[MSN] Stolen Arad window still a paneful memory

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Stolen Arad window still a paneful memory
By DAVE JOHNSON, Executive Sports Editor
April 30, 2006

A visit to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame always creates a mix of
emotions for Marilyn McCutchan Lisman. 

That was the case when she and other family members went to the basketball
shrine in Springfield, Mass., for a ceremony honoring the NCAA Division II
Elite Eight 50th anniversary team. Her late father, former Evansville coach
Arad McCutchan, was on it. 
 
"It was a very special weekend," Lisman said. "We left there feeling very
humbled by our father being included in this collection of the best of the
best in the basketball world." 

But the visit was tinged with some sadness, too. 

"It reminded us once again of the missing stained glass window which
commemorated our father's induction." 

The Hall of Fame opened in 1968 and has undergone a few moves and
renovations since 1981, when McCutchan became the first Division II coach to
be inducted. Eleven years ago this month, McCutchan's window was stolen. It
was part of a display of over 100 stained-glass panels placed side-by-side
in the museum's Honors Court. Each panel was about 9 feet tall and 2 feet
wide and featured the Hall of Famer's picture and biographical information.
Around 1991, when Hall of Fame officials decided to change the display, they
offered the windows to the inductees or their families, Hall historian Matt
Zeysing recalled. "If they weren't interested, (the windows) were offered to
the (Hall of Famer's) school. All they had to do was pay the shipping cost."


Dr. Charles and Cecille Klamer of Jasper, longtime friends of the McCutchan
family, purchased Mac's window and presented it to the University of
Evansville. 

At first, UE officials weren't sure what to do with it. They stored it in a
building across from campus for several years, then decided to give  

 
it to the Roberts Stadium Foundation, which oversees the display cases that
commemorate local and area players and teams at the Stadium. Board member
Bruce Lomax recalled the Foundation planned to install the window next to an
existing case that honors McCutchan, who led the Aces to 514 victories and
five national titles during a 31-year coaching career that began in 1947.
However, before it could be moved, someone broke in and stole it. 

That was in April of 1995, two years after Mac died. 

Lisman, who lives in North Carolina, said it "haunts" her family that the
window is not in the hands of UE or the Roberts Stadium Foundation, "where
it would be displayed or at least archived properly." "It's hard for me to
imagine why (the thieves) would want it or what they're doing with it." 

Lomax, who played basketball for the Aces in the mid-1930s, feels the same
way. 

"At first, we thought maybe it was a prank," Lomax said. 

For several days after the theft was reported, Lomax spoke with
fraternities, sororities and other student groups and even offered a $1,000
reward, "no questions asked." Nobody came forward, he said, although he
spoke with a neighbor who apparently was a witness to the incident. "She
said she saw a red Ford pickup truck back up to the rear of the building and
three kids go inside," said Lomax. "It was so big and heavy; it must have
weighed 250 pounds. Anyway, she said they carried it down from the second
floor and loaded it into the back of the truck. Then they drove down
Bellemeade (Avenue), and that's the last anybody's ever seen of it." 

Harold Matthews, UE's director of safety and security, said campus and local
police had few leads in the case. 

"Our file shows we got an anonymous call in November of 1995 from someone
who gave us a location of where the window was supposed to be," Matthews
said. "We notified the police and they went there and received permission to
search the place. They didn't find it." 

Lomax said he's come to believe "whoever took it just dumped it somewhere."
Matthews agrees: "My gut feeling is somebody just destroyed it." 

Lisman hopes they're wrong. "It's hard to believe it was just destroyed,
unless it was from neglect or maybe the glass got broken," she said. "I
mean, why would anybody go to all that trouble (to steal it) and then just
get rid of it?" 

She keeps hoping it will turn up. "I want to think it's still out there,
somewhere."

http://www.courierpress.com/