“You’re the Best!”
Emogene Nutt of Little Rock stays busy this time of year watching two of her four sons coach basketball.
Dickey is the head coach at Southeast Missouri State University, and Dennis is the head coach at Ouachita Baptist University. Then there are the 13 grandchildren, including two sets of twins and one set of triplets. There also are the two well-known sons who coached football, Houston Dale and Danny. Somehow she found time to write a book about her late husband, Houston Nutt Sr., and it’s a fascinating read.
You’re the Best! Reflections on the Life of Houston Nutt is the story of a man born during the Great Depression in the pine woods of south Arkansas who later became an icon in the deaf community. Houston Sr., who died in April 2005 at age 74, often used the phrase “you’re the best” when encouraging his students.
“I guess I knew one day I would write a book about Houston,” Emogene says. “It’s more than being born to deaf parents and raised in a deaf environment where all of his siblings were either totally or partially deaf. It’s even more than having played for two legendary coaches. It’s about the American dream. Things in Houston’s life that could have been a detriment to some people were handled with ease. Houston set high goals for himself in athletics. His dream was to grow up and make life better for deaf people. In addition to this dream, he had an unbelievable passion for basketball. … Because of Houston’s dedication and hard work, he earned a college education and lived out his dream of coaching basketball and working with the deaf.”
Houston and Emogene Nutt moved onto the campus of the Arkansas School for the Deaf at Little Rock in 1956. Emogene says conversations in the deaf community can be “very blunt, straightforward and to the point.” She hopes the book will help explain the complexities of the deaf culture. One such complexity, she says, is that “being deaf doesn’t mean you are part of the deaf culture. For example, people who lose their hearing from illnesses or deaf children who are born to hearing parents often haven’t been privileged to sign language or the knowledge that makes up the deaf culture. Most do acquire the language and culture later in life. However, their acceptance in deaf culture partially depends on their skill in the language. Then there are people like Houston, who are born into deaf culture, inherit the language and take pride in it.”
Emogene wasn’t born into that culture, but she learned it while living in a dormitory at the School for the Deaf. When the Nutts arrived in Little Rock as newlyweds, most of the school staff members were deaf people who had been students. It was a steep learning curve, but soon she was like a second mother to the students her husband mentored.
Houston Nutt Sr. graduated from Fordyce High School in 1951 and earned a basketball scholarship to play for Adolph Rupp at the University of Kentucky. Rupp had been coaching at Kentucky since the fall of 1930 and would remain the head coach there until the spring of 1972, compiling an 876190 record. The head football coach at Kentucky just happened to be from Fordyce. You might have heard of him. Yes, it was Paul “Bear” Bryant, who told Rupp about Houston Nutt Sr.
Nutt later hitchhiked from Fordyce to Lexington, Ky., to enroll. The Wildcats were the defending national champions. Kentucky went 29-3 during Nutt’s freshman season and made it to the NCAA Elite Eight.
In October 1951, three former Kentucky players were arrested for having taken bribes from gamblers to shave points in a National Invitation Tournament game during the 1948- 49 season. The Southeastern Conference voted to ban Kentucky from competing during the 1952-53 season due to that scandal. The season was scrapped. Houston Sr. enrolled at Little Rock Junior College with the idea of going back to Kentucky after a year. Instead, he wound up transferring to Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University) in 1953 to play for another legend, Henry Iba.
How many people could say they played for Rupp and Iba while having Bryant as a family friend? Just one.
“While I was a student at Oklahoma A&M, a tall, thin, handsome guy came strolling through the library with a friend and just happened to sit down at my table,” Emogene writes. “He got my attention and said, ‘Do you know me?’ My reply was, ‘No, I don’t know you.’ In so many words, he explained he had played basketball for Adolph Rupp at Kentucky and was now playing for Coach Iba. I wasn’t impressed. I knew absolutely nothing about basketball. Furthermore, I wasn’t at all interested. After this introduction, I would occasionally see Houston on campus. He stood out because he was at least a head taller than most everyone else.”
She found herself impressed not with his basketball ability but by his smile, his personality and the fact that he didn’t drink, smoke or use bad language. During his senior year, Houston Sr. persuaded Emogene to attend a basketball game. After graduation, he had the chance to be a graduate assistant for Iba or play basketball for the Phillips 66 Oilers. He turned down both offers. He believed his calling was to work with deaf children back home in Arkansas. Emogene went to Fordyce to meet the Nutt family. Marriage soon followed along with a new life in Little Rock.
“Houston whisked me off my feet, and I landed at the Arkansas School for the Deaf,” Emogene writes. Hundreds of deaf children would be the beneficiaries of that decision.