The Time Capsule | Roy Marshall

The Oct. 31 column was six years in the making. In 2011, we did a first draft of the Emerson girls’ state tournament appearance and decided it wasn’t complete without an interview with Vivian Fleming. She’d taken her school to a place it had never been, and more. If I’m reading record books correctly, Fleming is the highest-scoring player Southwest Iowa has ever had – in any sport. In the event I’m wrong and a reader can give me the name of a boy or girl who attended a school south of Interstate 80 and west of I-35 who scored more than her 4,168 points in a high school career, please let me know. We’ll print a correction and I’ll eat a crow. (Teresa Albright of Farragut had 4,024. An Iowa boy has never reached 3,000. And no, “any sport” does not include golf, bowling or the cumulative scores in either.)

I wanted to talk to Fleming, and a reader supplied contact info. She was living in Georgia. I telephoned several times over the next three of four months. When she didn’t call back, I wrote a letter, explained my intent, and offered to let her approve the article before it was submitted. While waiting for a reply that didn’t happen, I put the draft in my “too hard” basket.

The “too hard” basket is a hold-over from Des Moines. I’d been a field agent – an investigator promoted to an administrative position. My office in the Wallace Building came with a secretary and the usual accessories. On the desk was a two-tiered basket arrangement. The bottom was labeled “in,” the top “out.” My job was simple; the secretary put papers in the “in box.” I put them in the “out box.” Occasionally there’d be an item that wasn’t easy, or needed more information, or seemed a low priority. These stayed in the “in box,” at least for a while. Over time the stack in the “in box” overflowed while the “out” was nearly empty, making it appear that I wasn’t doing anything. I put in a third box and labeled it “too hard.” This balanced the “in box” and “out box.” I went through the “too hard” at the end of each month, sooner if there were deadlines, and found that some matters took care of themselves, and decisions on those that didn’t benefitted from the extra time.

When I moved on to other things, there was no need for the “in” and “out” baskets, but the “too hard” remained useful. Rejections that needed a new approach went there, as did column ideas from readers that were good but required research – that sort of thing. The Emerson column eventually went to the bottom of the stack. A few weeks ago, I decided to either use it or pitch it. I liked it too much for the latter, but the Fleming problem remained. Her perspective was important, but I wasn’t going to get it. I still wonder why. Most of us relish high school memories. Hers was a hall-of-fame career, culminating with an unparalleled performance in the state tournament. In the pressure-packed semifinals, with more than 14,000 looking on and tens of thousands more listening, she turned in what might have been the best game of her life. Many of us doing anything remotely approaching her performances would spend our old age stopping people on the street to tell them about it; but this apparently isn’t her.

I decided to use the article anyway; there were other players and fans and the story is a good one. Hopefully, wherever she is, she’s OK with that.

Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.