April 24, 2002
This is another "B" Line column, a periodic collection of news items of interest to members of the Baylor "B" Association. Contribute news about you or your teammates via e-mail to Dutch Schroeder (Dutch_Schroeder@baylor.edu), Reba Cooper (Reba_Cooper@baylor.edu) or Jack Loftis (Jack.Loftis@chron.com). The mailing address is Baylor "B" Association, P. O. Box 8120, Waco, TX 76714.
IN MEMORIUM
The notion that bad news travels fast isn't necessarily so. According to "B" Association Executive Vice President Dutch Schroeder quite a few former Baylor sports figures have died in recent months and the reports of their deaths have been slow in arriving in Waco. It is with sorrow that this week's "B" Line is devoted to the memory of the following:
BILL KEMP - One of Baylor's finest sprinters, Kemp died on March 8 of kidney failure. He ran on two of Coach Jack Patterson's three outdoor championship teams during the early 1960s and in high school was a superstar at Forth Worth Carter-Riverside. Competing in freshman track at Baylor in 1960 Kemp and teammates Glynn Fields, Jerry Nason and Don Adams helped revise the Southwest Conference Freshman Record Book - Kemp in the 100, Fields in the 440 and all four in two relay events. They also set seven Baylor freshman team records. As a junior in 1962 Kemp won the 100 and 220 and helped the 440- and mile-relay teams finish first as the Bears won the SWC meet held for the first time at Baylor's new track facilities. Kemp's final year was not one of his best, but still he helped Baylor again win the SWC meet. He scored 33.5 points in three SWC championship meets and his freshman records stood up through the end of the SWC. As old-timers gathered to reminisce at the April 20 Baylor track reunion Kemp's name was mentioned often. He was a great one . . .
BILL SRACK - When the 1949 and 1950 Baylor basketball teams were honored at Homecoming last year, Srack - a member of those Southwest Conference championship teams - was missing. He died in July after retirement from Bud Adams's Ada Oil Company, now known as Adams Resources & Energy. Srack also was a member of Baylor's 1948 championship basketball team and later won a letter in tennis. He lived in Conroe at the time of his death . . .
REV. LONNIE ESTON QUILLEN - The Rev. Quillen, another basketball player, died on Nov. 5, 2001. He was a 1951-53 letter winner and also was living in retirement in Conroe. Over a 52-year period he served as a pastor of Baylor churches in Texas and Virginia and was credited with foreign service in Botswana and Malawi . . .
ED STREETMAN - Although he did not participate in sports as a player, Streetman was always looking for ways to show love and support for his Baylor Bears and the "B" Association. He graduated in 1938 and worked for fellow Baylor graduate Bunk Bradley, who at the time was manager of the Equitable Life Insurance Company office in Houston. Streetman later launched a chain of Gibson stores in Beaumont and East Texas and after leaving the retail business in the early 1980s moved to Waco where he died last October. The "B" Association's Schroeder credits Streetman with buying the organization its first computer. "We will miss Ed being at Baylor athletic events," Schroeder said . . .
AND FINALLY - Ed Streetman's love for Baylor also involved him in a benevolent endeavor that eventually took a strange twist and remains a campus mystery today. During the 1930s the Gernand brothers from the Beaumont area became Baylor athletes.
C.J. "Bubba" Gernand, the oldest, lettered three years in football (1935-37), two years in basketball (1937-38) and one year in golf (1938). Jules "Julie" Gernand lettered in football in 1936 and basketball in 1938. And Walter Gernand, the youngest, played freshman football in 1937 and later served in he U. S. Army Air Corps during World War II. He died in a plane crash in England . . . After the war, a Baylor ring was found in rubble near the crash site. It had belonged to Walter Gernand. An Englishman named Alan Hunt, who is now a Baylor public relations staffer, had some part in getting the ring back to Baylor and Streetman provided a shadow-box display case for it. The ring was located in a prominent position in the "B" Room for all to see - and perhaps for one to steal. The crime has never been solved and a regretful Dutch Schroeder can only shake his head and surmise that too many people had access to the "room of honor" . . .
JACK LOFTIS
Co-chairman
Communications Committee
