Terre Haute Gerstmeyer High School Terre Haute
Year graduated
1953
Major accomplishments
Scored 20 points in the championship game of the 1953 state tournament; Received the Trester Award for mental attitude; Indiana All-Star; Indiana University co-captain as a freshman; Indiana Basketball Hall of Famer
Arley, Harley, and Uncle Harold—it’s one of the most famous sayings in Indiana high school basketball history. The Andrews boys—Arley and Harley, identical twins, and Harold, a brother of the twins’ father—made up three-fifths of the Terre Haute Gerstmeyer starting lineup in the 1952-53 season.
“Yeah, we called Harold, who was nine months younger than Arley and me, Uncle Harold on purpose,” said Andrews. “Rather than Uncle taking care of us, we had to take care of Uncle Harold. He played a year after I graduated, and so did Arley because of an accident he had when he was seven and got held back a year.”
The Black Cats, who were 30-3 going into the 1953 state tournament finals, lost to South Bend Central, 42-41, in the finals of one of the most controversial championship games ever played at Butler Fieldhouse (now Hinkle Fieldhouse).
Arley wore No. 34, Harley 43, and those numbers, which coach Howard Sharpe often switched to confuse anyone scouting the Black Cats, cost Gerstmeyer dearly. With 5:27 to play, Arley was called for his fifth foul and had to leave the game.
“Most of the season we lucked out by playing five ballplayers 95 percent of the time,” said Andrews, who received the Trester Award after the title game, and was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame with Arley in 1989 (Harold, who died three years ago, went into the hall in 1993). “Until tourney time it didn’t bother us. But in the finals it did.”
Andrews, who led the Black Cats with 20 points, missed a shot with just a few seconds to go, enabling the Bears to hang on for their first state title. However, it was a play in the first half that still haunts the twins.
“It was my brother and I [who were involved in the controversy],” said Andrews. “I made the foul. My brother wasn’t within 15 feet of the foul. The official came over and raised my hand. They did that in the state finals that year.
“The only thing is when the official gave the hand signal to the official scorekeeper, he read it in reverse. Rather than 43, he read it as 34, and levied the foul against Arley. That put three on Arley. I maybe had one foul at that time.”
Arley got his fourth foul in the first minute of the third quarter. It hurt, said Andrews, because foul No. 5 put the Black Cats in an untenable situation with so much time still to be played. “They took a survey in the press row, and the majority [of the writers] had the foul on me, and not Arley,” said Andrews, “but the official scorekeeper would not change [his book].”
Asked if Arley had been able to finish the game, would Gerstmeyer have had a chance to win Terre Haute’s first state title, Andrews didn’t hesitate to reply in the affirmative.
“We’d have won by 20,” he said. “Arley averaged approximately 25 points a game and 11 or so rebounds. He ended up that game with six points and two rebounds.” Arley didn’t shoot well in the game, but Andrews says, “Eventually his shooting would have caught up to him.”
A man with a wry sense of humor, Andrews said, laughing, “While he was out, of course I didn’t recognize it, but I had to take over. It did give me a chance to get the ball, and I got to be the leading scorer. South Bend was a good ball club as far as being as tough as the teams we played in the semifinals, and Richmond in the first game of the finals. They were probably not as strong, to be honest, and I’m not downgrading South Bend. We played Evansville Central and Jeffersonville in the semifinals in Bloomington, and they were big ball clubs. We played Richmond in the finals, [and won, 48-40], and they were a big ball club. If South Bend had had to play some of those ball clubs, it would have been tough for them.”
Newsmen asked Sharpe about Arley s five-foul count, and he replied, “Gee! Take him out of a state championship with only four fouls!” That was as strong a comment as Sharpe offered to the media. When the subject of Arley’s disqualification came up again, Sharpe said, “I don’t want to say too much about breaks. I don’t want these fellows to think life is cheating them.”
Andrews certainly doesn’t feel that life cheated him or his teammates by that fateful decision. “That’s been our attitude,” he said. “It’s like in baseball, when a call is made, you accept it. Once that call was made we accepted it.”
Gerstmeyer, which is no longer in existence, did not carry a championship trophy back to Terre Haute, and no other Terre Haute school has secured a state title. Did Andrews feel disappointed by the Black Cats’ runner-up finish?
“No,” he stated. “It’s the breaks of the game. It’s like the Boston Red Sox. They had their problems before winning the World Series. Terre Haute South went to the state finals three years in a row in the late ‘70s, and didn’t win a title.
“I can’t remember which year it was, I think it was 1979,1 went to the finals, and Bobby Plump and I sat next to each other since we are Trester Award recipients. That’s the year Muncie Central won state with Ray McCallum after beating South in the second afternoon game. I thought South had the best total team, size, speed, and talent of any that came out of Terre Haute. I thought surely that would be the year Terre Haute would bring back a state title, but South got beat.”
The Trester Award remains special to Andrews, who says, “After I’m no longer here, then it will be given to the hall of fame by the family. There’s no way you can set your mind to win the Trester Award. It’s an award given to an athlete. It takes in many facets of an individual’s life, his academic background, team effort, his attitude, and character. I was not aware of the award before the game started. And I don’t know of many players who are. I learned the true value of the award later. And more as the years go by.”
In the December 21, 1953 issue of Life magazine, Harley and Arley were featured in an article. “The first time anybody in high school basketball got a full page in the magazine” said Andrews, the older of the twins by five minutes. He was a freshman at Indiana University, Arley a senior at Gerstmeyer.
“One of my sons had the article bronze plated and put on a walnut board,” said Andrews, who is retired from the petroleum business and living in Clay City, Indiana, with his wife Thelma. “It was a nice article.”
The twins could have gone to any college they wanted to after leaving Gerstmeyer, says Andrews. He chose Indiana University, while Arley signed with the Philadelphia Phillies as a left-handed pitcher.
“I would have had the opportunity to sign a baseball contract, too, but I wasn’t a pitcher,” said Andrews. “I played second base and centerfield. I had a good batting average, but there wasn’t any money in it unless you were a pitcher. I’d rather take the scholarship [to Indiana University]. Arley played five years and went to the Phillies’ training camp every year. During the offseason following his first year, he was in Illinois. Some farmer turned in front of Arley and he hit the farmer’s vehicle head-on. It ruined his shoulder and pitching career.”
Andrews and Hallie Bryant of Indianapolis Attucks High School, were co-captains of the IU freshman team. After a year and a half at IU, Andrews withdrew because he wasn’t happy. He went into the military for 33 months, and played a lot of basketball in Austria and Germany while in the special services. He was one of the leading scorers in Europe.
When Andrews returned home, he joined Harold at the University of Louisville. “I was on the basketball team three years, but I didn’t play a lot because of a knee injury,” he said. “I also played baseball all three years.”
Andrews and his wife, Thelma, have two sons, Daryl, 40, and Dennis, 38. Dennis played basketball at South High and Indiana State. Andrews still has business activity in petroleum, but mostly “I do what I want to do. I play golf and work with the Veterans of Foreign Wars. I work at the state level and I’ve been a district commander.”
When asked which of the twins was better, Andrews answered again without hesitation. “Arley,” he said. “I think I was a good shooter. There wasn’t that much difference in scoring, but he was stronger on the boards than I was. It worked out well, but he was a better all- around athlete. It’s been a good life. I’ve enjoyed all of it.”