DePauw University

"Red" Gardner was the key man on DePauw basketball teams during the late '40s, leading the Tigers to a 16-3 season and a national tournament berth in 1946-47 and to a 14-6 mark a year later. The '46-'47 record was the most wins recorded by a DePauw basketball team until it was finally topped 36 years later. Gardner scored 683 points during his DePauw career, a figure that kept him among the school's top 10 career scorers into the 1970s. His undergraduate basketball skills did not go unnoticed. He played one season with the Minneapolis Lakers then went to St. Louis to play for Slater Martin. Illness curtailed his career, however, and he earned his M.S. degree at Indiana University in health and physical education. In 1950 he started what would be a 33-year career at Oakwood High School in Dayton, Ohio. His duties included teaching, counseling, and coaching golf and basketball, the latter sport, of course, his first love. He retired in 1983.