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Editor's note: Much of this story ran as part of the Panhandle Legends series, produced by Amarillo historian and author King Hill, and was produced for a series by KAMR that can be found on the myhighplains.com website.
With the win of a gold medal by the USA Hockey Team in the Winter Olympics in the air, it harkens back to another huge team win — one for USA Basketball in 1936, led by Happy/Amarillo legend Joe Fortenberry.
In fact, that U.S. basketball team not only won gold, but the first ever issued for that sport in the Olympics. And Fortenberry was partly behind one of basketball's most signature moves.
Standing tall at 6 feet, 7 inches, Fortenberry was born in 1911 and was raised in Happy, where he first picked up a basketball for the high school team. His time on the courts continued throughout college when he attended West Texas State Teachers College (later known as West Texas A&M University), where his skills dominated the Buffaloes for three years.
During his tenure, Fortenberry led the WT team to consecutive 20-win seasons in 1932-1933 and earned All-American honors during that time. After WT, Fortenberry played for the Ogden Buffaloes in Utah and the McPherson Globe Refiners in Kansas. He was also credited with the first case of “dunking the ball” during a game in Madison Square Garden in 1936, as recorded by NY Times Sports Writer Arthur Daley. Daley’s story said that Fortenberry and his teammate Willard Schmidt skipped shooting for a layup and just “leaped up and pitched the ball downward into the hoop, much like a cafeteria customer dunking a roll in coffee.”
This was considered the first public instance of a slam dunk in basketball, more than 20 years before the move became popularized by players such as “Jumping” Johnny Green or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
When the U.S. team arrived in Germany for the Olympics, they were met with surprise rule changes, according to USA Basketball. They abolished the three-second rule, a seven-player limit on each team and had a designated outdoor court of sand and clay.
The 6’7” Fortenberry was almost disqualified by a rule proposed to limit players to a height of 6’2” or below but was rescinded after the U.S. complained. The McPherson Globe Refiners and Washington Huskies took turns with seven University Pictures team members playing the Olympic basketball matches and eventually wound up facing the Canadian national team in the final game.
But those weren’t the only obstacles the winning team faced. During the playoffs, a downpour hit Berlin, which left the clay and sand court like a swamp with no alternate time or location. It all seemed designed to throw the game against the U.S. But, despite the overwhelming odds, Fortenberry equaled the entire Canadian roster with eight points.
The final score showed the U.S. team winning 19 to 8, which secured them the first basketball gold medal in Olympic history.
Fortenberry was quoted in a 1992 interview with the Amarillo Globe-News as saying, “Adolf Hitler said it was an outside game and that’s where we were going to play it.”
Fortenberry goes on to AAU All American
After his triumph in the Olympics, Fortenberry became a four-time AAU All-American and won three Missouri Valley AAU titles and the 1940 AAU national championship. According to the Texas Panhandle Sports Hall of Fame (TPSHOF), Fortenberry also continued to play on various Army Air Corps teams during World War II.
He has been remembered not only as the first inductee in the TPSHOF, but also a quiet, unassuming gentle man, beloved friend and family member.
The basketball hero lived out the remainder of his life in Amarillo before his death after a battle with cancer in June 1993. He was survived by two daughters, Sally and Trish and a son, Oliver. His wife, Bobbie, who was all of 5’ tall, worked at the Amarillo Globe-News in the library “morgue” for many years, with her sister, Mary Kate Tripp.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Fortenberry found fame at 1936 Olympics despite obstacles in Germany