To Find My Name: An Athlete's Journey

by Joe Nolte

In November 2006, students from the Youth Ministry program at Corinthian Baptist Church in Des Moines, under the guidance of Youth Ministry Director Robin Jenkins, partnered with the Museum to collect oral histories from four Des Moines area African American athletes, in conjunction with a changing exhibit entitled It’s More Than Just a Game: African American Athletes in Iowa. Ten children participated, documenting the lives and contributions of Dolph Pulliam, Tom Hill, Natasha Kaiser-Brown, and Brian Brown. Three students, Faith Wortherly, Chelsea Tidwell, Kathelina Moody, recorded their interview with Dolph Pulliam on videotape.

The interviews these children created showcase amazing contributions. Even more important, the Museum facilitated the recording of African American history by African American youth in a way that inspired pride and hands-on involvement with heritage. We are excited that all of the interviews are available in the Museum’s archives, and we hope to replicate this successful program with our youth group partners across the state.

Adolphus (Dolph) Pulliam moved to Des Moines from Gary, Indiana, in 1965 to play basketball for the Drake Bulldogs. He led the Bulldogs to the NCAA Final Four in 1969. After graduating, he had a successful career in Des Moines as a newscaster, and is now Director of Community Relations and Development for Drake and the broadcaster for Drake Basketball. The following are summaries from the students’ interview with Dolph Pulliam.

Life in Mississippi for me and my nine brothers and sisters was not a whole lot of fun. We lived in a little one room house with a fireplace. We lived on a cotton farm. We picked cotton for a living. We weren’t allowed to go to school. … We just had to work in the cotton fields. My Mom and my Dad wanted a better life, and in order to have one we needed to get out of Mississippi. We looked for someone to sponsor us so that we could leave. When I was very small, my mom and dad found a farmer in southern Missouri who would take all of us, let us pick cotton in his cotton field, and let us go to school. I got to go to school. Little did we know we had replaced the people he had been hiring in Missouri to work his farm. Those were the white folks who lived in town, and he was paying them a lot of money. Somehow after we moved, when my parents were away from home, someone took their lives. … My mother’s sister brought us to Gary, Indiana, and she raised me. So we got out of Mississippi, but I lost my Mom and my Dad in the process.

Graduating from high school, I looked at colleges that wanted me to play football. A hundred wanted me to come and play football for them. I had fifty schools that wanted me to play basketball. I thought about what I wanted, and I wanted to get an education. Which one did I choose? I chose basketball and left Gary, Indiana for Des Moines to enter Drake University to start playing basketball and to get an education...

When I was a senior [at Roosevelt High School in Gary, Indiana], my basketball team had two captains—they were the coach’s favorites, but the team was losing, so the boosters and fans and all of the students in the school were unhappy. They said to make Adolphus Pulliam the captain. If you make him the captain, the team will do something. So much pressure was put on the coach that he called a team meeting and said that we will elect a new captain. My teammates said that we didn’t need an election, let’s just make Dolph Pulliam the captain. The coach said that we’ll have a democratic election, so we did, and it ended up being that I was captain. Once I became captain, I said there was several things we were going to do. I said that we were going to church every Sunday. The coaches said “Coaches too” I said coaches too. The first we went to was my church, Calvary Baptist Church. So we all put on our church clothes, and went to church, sat in the back row, and every Sunday from then on my teammates and I went to church and asked God to be our leader and show us how to win. We started to win and win, and by the end of the season, we were going to the state tournament... We turned the season around and went to the state tournament, but lost by two points in the tournament…

My family missed me when I left, but they wanted me to be successful…Everybody was happy for me; they knew Gary, Indiana did as much as it could to raise me, and my family as much too—it was time for me to go off and do something on my own…They gave me a push to go off and enjoy college life. So when I came to Drake my freshman year I was a very good student. At the end of the year, I packed all my clothes and got on the bus, when I came back to Gary, and my aunt said, “Adolphus, what are you doing here?” When I came home for the summer, she said “No you’re not, this isn’t your home anymore. Your home is in Iowa.” She said to go back. I said, “Go back?” and she said, “You’re going back.” So I got on the bus the next day. She said I could always come visit, but make to make Iowa your home…She was right…

My senior year, Drake went to the NCAA Final Four—in college basketball, it’s as high as you can go. If you win, you are the best basketball team in America. We played UCLA with Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar)—he was 7”2”—I’m only 6’4”. He was BIG. They beat us by one point. That ended my college career.

My middle name came after college. When I came to Des Moines, the basketball coach assigned every athlete to a family. My family was the Paul Vance family. On the weekend, we went to their homes for dinner and to stay overnight. They’d make birthday cakes and have parties. After college, we became great friends, and our relationship continued. When my brothers and sisters visited, they stayed with the Vances. So one day, to honor them for their friendship, I decided to change my name and make Vance my middle name. I contacted a lawyer, who contacted the state of Mississippi, which made a notation on my birth certificate, and they sent me a copy of that. For Christmas, I gave them a copy of the certificate. When they opened it, the tears were flowing. They had two daughters and no sons—I was their son. We’re all still friends to this day.