Memories of ‘Uncle Jack’ Atchley vivid as Loyola wins national championship

My uncle would be proud.

So would my father.

Our son is certainly proud.

For that matter, so are Ed Daniels, Les East, Lenny Vangilder and Jude Young of Crescent City Sports. We’re all Loyola graduates.

The alma mater captured the NAIA men’s basketball national championship Tuesday night.

I was blessed to garner a valued, excellent education at Loyola University, as was the case with my late father, Edward Trahan Jr. and our son, Travis Trahan.

My formative years were spent with the Atchley family.

Elise Atchley was my late mother Julie Trahan’s best friend and a superb athlete.

Her sons, Jack, Calvin and Mark were my childhood friendships. Daughter Terry was sweet as could be. Our mothers even dressed Mark and I alike, though I hope those pictures never surface!

We lost Calvin to Muscular Dystrophy in 1977.

It was stunning, shocking, sobering.

As youngsters, Calvin and I would play together. He was big, healthy and had a tremendous sense of humor.

To see him fade the way he did was one of the most traumatic experiences in my young life.

I chose to commemorate his memory and to try to draw attention and needed funding to the cause by starting an annual Muscular Dystrophy Celebrity Bowling event, which we did for 17 years, concluding with 2005 and the event which took place less than two days prior to the rude arrival of Hurricane Katrina.

Then, we lost the only daughter in the Atchley family, Terry, tragically to cancer at the tender age of 21.

It was an incredibly difficult pill to swallow.

Terry was a year younger than I was.

Trying to understand it all, even as a young adult raised in church from infancy, was very hard to do.

Terry was as easy going and kind of a person as you would ever meet.

Young Jack then had a very serious injury to one of his hands in a workplace accident, losing it.

The saving grace for the Atchley family to endure so much heartache and pain was their collective unfailing faith.

Jack and Mark are great people.

Then, there is Uncle Jack.

The original Jack Atchley was like a second father to me.

“Uncle Jack” got used to being around me, with me being at his house on Franklin Avenue in Harahan, going to family functions and parties with he and his family and going to games with him and having him at our house in Metairie on Brockenbraugh Court.

Jack was as nice and amiable a person as you would ever know.

We lost Jack in December of 2015 at the age of 88.

At the funeral, Elise gave me a DVD of the story of Jack’s life, telling me she wanted me to have it, based on the very close relationship we had for a lifetime. I was moved to tears.

In his lifetime, Jack and my father were as close as close could be for many years.

In his lifetime, Jack was a competitive person at everything he did and a fine athlete. I have never met a more competitive person than my father.

Jack and Elise, along with Eddie and Julie Trahan and me bowled in the same league together at Pelican Lanes in Metairie for years and, despite Jack being the elder, he wanted to beat me badly. Of course, he laughed his familiar chuckle every step of the way while defeating me more often than not as I seethed.

At his house in Harahan, Jack started trying recreational horseshoes.

He got dad’s attention and soon, we had horseshoes in our Metairie yard.

Eventually, Atchley immersed himself in the sport and became good at it.

More importantly, he poured his heart and soul into it and formed a horseshoe pitching league at Harahan Playground.

The pits still stand there today, as does a faded sign with his home number on it for those interesting in participating.

He even helped arrange a horseshoe pitching exhibition with bowling great Walter Ray Williams Jr., who also happened to be a world class horseshoe pitcher. Remember the old Cinerama building on Tulane Ave? It was quite crowded to watch the ringers on that day.

After graduating from Sacred Heart (grammar school) and Jesuit, Jack went to Loyola and was part of the basketball program.

He became part of the most important team and moment in school history, as a member of the 1945 NAIA National Championship team.

Jack never wanted to talk a lot about himself or about that experience, other than to say that it was enjoyable and special. He was an amazingly humble man. You would never have known if Jack was the star of the team or the last player on the bench. He was honored with induction into the Loyola Athletic Hall of Fame in 1995.

Jack would be smiling tonight, as he always did in life.

The only difference is that the smile would be considerably wider and pronounced than normal.

That is because of what his alma mater accomplished Wednesday night.

The 2021-22 Loyola Wolf Pack, now with the two-word mascot, defeated Southern States Athletic Conference rival Talladega 71-56 for the national championship in Kansas City.

Back in the days of Jack, it was Wolfpack.

North Carolina State showed a degree of pettiness, if not being ridiculous, to threaten Loyola with legal action over Wolfpack in 2011.

Rather than engage in warfare, the alma mater simply provided the differential with Wolf Pack.

Take that, N.C. State!

In the title game, Loyola played flawlessly, fast and furious in the first half, exploding to a 44-25 lead and 36-21 at halftime.

Talladega got hot against the 1-3-1 Loyola zone defense and cut the deficit to 50-45. However, the Wolf Pack remained calm and responded quickly and ran back out to a 17-point lead before winning comfortably in the end.

Myles Burns had 19 points and 17 rebounds while Zack Wrightsil finished with 19 points and 12 rebounds. Brandon Davis had 13 points and seven rebounds and Terry Smith Jr. had 11 points and four rebounds.

It took 77 years.

The wait was worth it.

It took overcoming the ill-advised dropping of the basketball program and intercollegiate athletics in 1972.

During my time at Loyola, we played intramural basketball on carpet in what was formally Loyola Field House.

It took nearly 20 years for athletics and basketball to return with Jerry Hernandez reviving the program in 1991 and running it through 2004 in outstanding fashion.

Mike Giorlando took over and did an excellent job from 2004-2014.

Enter Stacy Hollowell, who has simply raised the program to a different level.

I was blessed to be asked by Giorlando to return to my alma mater to broadcast Wolf Pack games from 2007-2015 and it was a true pleasure to watch the program grow with young men who regularly achieved significant grade point averages, the personification of what a student-athlete should be.

The odds were certainly not with Loyola Tuesday night.

The Wolf Pack knocked out Talladega in the second round of the 2021 NAIA tournament.

Loyola beat the Tornadoes three times this season and were faced with having to defeat them again for the fourth time since Feb. 12.

It was no problem for Hollowell and his team.

There were no obstacles that were going to stop this team.

Hurricane Ida displaced players and coaches.

The storm damaged the Recreational Complex where Loyola plays.

Games had to be played away from home, most at Tulane.

When the Wolf Pack returned home, they played on a court borrowed from the City of Kenner.

When COVID hit and games were postponed, it did not deter them.

When Burns missed a game with Faulkner, Loyola lost 92-73.

When Loyola faced Faulkner again, Burns played and Loyola won 121-69.

When the Wolf Pack had to play Faulkner again in Kansas City, Loyola prevailed 85-67.

Then, it was time to beat the Tornadoes for a fourth time on a night where Tornadoes ravaged the south, including here at home in St. Bernard Parish, on the West Bank, the North Shore, the Lower Ninth Ward and in New Orleans East.

Playing in the toughest conference in the nation on the NAIA level certainly prepared Loyola well.

Yes, Burns, Wrightsil, Andrea Fava and Terry Smith, Sr. are seniors. This talented, versatile, experienced and bonded team looked the part as the best NAIA team in the nation.

It will be hard to replicate this success moving forward but watching what Hollowell has done, I would not be at all surprised if the Wolf Pack rebuild quickly and get back to Kansas City next season.

Hollowell accepted the Maude Naismith National Championship Trophy for all who have played basketball at Loyola.

That included Uncle Jack.

Aunt Elise still lives in that house in Harahan.

I hope she sees this.

I hope Mark and Jack Jr. see it.

The spirits of Calvin and Terry live on.

The spirit of the Wolf Pack was amazing to watch.

Jack is smiling.

I went and pulled out the diploma and the ring by game’s end, really.

That brought a smile to my face as I envisioned my friend Jack in my mind’s eye.