As Dr. Jim Claypool sat there, awaiting his ride home outside the University Ballroom at NKU Monday, it’s pretty clear how few of the current faculty, staff and students on this bustling metropolitan institution — as they crossed campus at mid-day — had any idea how much this man had shaped their university.
As the first employee of NKU, Jim, a Beechwood High and Centre College grad, was a rising tenured history professor at Murray State when he got the knock on his door that day in December of 1969. Come with me to NKU, Dr. Frank Steely, just named the new NKU’s first-ever president, pleaded. And so Jim did.
Hired for what would be the new Northern Kentucky State College when it was still the Northern Kentucky Community College in Park Hills with a Feb. 1 start date. By the end of that month, Jim already had a basketball program going. I know. I was in the middle of it as were so many of the overflow crowd that caused this event to be moved from the Votruba Student Center to the much larger ballroom. These folks knew what Jim did.
The ballroom crowd was on hand for a presentation to Claypool on the occasion of the naming of a Student Center meeting room in his honor and a tribute for his 32 years of service to NKU.
“Jim, welcome home,” said NKU President Cady Short-Thompson. “This crowd,” she called it “incredible” but a perfect reflection of Jim’s do-it-all tenure in his 32 years at NKU.
Jim chose the gold-and-white colors trimmed in black for NKU. Chose the Norse mascot. And he wasn’t even the AD. NKU didn’t have one. So Jim did it. Someone had to. And there he was.
Always there. Always where the action was. Always where he needed to be. Always there where NKU needed him to be.
Realizing sports could be the vehicle to make the first and most visible immediate impact on high schools here, Jim — both the Dean of Admissions and Dean of Students, jobs that Dr. Steely offered him with tenure — knew what to do. Even if his first response to Dr. Steely’s giving him those jobs was:“But we don’t have any students.”
They soon would. What they didn’t have when he showed up at the Community College was an office. When he asked where it was. “You don’t have an office,” he was bluntly told before eventually sharing a desk with Dr. Steely.
Now for a blanketing of Northern Kentucky’s high schools, alerting them to the arrival of NKSC. Which brought the top three, and only three, administrators – Dr. Steely, Dr. Claypool and Dr. Ralph Tesseneer, Dean of Academics — to Covington Catholic one day during district tournament week at the end of February. Since I had the entire senior class in two afternoon large groups in the gym for my American Studies course, that’s where the trio would make their pitch.
In the 10 minutes between classes, I told them the question I was getting most often was when would the new college have a sports program? And I’m thinking it was Jim who responded that they were thinking about a basketball team the next year.
“Wait a minute. Do you have a coach, any players, a place to play, a schedule?” I asked. Well not yet, they said. But they were hopeful they could work it out. At the end of class, I couldn’t hustle down to the coaches’ office fast enough to inform Mote Hils, about to win CovCath’s unprecedented fifth straight regional championship, the news.
“Mote, go talk to the NKSC guys. They’re going to have a basketball team next year and they need a coach. And if you get the job, I’ll help you any way I can.” And in three days, Mote had the job and thus began the start of an amazing adventure that we know as NKU, this major metropolitan institute of higher education.
“A visionary,” President Short-Thompson called Jim. “A mentor . . . generous . . . the epitome of an NKU founder.”
“A great man,” former coach and educator and Northern Kentucky sports historian Charlie Coleman called Jim. He got to kno Jim while working on his Northern Kentucky Sports Legends of the 1950s book and needed help. “A great mentor and a great friend” Coleman added.
Jack Moreland, who has had so many leadership roles in Northern Kentucky called Jim “the single-best ambassador NKU has ever had,” nodding toward the concerts Jim put on at NKU, with former Advancement Director Ron Ellis, now an author, referencing seeing the likes of Billy Joel and Dolly Parton on campus.
Which inspired Jim to elaborate on having “George Benson and his girlfriend, Dionne Warwick,” at NKU. Or the Eagles. “Twice,” Jim said, “and for $3,000.” Then there was Sly and the Family Stone in a three-hour late concert.
And all those Presidential Scholarships that Jim created for the top two students in every high school in Northern Kentucky when NKU came along at a time when, thanks to “a glut” of Ph.D’s from places like Harvard, NKU could put together a top faculty quickly.
And now with Chase Law School, and “law students from every county in Kentucky,” Jim noted, “they go home and become judges.” And help spread the word about NKU.
Just as Jim knew “sports could spread the word about NKU” in those early years. But here’s a sports note, maybe as important as any Jim has ever expressed, that probably hasn’t been spread enough.
After the University of Miami in Florida had offered women’s athletic scholarships in swimming and tennis, NKU was the first school in the nation to offer women’s basketball scholarships back in 1974-75, as the Title IX wave was working its way slowly through higher education.
“It was all about fairness,” Jim said. While Dr. Steely may not have been a big sports guy, Jim said, “he was all about fairness.” And so was NKU. Before almost anyone else. And that’s a big deal. But an easy call for Jim. And nothing but support from NKSC.
Former AD Jane Meier, the 57th woman to run a college athletic program for men and women in the U.S. and the first in Kentucky, talked of those early years and how NKU did what it did – “despite no facilities anywhere” as she highlighted those early coaches – “all from Northern Kentucky.” And the early founders like Hils, Bill Aker and Roger Klein succeeded by more locals like Newport’s Nancy Winstel and Covington’s Kenny Shields, multiple hall of famers who took NKU even farther with even more locals like Steve Kruse and Todd Asalon moving in next.
“Throughout my whole tenure, the focus was on local athletes,” Northern Kentuckian Meier said of her three head coaching jobs and AD work in 21 years here. It’s like that venerable quote about the Abominable Snowman, she said of Claypool: “You know him by his footprints.”
Jim’s footprints are many and in every direction in Highland Heights. But most of all, he says, he wanted to be a teacher, which is where he finished up his career as well as university archivist along with his work as an author focused on Kentucky’s thoroughbred racing history as well as country music.
But if there was one word of advice that Jim had for Pres. Cady-Thompson, it was this: “We hired local and had tremendous success. It was the key to our success.”
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X @dweber3440.