The night Gamecock basketball legend Jack Thompson met General Wade Hampton at 901 West Cedar Street
Alan Piercy is the author of A Gamecock Odyssey: University of South Carolina Sports in the Independent Era (1971-1991). The following was originally published on Alan’s South By Southeast newsletter.
Jack Thompson tells a story like he used to pass a basketball during his playing days at the University of South Carolina – with a style all his own and a generous helping of mustard.
Thompson is widely considered the greatest passer in the history of USC men’s basketball. You can get a sense of his flair for passing in this Gamecock Throwback video from 2013.
The 6-foot point guard joined 6-foot-4 forward Frank Standard, 6-foot-1 guard Skip Harlika, and 6-foot-8 center Skip Kickey as members of McGuire’s first recruiting class at Carolina in 1964. They were tough Gotham ballers of the type that enabled McGuire to secure the 1957 NCAA championship during his days at UNC.
As the legendary coach redirected his New York-area recruiting pipeline from Chapel Hill to Columbia, the New Yorkers joined eventual first-round NBA draft choice, 6-foot-7 Gary Gregor from Charleston, West Virginia, who was on campus prior to McGuire’s arrival.
Thompson, Standard, Harlika, and Gregor, known as the “Four Horsemen,” were the iron men of those early McGuire teams from 1965 to 1968. They were classic McGuire players, tough and unrelenting, and they collectively raised the profile of Gamecock basketball, setting the stage for Carolina’s dominant ACC teams of 1968 through 1971.
Perhaps the star of this foursome was Thompson, the ball-handling whiz from Brooklyn, who set Gamecock records for career assist average (4.67) and assists in a game (13). Thompson still holds sixth and fourth place respectively in those categories, some 56 years after his final game in garnet and black.
Thompson was selected to the ACC All-Tournament team in 1967 and ‘68, and was elected team captain during those same seasons. In 1967 he earned second-team All-ACC. Thompson played professionally with the Indiana Pacers, then of the ABA, and in 1999 was inducted into the University of South Carolina’s Athletics Hall of Fame.
He went on to a long career as a stockbroker after his basketball days were finished. In retirement, Thompson has honed a skill for storytelling in frequent email missives to friends and acquaintances, and in a novel set in 1960s New York City which is nearing completion.
The flair for humor in his writing brings to mind Pat Conroy or Lewis Gizzard, with a Yankee twist. One of his best, and most frequently told, stories involves a trip to Myrtle Beach in May 1966, with a memorable detour through Florence, South Carolina.
Jack picks up the story here:
To this day, I have been to Florence, S.C., on just one single occasion in all of my 77-plus years on this earth. I stayed overnight back in late May 1966. The fact that I can still see the layout of the interior of that house as if I had been there just yesterday speaks volumes. You see, fear has a way of indelibly imprinting certain memories into the dark recesses of the mind.
The Civil War had ended over one hundred years before I made the decision to stay overnight at 901 West Cedar Street, Florence, S.C. 29501 but what was to occur that evening seemed to put that lie to rest. First, you need to know that I was, am, a Yankee–no not the baseball type but a real, honest-to-goodness New Yorker (Brooklyn to be exact)–and my accent was never to be mistaken for some other regional accent.
I was 20 years old at the time and the world, as I was riding down I-20 East towards Myrtle Beach, S.C., was my proverbial oyster. I had finished my sophomore year at the University of South Carolina and was being celebrated as the star of the University’s men’s basketball program under the tutelage of the great Frank McGuire. The only reason I was going to Myrtle Beach was to meet the beautiful Carolina girls and hope that my celebrity would give them reason to throw caution to the wind and jump my bones! I mean, the sunshine and the Atlantic Ocean has always had a way of, should I say, altering the normal everyday social restraints, loosening the proverbial ties that bind. Hedonism Southern style–it don’t get any better than this!
Okay, you may be asking, is this about Myrtle Beach in the summer or is it about a fateful night spent in Florence back in May of 1966? Well, actually you wouldn’t have had one without the other, so—-here goes.
I bummed a ride to the beach with the former sports editor of the school newspaper The Gamecock. His name is Ernie Trubiano. He was a Yankee also, from Boston, Mass. Ernie was to drop off a fellow Sigma Chi brother named John Lester at his family residence in Florence, S.C. John Lester was in law school at the time.
They were both about 4 years older than I and so you might say I was “the kid” of the group. In the beginning, as we were leaving the USC campus in Columbia, S.C. I thought all three of us were going straight down to Myrtle Beach but it soon became evident that John ( known as Johnny Bob) was going to stay that night with his mother, father and two of his four siblings in the family home at 901-West Cedar Street in Florence before driving his own car down to Myrtle Beach the next morning.
So far so good, right?
But then it hit me, Florence was the hometown of Miss South Carolina 1963. I didn’t really know her but my good friend Dan Reeves, at that time a star running back for the Dallas Cowboys, told me her name was Sue Smith. I told Dan that she was always saying “Hey Jack” to me during chance meetings around campus. Being the star basketball player had its perks as many people would say “hey” that I really didn’t know. It probably took me all of 5 minutes before I turned to Dan and said “I think I’m going to date Miss South Carolina.”
When it became evident that Johnny Bob was staying that night at his home in Florence the light bulb went on in my head. “Johnny” I said as I leaned forward from the backseat of the car “do you think I could sleep over at your house tonight?” You see, I’m thinking I will call Sue Smith and ask her out. I mean this opportunity may never come again.
So Johnny Bob, whom I really didn’t know all that well at the time, “says sure, why not!”. At that very second though, Ernie turns around and says “You are ‘gonna stay overnight at the Lester’s?” I said “yeah , I want to ask Miss South Carolina out!” So Ernie says to me “Have you ever heard about Mr. Lester?” I say no.
He then tells me that Mr. Lester hates Yankees, literally hates them. He tells me I better rethink this whole deal. After about five minutes go by I say “Johnny, does your father hate all Yankees?” I mean, I’m thinking I’m one of the good Yankees. But smart mouth Trubiano once again doesn’t let his fraternity brother answer my question. He says “He hates all Yankees, he has never gotten over the Civil War!” Then I turn to Johnny Bob and say “Does your mother hate Yankees too?” Then the jerk from Massachusetts does it again, “No” he says, “Johnny’s mother loves everyone.”
Okay, that sounded a little encouraging–not much–but just a little ray of hope here. Now I am really quiet as the car steams towards the moment of reckoning–do I stay or do I go– right the hell past Florence, S.C.? Then the Boston–guy I would love to strangle by then, says “If you decide to stay over, whatever you do, don’t get into a conversation with Mr. Lester. It will only lead to no good.”
Meanwhile, Johnny Bob ain’t sayin’ nothin’–just nodding his head to the tune of the big mouth from Boston. My heart started to beat just a little faster as we took the off-ramp of I-20 going east. On the one hand, I really thought I had a great shot at dating Miss South Carolina but being so young and really naive about the ill-will remaining towards Yankees– I wondered if some really unfortunate situation might arise with Mr. Lester that night.
As we pulled into the driveway at 901 West Cedar Street in Florence, S.C. I was scared, no, really, I was scared! But the fact that Sue Smith was a friend of Johnny Bob’s would make my invitation all the more natural–considering all we had really ever said to each other was “hey, how are you”, and that was before Dan Reeves told me who exactly the beautiful blonde in the USC cafeteria, the one who had turned all the way around in order to acknowledge my presence, was.
So it was fate wasn’t it that just three days later I was running down the highway to Sue Smith’s hometown? So I, as they say in athletic circles, decided to suck it up and go—-straight into the Yankee hater’s den!
Fact was, Mr. Lester wasn’t at home but Mrs. Lester and Johnny Bob’s younger brother Lon and his younger sister Flo (short for — you guessed it) were in the kitchen when we walked into the house. The normal pleasantries were exchanged as Mrs. Lester prepared the dinner meal with the help of 6 year old Flo. So far no mention of my being a Yankee had arisen and I started to take a look around the Lester home.
A very nice home it was, not the home of a vastly wealthy family but tastefully decorated. It was far nicer and more spacious than the apartment in Brooklyn that I lived in at the time. I was apprehensive as I walked from the kitchen out past the dining room table where I made an easy right turn and found myself in the den. To the right of the television in the den was the front entrance to the house.
Just by chance, I stood all alone– the others were in the kitchen. The swinging door to the kitchen was behind and to my right. I had exited the kitchen not by the swinging door but rather an alcove that led, as I said, to the dining area on the side of the kitchen. It was then that it happened— the front door swung open and a man in full Confederate uniform replete with a heavy gray army coat, wearing a Confederate hat and having a long saber strapped to his waist walked into the room.
At that moment, I learned the truth about the cliche of someone’s whole life passing in front of his eyes when his life was threatened. I talked faster than at any time in my life to this day–blurting out that I was a classmate of his son Johnny Bob, that I played for Frank McGuire, that I had been invited to stay overnight—-and then I remembered what the dipstick from Massachusetts had warned me —————-“Whatever you do, don’t get into a conversation with Mr. Lester.”–and I stopped in mid-sentence and started staring at the floor. Cold turkey silence.
But I felt certain this crazy Yankee-hating man could hear my rapid heartbeat. Still, nothing, not another word. At that point I heard the swinging door to the kitchen opening. Johnny Bob came out first, then Mrs. Lester and the two younger children followed.
They all looked at me first, then looked up at Mr. Lester –then Johnny Bob started to laugh as did the others. The only one not laughing was me. I mean, I saw nothing humorous at that moment. Mr. Lester now closed the front door and walked over to me. Ever hear the cliche about fight or flight? I opted for neither—I asked the General–if I should shake his hand or salute. He looked at me as if I had a third eyeball stuck in the middle of my forehead. “Shaking hands will be sufficient,” he told me.
Turns out that on the only day of my life spent in Florence, S.C. the patriarch of the Lester Family had dressed up as General Wade Hampton for a Dairy Association skit during a luncheon.
Now know this, the imbecile from Massachusetts had no idea that Mr. Lester would come home in full Confederate regalia that evening. But the story made up by Ernie Trubiano was bogus from the git-go, Mr.Lester didn’t hate Yankees at all. And Mrs. Lester was, as described, a woman who loved everybody.
The house is still there, still owned by the Lester Family, Mrs. Lester is now 92 years of age and sharp as a tack. And I have been telling this story for the last 56 years. Just don’t ask me to sleep over again at 901 West Cedar Street in Florence, S.C.–ain’t ‘gonna happen!
