commissioner for twelve years, serving three full terms as administrator for the county, which is equivalent to being the mayor of a city. We have about 120,000 people in Delaware County. But after my third term I went to the doctor, and my blood pressure was sky high, so I decided ease up a little. It was hard to do, because I’ve always been a public relations person, and I enjoyed serving my community as county commissioner.
We built a new home just east of the reservoir – we’ve got fifty or sixty acres, all in a wildlife habitat with the state. We’ve got an abundance of quail, and we’ve put in a new seven acre wetland, so my wife and I are both looking forward to retirement. We raise Springer Spaniels – we have fourteen right now, and they stay in a very nice kennel.
Final
Question: You’ve achieved great success in your life. You are universally
respected and admired by many people, both inside and outside of the NBA.
If you could offer one piece of advice on life to others, what would that
be?
Don’t
feel that you’re better than anybody else. Don’t ask someone to do
something that you wouldn’t do yourself. I think that’s respected.
