Bob Lutz: North’s Dennis Brunner made an impact on basketball, society

There’s no way to know for sure, but many who were around at the time remember Dennis Brunner as being a pioneer.

He was, folks say, the first basketball coach in City League history to start five black players in a game. It was the 1970-71 season and the starters were Richard Holt, Bev Mitchell, Larry Dennis, Kenny Joe Love and Greg Richards.

“I remember that very clearly,” said Jeff Brunner, Brunner’s oldest son, who was in the elementary school at the time. “My dad had a discussion with my grandfather about it and he was concerned because there was racial tension. My dad said to him, ‘My best five players are black.’ And my grandfather said, ‘Then there shouldn’t be a question.’ ”

Brunner, who coached at North from 1966-80, died last week after a battle with cancer. He was 77 and remains No. 7 on the City League’s wins list with a 162-119 record.

But, as with many coaches, his influence goes beyond the tangibles.

Bob Love, an All-State player for North in 1968-69, to this day calls Brunner “Pops.”

“And Mrs. (Faye) Brunner is mom to me,” Love said. “I was there with him last Thursday and he was on his last legs. What a beautiful guy and to be able to sit there with him and tell him thanks for everything… it was very emotional.”

Brunner, who became North’s athletic director after his coaching career, had some outstanding North teams, especially early on. He coached six All-State players and all played between 1967 and 1974 — Bob Love, Dennis, Mitchell, Holt, Larry Neal and Leroy Leep. Holt was a two-time All-State selection.

“I haven’t stayed in constant contact with Coach Brunner,” Holt said. “But we were friends, really friends. The North High Redskins from that era, we were a pretty close-knit group and we all loved Coach. He was our guy back in the day.”

Brunner grew up in Ramona, in northern Marion County, and won a state championship as coach at Class BB Durham in 1963 after coaching briefly at Roxbury. The small-town kid, who graduated from McPherson College, decided to take the plunge into big-city athletics at North.

It didn’t take long for him to fall in love with the school, his wife said. He and Faye, a Wichita native who met Brunner when they were students at McPherson, were married for 56 years. She was undergoing surgery for a heart condition when he died.

“We’ve heard from so many of Dennis’ former players,” Faye said. “The one that got me were when two players from his Roxbury team in 1961 and two players and the manager from his two years in Durham came to see him. They’re all in their 60s and I warned them that I didn’t know how much would register with Denny.”

But when Brunner recognized one of his former players, he said, “Hey, Old Man.”

“That,” Faye Brunner said, “was his nickname for Larry Wedel. And Larry just stood there and bawled.”

Brunner was diagnosed with an untreatable form of cancer, Faye said, the day after Father’s Day. It attacked his sinuses and spread quickly.

The family celebrated Brunner’s 77th birthday on Sept. 7, Jeff Brunner said, and Dennis was tired.

“You could really see it, but he wasn’t going to let anybody really dwell on it that weekend,” Jeff said. “He was fired up.”

Brunner’s best North team, in 1971-72 and led by Holt and Dennis, finished 20-2 but lost to East in the Class 5A semifinals.

The Redskins played in four state tournaments during Brunner’s coaching career but lost in the semifinals each time — once to East, once to Heights and twice to Kansas City Wyandotte.

A couple of years before making the decision to start five black players, Brunner dealt with another tense racial situation during a pep assembly in the North gym, Love recalled.

“It was my senior year and that was after John Carlos and Tommie Smith had given the Black Power salute at the Olympics,” Love said. “A lot of the black players on the basketball team decided we wanted to represent and do some of those same things. So when our names were called out at the assembly, we gave that sign and it caused a big controversy. Coach Brunner was upset because we just sprung this on everybody and it was tough on him. He caught a lot of flak for that.”

But Brunner didn’t kick any players off the team. He used that incident as a teaching moment for kids who didn’t know any better, Love said.

A boy raised in rural Kansas became a man who, Faye Brunner said, never held anyone back because of the color of their skin.

“I think one reason for his connection with players is that he lived by the golden rule of treating others the way you want to be treated,” Jeff Brunner said. “We did have some vandalism at our home after he made that decision to start five black players and I remember being with him and hearing people yell things at him and accuse him of being a racist in the opposite way you usually think about that.”

Brunner was not deterred, though. He cut through the politics and decided the five-best players on the team would start.

Simple.

Yet, during that era, anything but.

“He was a great basketball coach,” Larry Dennis said. “But it was after the practices that he would coach you on life and talk about your goals and what they should be. If your grades weren’t up to par, he wouldn’t let you play. He made a huge impact on my life.”

This story was originally published November 10, 2015 at 5:18 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: North’s Dennis Brunner made an impact on basketball, society."