BY ANDY TAYLOR
Montgomery County Chronicle
PEORIA, Ariz. – A former member of the Phillips Oilers basketball team who was credited with making the Converse shoe into a household name has died.
Grady Lewis, 92, of Peoria, Ariz., died Wednesday, March 11, 2009, at his home. Lewis was a frequent visitor to Caney, where his wife, the former Maxine Steele, was raised.
A memorial service was held Tuesday, March 17, in Sun City, Ariz., and burial will be held at a later date at Caney’s Sunnyside Cemetery.
Born in Boyd, Texas, in 1917, Lewis was a standout basketball player at the University of Oklahoma, where his 6-foot-7 frame caught the attention of the Phillips 66 Oilers basketball team based in Bartlesville. The Phillips 66 team was a member of the Amateur Athletic Union in those days, where many top-notch college players landed rather than take the road to the then-low-paying National Basketball Association. Lewis was the AAU Rookie of the Year in 1937, a three-time AAU All-Star and a two-time AAU All-American.
Lewis played four seasons with the Oilers before taking the jump to the professional Basketball Association of America as a member of the Detroit Falcons, St. Louis Bombers, and Baltimore Bullets. He averaged 5.4 points per game in his career and won a league championship with Baltimore in 1948.
Lewis coached the St. Louis Bombers during the 1948-49 and 1949-50 seasons.
The Basketball Association of America became the National Basketball Association during his two years at the coaching helm in St. Louis. During his two-year stint as the Bombers’ coach, Lewis faced some of the early-day teams of the professional ranks, including the Chicago Stags, the Rochester Royals, the Fort Wayne Pistons, and the Indianapolis Jets.
It was in the post-war years when a no-name shoe company called Converse was trying its best to get its brand into high school and college gymnasiums across the nation. The Chuck Taylor Converse All-Star shoe eventually gained acclaim, and the “Chuck high top” was a staple shoe on basketball courts.
Converse hired Lewis to be a member of its national sales team, where Lewis developed a lower-cut, or Oxford-style, basketball sneaker that gained a foothold in the professional ranks. Lewis was instrumental in getting the Harlem Globetrotters to test the low-cut Converse sneaker. And, by the 1960s, many professional players preferred the lower-cut Converse style to the Chuck Taylor high-top that the shoe company produced by the millions during the 1950s.
“We developed oxfords by working with and having the Harlem Globetrotters test them for us,” Lewis said in an interview in the 1990s. “We actually took ‘high cuts’ and cut the tops off until we developed a pattern that would not be kicked off under game conditions.”
Not only did Lewis market the lower-cut basketball shoe but he also became senior vice president for Converse. During his senior management days, Lewis developed the company’s extensive program of clinics and films for high school players and coaches.
He was nominated several times for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., as a contributor to the sport.
In 1977, Lewis was giventhe Clifford Wells Appreciation Award by the National Association of Basketball Coaches for his contributions to basketball.
He also was a member of the NAIA National Hall of Fame, to which he was inducted in 1975. Lewis played at Southwestern Oklahoma College, an NAIA school, before being recruited to the University of Oklahoma.
Lewis is survived by his wife of the home; a son, Rodney Lewis, of Peoria, Ariz.; a daughter, Ginger Olsen, Chino Valley, Ariz.; three grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.
