My Favorite Books As A Kid

I read many of the twenty-four novels that Clair Bee wrote in the "Chip Hilton Series." I encountered a piece in the New Yorker about Edward Stratemeyer—creator of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, the Bobbsey Twins, and Tom Swift—who was the hands-down king of juvenile fiction in the 1920s and 1930s. However, none of the Stratemeyer characters captured my imagination like Clair Bee's Chip Hilton. One of the reasons I like Coach Bob Knight is his loyalty to Clair Bee during Bee's lifetime. Clair Bee was a mythic basketball coach himself. His Long Island University Blackbirds won both NCAA and NIT championships. Bee's collegiate tenure was marred by the terrible game-fixing scandal of the early 1950s. Before that disaster, Bee was credited with inventing the 1-3-1 zone defense, the 3-second rule in the free throw lane, and the 24-second shot clock used in the NBA. Bee's LIU teams won 95 percent of their games between 1931-51, including 43 in a row from 1935-37. After the gambling scandal revelations (involving LIU players), Clair Bee moved to the NBA and coached the Baltimore Bullets (1952-1954) and finished with a 34-116 record. Clair Bee devoted the rest of his time to writing. Chip Hilton—supposedly modeled after Bob Davies, a 6'1'' guard from Seton Hall University who played 10 seasons with the Rochester Royals—was the consummate three-sport athlete: football (quarterback), basketball (guard), and baseball (pitcher). After he graduated from Valley Falls High School, Chip Hilton walked on as a non-scholarship player at State University. Through it all, he was a good guy. I wanted to be Chip Hilton. Chip Hilton for President! If this is (fair & balanced) hero worship, so be it.

[x American Prospect]
Good Sports
by Russell B. Pulliam

Behind three points with less than thirty seconds in the game, Chip Hilton steals the ball, makes a layup, and prepares for another steal in an effort to lead Valley Falls high school to an upset victory. Readers of the Chip Hilton sports series will remember such twists and turns as well as the names of his teammates: Biggie Cohen, Speed Morris, Soapy Smith. The series, originally geared toward young teen readers in the 1950s and ’60s, is making another kind of comeback today, with all twenty-three books now being reprinted. Endorsements have come from big names, including college basketball coaches Bobby Knight and Dean Smith, Baltimore Orioles manager Mike Hargrove, NBC sportscaster Bob Costas, Sports Illustrated Senior Writer Jack McCallum, and former U.S. Senator Dan Coats, now the American ambassador to Germany, all of whom have fond memories of reading the books in their youth.

The books offer young teens an unusual (for today) emphasis on character qualities and moral commitments. Chip frequently sacrifices his own success and comfort for the sake of his friends. He is wronged but learns how not to lash back. If he has to fight to defend himself, he will, but only as a last resort. Chip follows in the footsteps of his father, who died when he was young. Chip honors his mother and visits her when he goes off to college in the later books in the series.

If Chip Hilton seems too good to be real, that is one of the points of the series by its author, former Long Island University basketball coach Clair Bee (1896-1983). Bee deliberately set a high standard for his young and impressionable readers, favoring integrity over winning and sacrifice over selfishness. Bee’s daughter and son-in-law, Cindy and Randy Farley, worked with the Broadman & Holman publishing house in Nashville, Tennessee, to update the books, giving Chip a computer and some other modern conveniences, such as ESPN, but the stories are basically the same.

Hudson Institute President Herbert London enjoyed the Hilton books during his years as a high school basketball star in Queens, New York. “I find it remarkable that they are coming back now,” London told me. “For me as a young man, these books left a strong impression. It did set a standard for character.”

What can still hook a young reader today are the plots, similar to the Hardy Boys formula. Instead of solving crimes, Hilton and his friends are trying to figure out how to win games, earn money, stay in school, and help their families through hard times. The reader can guess that Chip Hilton will get through the challenges set before him and his team, but it is never obvious in advance how in the world it will all come out. “The heroics of the game were incidental to the moral dimension of the books,” London says.

The names of Clair Bee and Chip Hilton may be faintly familiar even to those who never read the books. The Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, gives out awards in their names each year for the outstanding Division I college coach and player of the year. Bee’s name was also linked with the sorry side of college basketball of his era. Some of his top former players were implicated in a major point-fixing scheme that affected a number of top college programs. Several of them wound up in prison and were kicked out of the game for taking the bribes. But some good came out of the scandal, as raised the warning cry against sports betting, against which there has been a consensus ever since—specifically, that allowing gambling on college sports is bad public policy. Though he was never directly blamed for the scandal, Bee quit coaching and, in the Chip Hilton tradition of accepting personal responsibility instead of blaming others, took some of the blame, contending that he had pushed his players into becoming too competitive.

But the gambling scandal needs to be seen in some context. Dan Wetzel, senior writer for CBS.Sportsline, has written a book on more recent scandals, Sole Influence: Basketball, Corporate Greed, and the Corruption of America’s Youth. Wetzel notes that Bee’s name was never tarnished by the scandal that affected so many schools. “He’s not shamed historically,” says Wetzel. “People look at him with great reverence. No one stood a chance against the Mafia in the 1950s in New York City. They infiltrated everything—construction, government, fashion.”

Given that the Chip Hilton books have been out of print since the early 1960s, the current revival of the series—competing as it does with the moral relativism that dominates the nation and especially the educational system—suggests a profitable market for stories with a strong moral message about the importance of character. Reflecting the growing interest in literature consistent with traditional moral values is the fact that several other older series of books with similar themes are being republished, and not by any one particular publisher.

The name of Horatio Alger is well known to many because of his association with the idea of the self-made businessman who pulls himself up by the bootstraps. Though his name has endured with that image, his books went out of print until the recent republication. They emphasize personal character qualities such as determination and perseverance, demonstrating their effectiveness in the efforts of young men trying to make their way in the world. The historical fiction of British author George A. Henty is also being republished, for the same reasons that the Hilton and Alger stories are finding new audiences. The growing market for such fiction suggests that many parents, at least, are tired of the moral relativism of much of contemporary American culture, and want something better for their children.

Russell B. Pulliam is the associate editor of the Indianapolis Star and the director of the Pulliam Foundation.

Copyright © 2002 Hudson Institute