Honoring a legacy: Former coach remembered fondly

Kent Verkruysse first heard about the man who in many ways would help shape his life when he was 11 years old.

He was a paperboy in Erie, and halfway through his route, he often stopped at a local ice cream shop. That was where the high school jocks and cheerleaders liked to hang out.

Erie had a dominant boys basketball team at the time. Verkruysse liked being around those guys, and hung on their every word. They would occasionally talk about a guy named Clarence Reiley.

Verkruysse thought to himself, ‘Who the heck is Clarence Reiley?’ He would soon find out.

“We went to a basketball game in Prophetstown – a bunch of us kids got a ride over there – and there was this one player, and he was tremendous,” Verkruysse said. “I asked somebody and said, ‘Who is that?’ They said, ‘That’s Clarence Reiley. He’s also the quarterback on the football team.’

“My world was small. Erie, Prophetstown, that was it. Here this guy in Prophetstown, all the girls loved him, he was a tremendous basketball player, he was quarterback of the football team – that’s who I wanted to be. That was good enough for me. He had everything I ever wanted in life. I wanted to be Clarence Reiley.”

More than 60 years later, Verkruysse would count Reiley as his dearest friend. He was also one of six casket bearers at Reiley’s funeral, after he died on April 7.

Verkruysse didn’t have a storybook high school experience. He attended Newman for 3 years before getting kicked out of school. The family moved to Clinton, and he enrolled at St. Mary’s High School, where he excelled on the basketball team – for a while.

“When I got to Clinton my senior year, I was a pretty good basketball player, but I learned about beer and women,” Verkruysse said.

Verkruysse noted St. Mary’s had an enrollment of just 90 students, but one of them was a 7-footer. The team, without Verkruysse, advanced all the way to the one-class state finals, before losing to a team, Des Moines Roosevelt, with an enrollment of 2,000 students.

“I still wake up in the middle of the night and think about that,” Verkruysse said.

Without a high school degree in hand, Verkruysse enrolled in the Navy, and served 4 years. He did three tours of Vietnam and endured some horrific things. Once, he was thrown off a ship in a hurricane. Another time, was trapped below deck when he thought the ship was going to explode.

He left the Navy in 1969, married his wife of 51 years, Diana, in 1970, moved to Chicago to work for Walgreens, then at his father’s behest, moved to St. Louis in 1973, then returned to Erie in 1985.

It was at a basketball game that year Verkruysse struck up a conversation with a gentleman sitting next to him. It turned out to be Clarence Reiley, and that process repeated itself over and over again.

“He’d say, ‘Kent, come on up. Sit down,’ " Verkruysse said. “We were kindred spirits in so many ways. I’m very politically incorrect in so many ways, and he liked that.”

They would see each other often at games, as Reiley’s son, Darrick, and Verkruysse’s daughter, Dionne, were in the same class. Verkruysse described their early days as pals, then it grew into friends, close friends, and possibly best friends.

It was a relationship Verkruysse cherished.

“When I got out of the Navy, for a host of reasons, I never made any friends from 1969 to 1989,” Verkruysse said. “For that 20-year period, the only friends I had were the guys I grew up with in Erie. I just didn’t make any. When I came back and met Clarence, I told my wife, ‘I have a friend.’ "

Reiley was a sounding board for Verkruysse on a variety of subjects.

“We’d talk for hours every week, as friends would talk,” Verkruysse said. “I knew his joys, his sorrows, and my wife liked him better than I did. He was such a gentleman, such a conversationalist. I’m fairly well-traveled, and I could talk to Clarence, maybe ramble on for 5 or 10 minutes with war stories from Vietnam or this, that and the other thing, and the silence would ensue.

“I’d say, ‘Clarence, are you there?’ He’d say, ‘I’m listening Kent, go ahead.’ What a wonderful thing it is to listen and actually care about that which you have to say.”

Kent and Diana Verkruysse would pick up Reiley several times a week during the school year to attend sporting events. They could be Prophetstown events involving Reiley’s grandchildren, or just a good football, basketball, baseball game or track meet from other towns. The group were followers of the dominant Annawan girls basketball teams from the early and mid-2010s, and for the past 3 years, the Amboy girls basketball teams caught their eye.

A meal usually would follow one of these road trips, and the Verkruysse’s remember one of them especially fondly.

Reiley had some sort of nasty breakout on his face, but he insisted the group go to that night’s game. It was always Diana driving, Reiley riding shotgun, and Kent in the backseat. After the game, they went out to eat.

“We pulled into the restaurant and this really pretty girl pulled in right along side of us,” Kent said. “Clarence looked at her, she looked at him, he looked at my wife, he looked back at the pretty girl, he looked back at my wife, and he said, ‘I think she wants me.’ "

As technology improved, the Verkruysse’s were able to able to hook up their computer to their television set, and they’d watch high school and lower-level college games on television. Reiley would come over to watch those games, as well as his beloved Boston Celtics, on TV.

“Clarence was always full of humor, and he had nice things to say about everybody,” Diana said. “He was a true sports fanatic. If we were going, he wanted to go along. We just loved Clarence.”

Reiley was also a youth coach in Prophetstown over the years in multiple sports, an influence that Verkruysse said was invaluable.

“Everybody knew he was one of the best athletes to come out of Prophetstown, so they listened to him,” Verkruysse said. “The teams he coached always won district or something. He knew what he was doing.”

At Reiley’s funeral in April, he was described time and again as a “great man” by many of the well-wishers. Verkruysse concurred with that sentiment.

“When I die, ain’t nobody going to call me a great man,” Verkruysse said. “That takes a lifetime of doing things for people to decide you’re a great man. He started as a kid, went on up, and dedicated his life pretty much to Prophetstown. All the kids there benefited from him being alive. And he was my friend.”

Brian Weidman

Brian Weidman

Brian Weidman was a sports reporter for Sauk Valley News