Posted on Thu, Apr. 03, 2008

Mark Story: Keightley lived the life -- the right way

By Mark Story

MSTORY@HERALD-LEADER.COM

One final time Thursday night, they turned out in Rupp Arena for Mr. Wildcat.

Bill Keightley lived the ultimate fantasy of everyone who grows up in the commonwealth loving the Kentucky Wildcats.

In death, he went out the same way.

So they came right out of the annals of UK sports history. Wah Wah Jones from the Fabulous Five. Unforgettables. Comeback Cats. There was Sky (that's Kenny "Sky" Walker) and Moon (Rodney "Moon" Dent).

There were two coaches -- Joe B. Hall and Rick Pitino -- who took Kentucky to national championships and one, Billy Gillispie, who hopes to do so.

Counting Gillispie, there were four current Southeastern Conference head basketball coaches in Rupp. Ex-UK player John Pelphrey (Arkansas), ex-Kentucky assistant Billy Donovan (Florida), and native Kentuckian Rick Stansbury (Mississippi State) all traveled to pay their respects.

Former Kentucky head coach Tubby Smith was trying to do so when his plane got stranded on a runway in Memphis.

Even the last two Kentucky football coaches, Rich Brooks and Guy Morriss, turned out to pay respects to the basketball equipment man.

If only he could have seen it. Keightley, who died of internal bleeding Monday from an undiagnosed tumor on his spine, would have relished the public memorial that celebrated his life.

For no other reason than there were so many sports figures there with which to swap stories.

His voice quavering with emotion, Hall noted that he always considered Keightley his best friend. Pointing all around the crowd estimated at some 2,000, Hall noted, "but he made all of you feel like his best friends."

Received warmly by Kentucky fans in Rupp for the first time since he became head coach at Louisville, Pitino said that when "Cawood Ledford left, we lost the soul of the University of Kentucky. Now we've lost the heart. For me, this was the last link I had with this great place."

Fighting back tears throughout his remarks, Gillispie told the crowd he was going to tell a story on Keightley. The UK coach reported that he was down to only one sock when he dressed out for practice late this season.

Gillispie said he made a point of showing Keightley his one sock, thinking the veteran equipment man would hook him up with new socks the next day.

Instead, nothing.

Said Gillispie: "He said, 'Hey, Bubba, I gave you three pairs in October.'"

As impressive as was the turnout of sports luminaries, in a way what was more significant was the steady trickle of regular UK fans that passed through the Rupp lobby for hours Thursday for public viewing of a man many of them had never personally met.

Along with his almost five decades on the UK bench and the genuineness of an ever-sunny personality, I think Keightley's public appeal in Kentucky owed to one other thing. He was Everyman given the run of UK basketball.

Few mere mortals can jump like Kenny Walker, shoot like Tony Delk or be 7-foot-1 like Sam Bowie. But everyone keeping score of UK games at home or logging on to a message board could see themselves in Bill Keightley.

He lived the life. And he did it the way we all hope we would.

"I think we honor Mr. Keightley with our lives," former Kentucky guard Jeff Sheppard said.

Even if few will ever have the chance to work for the Kentucky Wildcats basketball program, all of us can find something, a job, a hobby, community work, that we feel passionately about. We can work as meticulously at that as Keightley did at putting the Cats in well-pressed uniforms.

Not many will have the reflected glory of UK basketball to make us as well-known or well-liked as Bill Keightley. But we can all benefit from the example of a man who treated the big shots and the average joes exactly the same.

Which was well.