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The first time I bumped into Terry Porter, he opened up his wallet and reached inside for a folded up newspaper article.
Except for a slight tear toward the top of the article, it was still in pretty good shape for something he cut out of 2015 Marshall Independent newspaper.
The photo next to the article was of a young Porter in a St. Cloud State basketball uniform 50 years ago. He played for St. Cloud State after graduating from Marshall High School. He was wearing big athletic glasses and clutching a basketball.
He showed me the newspaper clipping after telling me about how the Marshall Tigers boys basketball team won the state championship against much larger schools in 1963.
"I wish you were there," he said of the parade that was held in March of that year.
Of course, just about everybody in Marshall knows of Porter and the 1963 champion Marshall Tigers. But I'm new in town and wanted to hear some more of his memories of one of Marshall's biggest events ever.
It's a storyline similar to the movie "Hoosiers."
I waited a few weeks before calling him up with an invite to meet me at the Daily Grind on Main Street for coffee. When we sat down at the table, he watched as I set my smart phone down on the table and hit the record button on the voice recording app.
"What does this entail now?" he asked. He had a worried look on his face. "Because it's been in the paper before." But I assured him sometimes a good story is worth telling many times over. Even though it was just four years ago that Marshall celebrated the 50th anniversary of the championship in a large spread in the Independent, I wanted to hear it all.
Porter told it all like it happened yesterday. His teammate, Dennis "Red" Schroeder sank two free throws with 13 seconds left on the clock to clinch a 75-74 win over Cloquet. A parade on Downtown Main Street followed.
"Back in 1963, our population, someone told me, was like 5,600," Porter said. "The interest was so incredible. And when we started winning, it just mushroomed. When we went to the state tournament, we had six buses of kids, up and back, up and back, up and back Thursday, Friday and Saturday. That's a long trip on a bus." Porter explained the team returned to Marshall Saturday night after the big win. The next day, people from one end of Southwest Minnesota to the other came to Marshall for the big parade.
"Luckily, it was a fantastic day. There was a caravan of six, eight cars carrying the ballplayers," he said. He remembered riding in a Corvette convertible.
"We were looking up from the car and there were people standing on top of the buildings and just jammed packed. We had to push people away to get the cars out here," he said, pointing to outside the Daily Grind window.
"There were people from all the surrounding small towns, because they were proud too. We came from Southwest Minnesota, a little small town compared to all the other schools. We had just a incredible ceremony. You never forget something like that.
Then he stared straight ahead and his eyes started to water up. He paused for a moment before continuing.
"It just showed how tremendous they (the crowd) were. You think you are going to get that kind of reception in Bloomington?" he asked.
Porter revealed that it made him feel good to make everybody in town happy. His eyes watered up again when he talked about his family.
"And then there is your mom and dad and brother after you win. It's incredible. I mean they were so happy ... What would have happened if I would have lost the game. That didn't happen. That's why my parents and my brother were so happy. Especially my brother. I learned so much playing against him."
I took a sip from my coffee before I asked the most important question. How does a team from Marshall defeat the big city team? "God, I get the chills," he said before pausing for a few seconds. He finally explained how most of his teammates worked on farms. "We had to get up at 6, 6:30 a.m. and we started developing a work ethic," he said. "You don't know how hard we worked back then. And the work ethic paid off. The big (city) kids, I would guess they didn't work as hard as we did. If I didn't work, I didn't have money. That was the same for all of us.
"That's why we won five or six close games. We could have lost if we didn't work hard," he said.
"They (other teams) just didn't compete as hard. It's as simple as that. We were so intense. Our captain was so intense. I was crazed over it."
But it was that work ethic, I'm sure, that made Porter and all of his teammates successful in life.
And it's that same work ethic you see in Marshall and in the surrounding communities today. On the farm and on Main Street.
-- You can follow Mike Lamb on Twitter@indymlamb