'Dr. Dunkenstein' memories saved for West End School

The first piece of fan mail Darrell Griffith received was printed on loose-leaf paper and completely in capital letters. Postmarked on Feb. 26, 1976, in Minneapolis, it carried a 13-cent stamp and a request for an autograph from "Your Greatest Fan," one Jeff Olson.

Monroe Griffith saved the letter and its envelope in one of the basketball scrapbooks he kept for a son who was more interested in playing than preservation. It speaks to the national celebrity Darrell Griffith attained as a senior at Male High School and, also, to a father's pride.

If a man never stands so tall as in the shadow of his son, Darrell Griffith's dad was lucky enough to live to see his son cast a shadow from a five-story photograph attached to a building in his hometown.

"It was a great honor that somebody thought enough to put you on a building," Darrell Griffith said Monday. "(But) I was more pleased that it was put up right before my dad passed away. He got an opportunity to see it. That meant more to me than anything."

The newspaper stories and photographs Monroe Griffith so carefully clipped have yellowed with age. After more than 30 years of handling, the paper is fragile and, in some places, torn. Thirty-four years since Darrell Griffith led the University of Louisville to its first NCAA basketball title, he is seeking to build on his dad's archive, to find sturdier evidence of his standout career.

With the Darrell Griffith Athletic Center scheduled to open in September at the West End School on Virginia Avenue, Dr. Dunkenstein is looking for old photographs to display from different stages of his career. To that end, he spent several hours Monday at The Courier-Journal, examining dozens of photos for potential use.

"They're going to have a Darrell Griffith Gallery," he said. "In order to have a gallery, you have to have pictures."

Some of the shots Griffith saw Monday he found unfamiliar. Others matched photos his father had saved in the scrapbooks, those pages already marked for ready reference. Some of the photographs were creased from being folded into undersized envelopes, or torn. Two of them, taken maybe a millisecond apart from slightly different angles, showed Griffith in midair celebrating U of L's 59-54 victory over UCLA in the 1980 NCAA Championship game at Indianapolis Market Square Arena.

Many of them captured Griffith at various stages of a leap that was measured at 48 inches, soaring toward the basket for a dunk or getting so vertical that he appeared to be blocking an opponent's shot with his elbow. Now 56 years old, Griffith has maintained his playing weight of 195, but his knees are no longer conducive to impromptu spacewalks or even running on flat surfaces. There was a time, though, when No. 35 had the hops of a kangaroo on a trampoline.

In August 1997, a photographer caught Griffith hurdling an opposing player en route to the basket during the World University Games in Sofia, Bulgaria. Former Louisville coach Denny Crum, who also coached that international team, remembers Griffith leaping that Polish guard en route to a layup.

"I had no clue until the next day, when I saw the photograph," Griffith said. "At the time, you're in the zone. When you're out there playing, you just react. It was just a spontaneous reaction. Everybody was like, 'Man, you just jumped over that dude's head.' I paid it no mind, (saying). 'Yeah, right.' "

Nowadays, anyone with access to a computer can create a self-portrait in which he or she appears to defy gravity. In Darrell Griffith's day, though, photos did not lie and they rarely exaggerated. Few athletes of any era have been responsible for so many slackened jaws, pinch-me moments and did-I-really-see-that double-takes.

His pictures say 1,000 words. And then some.

Tim Sullivan can be reached at (502) 582-4650, by email at tsullivan@courier-journal.com, and on Twitter @TimSullivan714.