A dance without his partner.(Bobbi Russell and Lute Olson)(Brief Article)

It was 1951, the North Dakota plains, high school days, when Bobbi Russell first saw the new boy in town. He'd moved from Maryville to Grand Forks, coming off the farm. His father had died, leaving the boys to do the farming, leaving his wife to hold the family together. She'd worked as a waitress with Lute tagging along, 5 years old. He'd fill the soda machine, stock the napkin dispenser. For that, he'd get breakfast.

It was small-town America, Norman Rockwell's America, and Lute Olson loved it. You knew everyone in town, everyone knew you. You played basketball, baseball, football. You ran track. You sang in the church choir, afraid to catch the eye of that cute little girl Bobbi Russell, and afraid not to.

Either way, she wouldn't let on that it mattered. At a dance, she first saw the new boy in town. A friend said to Bobbi, "Look at that boy over there. He just moved in from out of town. Isn't he handsome?" Bobbi said, "I don't think he's cute at all."

Small lies we tell ourselves, cushions against failure. But math is mighty and shall prevail, as it did quickly enough for Bobbi Russell and Lute Olson, sweethearts then, sweethearts forever. He went off to Augsburg College in Minneapolis but came back to marry Bobbi after her graduation in 1953.

Now we see Lute Olson, elegant. We see him tall, trim, handsome, usually in a navy double-breasted blazer with brass buttons, the silver hair shining, a man with a senatorial look, if not presidential. Critics call him a peacock, friends call him Cary Grant.

We didn't see him in 1953. We didn't see him working nights at a Minneapolis bottling plant. He worked. A roofer. A painter. A truck driver. He worked because he came from work. His father built the farm. An older brother died there, a tractor turning over. He worked alongside his mother, and he saw the folks of Grand Forks work, and he once said, "You learn a great work ethic from those people.... When you come out of that environment, you understand people pretty well, what they're going through."

Now we see Lute Olson, 66 years old, an icon of his profession, a college basketball coach who created five Final Four teams and a national champion. We see a Hall of Fame coach.