Sharpenter – who died May 24 and whose funeral is in Sarasota, Florida in three weeks – did have eight points and five rebounds in the 79-64 loss to the Bruins, but that wasn’t his real calling card from the high-profile game.
“We really started talking up that game when dad accidently got in Sports Illustrated,” Ned’s oldest son, Nick, said with a laugh from Sarasota Wednesday evening.
“The magazine did a big write up on Lew Alcindor and the whole centerfold was a picture taken by a camera through the backboard from behind.
“In it, Alcindor is absolutely slamming it over my dad who didn’t have any chance at all. It was actually a pretty neat shot.”
Sharpenter’s daughter Leanne Gilliland , who also lives in Sarasota, sent another telling shot of the matchup between her dad and Alcindor.
It shows the 6-foot-7 Sharpenter trying to defend against the towering 7-foot-2 Alcindor.
“Dad was proud of his days in Dayton and he talked about them often,” Nick said. “When we were growing up, everybody knew he had gone to the championship game. Our high school coaches, everybody knew the legacy of the family.”
Ned’s older brother, Bob, who was also 6-foot-7, starred at Georgetown and then was drafted by the NBA’s Syracuse Nationals in 1962.
But it was Ned and Bob’s dad – Ted “Shorty” Sharpenter – who really was the stuff of legends back in the 1920s.
From 1924-28, he lettered in three sports at UD.
Playing for the legendary coach Harry Bajuan, Sharpenter was the 6-foot-6, 200-pound center of the football team, played the pivot on the basketball team and pitched for the Flyers baseball team.
He was inducted into the UD Hall of Fame in 1979 and now, at the end of each season, UD honors its top rebounder with the Shorty Sharpenter Rebounding Award.
“The Shorty nickname was just a running joke because he was so tall, especially in that era,” Nick said,
In fact, an article in the 1927 Dayton Daily News described Sharpenter as “the tallest and heaviest center in Ohio football.”
The Cleveland Plain Dealer that year called him “a giant.”
When Ned came to UD four decades later, he roomed with Sadlier his first two years on campus and became especially close to George Janky, another Flyers’ big man from the Chicago area, who was a year younger.
“George was my godfather,” Nick said.
When Janky died in November of 2022, I talked to Ned Sharpenter about him.
“George was a very ferocious competitor and he and Obrovac, who was a year older, would go at it tooth and nail in practice,” he said. “I remember one particular incident where George got a little too frisky with his elbows and pretty much knocked Obrovac, not out, but close to it. That cost him 100 laps after practice.”
Janky was a UD freshman and not part of that 1966-67 team that played for the national title.
As for the guys who were on that team, several – Obrovac, Bobby Joe Hooper, Rudy Waterman, Rich Fox, Jim Wannemacher and now Sharpenter – have passed away. Head coach Don Donoher also died in April of 2024 and assistant coach Chuck Grigsby passed away in 2003.
“All the guys are getting older,” said the 78-year-old Sadlier, who is still active with the Tait Foundation, a long-respected charity in Dayton which supports families and especially early childhood development.
He and his wife Susan also like to travel and are in England for a month to visit various people from her family.
While he said they try to enjoy life, Sadlier said few people were better at that than Sharpenter.
“Let’s just say he enjoyed good times!”
Love at first sight
Ned and his wife Becky, who survives him, were both from Aurora, Illinois outside Chicago and were married 45 years.
“They met at a bar,” Leanne said. “He was dragging out a rowdy patron and she was walking in.
“It was love at first sight.”
After Ned’s career at UD – which included 16.3 points and 9.6 rebounds a game for the Flyers freshman team and then 48 games coming off the bench for the varsity – he returned to Aurora to work in the family business, Ted Sharpenter, Inc. which distributed Old Style beer.
In 1993 Ned and Becky moved to Sarasota, where he became a realtor.
Their three children – Nick, Marc and Leanne – all went to Florida Gulf Coast University in nearby Fort Myers and have stayed in the area.
Ned’s obit said: “He found joy in duck hunting, fishing, sporting clays, golf, and spending sunny days at the beach, always with a cold beer in hand.
“He was a devoted sports fan, with unwavering loyalty to the Green Bay Packers, Chicago White Sox, and his beloved Dayton Flyers.”
A man’s man
A few years ago, Nick said he and his wife Lindsay, were in Springfield, visiting some of her extended family:
“I called Dad up and said, ‘Hey, I’m up here by Dayton. Is there any place I can go to in Dayton where you used to go when you were here?’
“He told me about an old pizza place near campus. I can’t remember the name now, but we went there, and a couple of older guys were sitting at the bar and they said, ‘Oh yeah, we remember your dad.’”
Sharpenter had a few memorable games for the Flyers. His senior season, he came off the bench at Saint Louis when Janky picked up three fouls in seven minutes and Obrovac didn’t make the trip because of an arm injury.
He made five quick field goals in the first half to boost UD to a 37-32 lead and ended up with 17 points in the 67-56 victory. Sadlier led the way with 24 points and 15 rebounds.
In another game, Sharpenter came off the bench and scored 11 points against the Miami Hurricanes.
He missed the last two months of his senior season because of academic difficulties and apologized publicly in a Jim Zofkie article in the Dayton Journal Herald, saying, he felt “like a donkey” for letting the team down.
I’m not sure if Zofkie was cleaning up his quote to get it in print or if he really did say donkey.
Guys who played with Sharpenter don’t remember him that way.
“He was a good basketball player and a very enjoyable guy,’ Sadlier said. “He subscribed to what UD was all about: community, getting along, working hard. He was just a good guy.”
Nick gave his dad the perfect epitaph:
“He was a man’s man. He was an incredible storyteller, and he was a world class host – a world class entertainer. He had all the dry jokes.
“He liked to have a good time and wanted you to have one, too.”
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