Mark Bennett: Big-thinking fueled Hulman Center's debut 50 years ago

Dec. 8—Terre Haute was thinking big when Hulman Center debuted a half-century ago this week.

The 10,000-seat, multipurpose arena opened downtown with a pair of Indiana State University men's basketball games. On Friday night, Dec. 14, 1973, the home-team Sycamores played Purdue. The next night, ISU played Oklahoma.

The facility was big. ISU's opponents were big, hailing from the Big Ten and Big Eight conferences. The crowds were big.

That March, Hulman Center played host to the NCAA Division I Mideast Regional in college basketball's "Big Dance," with Notre Dame, Marquette, Ohio and Austin Peay coming to town.

In Hulman Center's first five years, it entertained the community with 95 concerts. That's right, 95, including Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Aerosmith, Johnny Cash, Earth Wind & Fire, Willie Nelson are many more music greats. And, of course, Larry Bird came to town.

On Hulman Center's opening night in '73, lots of Terre Haute icons showed up for that first event, Purdue vs. ISU. The list included Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer and Terre Haute product Clyde Lovellette. Big Clyde scanned the full-house crowd and glowing new Hulman Center and said, "This is something Terre Haute has needed for 50 or 100 years."

It's now lasted 50 years. And it could last 50 more.

The anything-is-possible attitude in Hulman Center's first years hinted at the swagger Terre Haute had in the 1920s, when Memorial Stadium, Deming and Rea parks, the Indiana Theatre and Ohio Boulevard were built. As Hulman Center's construction finalized, the buzz grew in town.

"It was quite a buildup," recalled Ed McKee, who served as ISU's sports information director from 1971 to 1980. "It was a lot of anticipation."

Hulman Center's construction began on Dec. 17, 1971 and finished in under two years. Initially known as "Hulman Civic-University Center" because of the cooperative effort between the city and university, the project received a $2.5-million from Terre Haute businessman and philanthropist Tony Hulman Jr. and his wife, Mary. That proved to be a big step toward the $10-million facility's completion.

Hulman Center gave ISU a showcase forum for its basketball teams, which had played in the cozier, 5,500-seat ISU Arena since 1962. Hulman Center's 10,200-seat capacity also allowed Terre Haute to compete with larger cities for musical and theatrical events. It quickly became a prime stop on performers' tours.

Terre Haute and ISU got on the national radar.

Within months of its opening, Hulman Center hosted the regional in the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

"We now had enough seating to invite the outside world," said McKee, now retired after decades in college athletics administration and living in Colorado.

Early 1970s Sycamore basketball players marveled at their new digs inside Hulman Center. Ted Kraly noticed from the moment he walked onto the facility's synthetic Tartan basketball floor on its opening night against Purdue 50 years ago.

"It was very exciting coming out on a big floor," said Kraly, a Terre Haute banking executive who played for ISU from 1973 to '75. "[Hulman Center] had all these neat things, because we'd come out of the [ISU] Arena. Everything was new. It had great locker rooms. And it was great for Terre Haute."

Kraly was a reserve forward on the '73-74 team and came to ISU as a transfer from Pepperdine. The Sycamores' top scorer, Rick Williams, also transferred from Pepperdine, a private university in sunny Malibu, Calif. They'd played in venues such as UCLA's Pauley Pavilion and USC, and the Los Angeles Forum.

"And then to come here, we had a 10,000-seat arena," Kraly said, "and that's really wonderful."

ISU played a Purdue team that featured 6-foot-11 center John Garrett — one of four future NBA draft picks in the Boilermakers' lineup, along with 6-6 forward Frank Kendrick, 6-2 guard Bruce Parkinson and 6-11 freshman center Tom Scheffler. The Sycamores had a balanced scoring attack, led by 6-8 Williams, 6-foot guard Lonnie Abram, 6-7 forward Carl Macon and 6-5 forward Rick Peckinpaugh. ISU's tallest player was Janis Ludeks at 6-10.

Purdue beat ISU 81-69, somewhat spoiling the Hulman Center coming-out party.

Ironically, a talented, 6-10 center Rick Darnell had played for ISU the previous season and even worked through the summer on a construction job, helping to build Hulman Center. But Darnell — who wound up playing with the ABA's Virginia Squires alongside Julius Erving — transferred to San Jose State right before the '73-74 school year began.

"If Darnell had been there, who knows?" McKee speculated.

The following night, ISU lost 65-55 to an Oklahoma team led by future Phoenix Suns star Alvan Adams, as another large Terre Haute crowd watched.

ISU was transitioning to the NCAA Division I level and hadn't yet joined the Missouri Valley Conference. As an independent, ISU scheduled an array of opponents in those seasons. The Sycamores' opponents visiting Hulman Center in the '73-74 season included Centenary, a Louisiana college team led by future Boston Celtic and Hall of Famer Robert Parish. ISU won that game, 87-78.

"There's a lot of history," Kraly said. "We've had a lot of great players in Hulman Center."

The Sycamores finished 12-14 in their first season with Hulman Center as their home, coached by Gordon Stauffer. He coached one more ISU season, then was replaced by Bob King, whose staff of assistant coaches included Bill Hodges, who recruited Bird. Packed crowds, amazing plays and big wins followed, of course, giving Hulman Center its heydays.

Hulman Center could've been even grander.

"It was going to be a bigger building," Bernie Carney, president of the Terre Haute Chamber of Commerce in 1971, recalled this week.

Mary Hulman wanted the new civic center to include a 400-seat auditorium for opera and theater events, Carney said. It was also to include an indoor track encircling the basketball court. Those additions would've added $3 million to the construction price, forcing the permanent closure of Eighth Street. The adjacent Masonic Temple would have to be purchased and razed. The auditorium and indoor track ideas were nixed.

Nonetheless, a variety of events indeed began happening in Hulman Center from the start.

"The facility's director, Kim C. Tidd, has assured me that many other nonathletic activities are being scheduled at this time," then-assistant athletic director Jerry Huntsman told the Terre Haute Tribune two weeks before Hulman Center opened. In the midst of the ISU basketball season, country music star Charley Pride performed the building's first concert on Feb. 15, 1974. Years of concerts followed, until that trend waned in the 21st century.

Today, Hulman Center looks a bit different, with an eye-catching exterior and an expanded, brightened southside entrance. And, there's a 15-foot-tall Larry Bird statue by Terre Haute's Bill Wolfe — dedicated in 2013 — greeting fans. Hulman Center underwent a $50-million renovation from 2018 to 2020. It included an addition 6,000 square feet of event space at the southside entrance, highlighted by lots of glass allowing natural light.

"That whole south addition has turned out well, and as we hoped and imagined it could," said Bryan Duncan, ISU's executive director of capital planning and construction.

One element fans don't visually notice are the modernized infrastructure systems, especially the heating and cooling.

Aside from regular maintenance, those systems and the exterior upgrades should last another 50 years, at least, Duncan said.

When the improvements on Hulman Center were in the design phase, a specialty sports consulting team visited the building to check the sight lines for fans from the seats beside the main floor.

"They said, 'Do not change a thing.' They thought it was great, better than a lot of buildings that are in use today," Duncan said.

As a result of its original design, Hulman Center has a built-in intimidation factor, he said. "It's the feel that you have of the crowd being so close to the floor."

For Kraly, who played in that first Hulman Center game back in '73, the current look of the facility is impressive.

"I think they've done a wonderful job of upgrading it. I like the blue seats," Kraly said, referring to the formerly orange seats. "It's just really a showcase."

Mark Bennett can be reached at 812-231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.