Glenn ‘Red’ Wilson was a basketball star, Navy pilot, and conservationist

To get away from Lexington’s awful traf­fic, I ven­tured to Clark County in the fall of 1999, look­ing for “a place in the coun­try” that had some mature trees. Boy, did I luck out. Glenn “Red” Wilson and his wife, Frieda, were sell­ing their home at Forest Grove and mov­ing to Arizona. Their house was sit­u­at­ed in the mid­dle of an eleven-acre woods.  It was per­fect.  I moved in that November.

While wait­ing for the usu­al rig­ma­role asso­ci­at­ed with clos­ing, I asked Red to give me a tour of the place. It had been a tobac­co farm before he built here in 1971, the first house in a new sub­di­vi­sion. He spent the next twen­ty years or more plant­i­ng native trees, shrubs, and wild­flow­ers until the place became a mag­net for gar­den clubs, scout groups, and school chil­dren. His exhaus­tive tour only man­aged to get about a hun­dred feet from the house, as he had a sto­ry and a botany les­son for each plant. A sec­ond tour only cov­ered his wild­flower garden. 

Along the way, I learned a lot about Red and decid­ed that his sto­ry need­ed to be told.

Glenn Wilson (1916−2004) was born in Owsley County and grew up on Cow Creek, about two miles out­side Booneville (pop­u­la­tion 150). His par­ents were poor, and most of their food came from the gar­den. He walked to the one-room school­house in town every day. 

In high school, he want­ed to play bas­ket­ball but didn’t make the team because he was too short. He showed up for prac­tice any­way. He kept it up until the coach final­ly gave him a uni­form and let him sit on the bench at games. In one game, they had so many play­ers out sick that the coach had to start Red. He scored 29 points, and they won. He got play­ing time after that. As a senior, he received sev­er­al bas­ket­ball schol­ar­ship offers, but chose to attend Berea College. (Berea did not give ath­let­ic scholarships.)

He didn’t get picked for Berea’s bas­ket­ball team either. When he con­tin­ued to show up for prac­tice, the coach said, “Can’t take a hint?” Undeterred, Red kept com­ing back and even got some play­ing time in that year’s games.  By the time he was a senior, he was cap­tain of the team. He had a great game against Transylvania University, in which Berea won, 38–32. The fol­low­ing sto­ry appeared in the paper the next day. 

“Berea College’s rolling bas­ket­ball play­ers staged a two-act per­for­mance of ‘The Phantom of the Hoopers” in the Transylvania gym Wednesday.  Leading man of the piece was Capt. Glenn Wilson of Berea, one of the busiest men ever to tread the Transy boards.  Playing with­out the ben­e­fit of sleeves or mir­rors, he phan­tomed 13 points into the hoop while the local boys fanned, fizzed, and fumed.

“The Bereans real­ly played six-man bas­ket­ball when Wilson was in the game since he fre­quent­ly man­aged to be in two places at once.”

Alex Bower, Lexington Leader, January 18, 1940

After the game, the coach said to him, “I can’t believe how much you’ve improved.” Red turned to one of the oth­er guys and said, “It helps if you get to play.”

After grad­u­at­ing, Red mar­ried fel­low stu­dent Frieda Ray Begley and took a job with the Farm Security Administration in Barbourville. His work required a car, and Red didn’t even know how to dri­ve. A local deal­er found him a Model A Ford for $25 and took him to a cow pas­ture for two or three hours to teach him how to drive.

When the war start­ed, Red enlist­ed in the Navy to become a pilot. He went to Iowa State University for train­ing, then got assigned to a branch con­duct­ing anti-sub­ma­rine war­fare. He found him­self sta­tioned on the air­craft car­ri­er Ranger and fly­ing an A‑24  Douglas Dauntless, a two-seat, open-cock­pit dive bomber. On one mis­sion, he got shot down and had to find a place to land in the dark. And he did, as he said, “Thanks to my ter­rif­ic night vision.”

The Navy moved Red to anoth­er car­ri­er-based plane, the PBM Mariner, a sea­plane that could stay in the air for eleven hours. He was lat­er assigned to the Pacific Theater and flew till the end of the war. He spent 30 years in the Navy fly­ing 263 mis­sions in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, before retir­ing to his place in Clark County.

When I moved here, I was sur­prised to find dozens of bird­hous­es and stands of gin­seng and pink lady slip­pers. Neighbors told me that Red, at age 83, still spent every day work­ing out­side on his place. They said it was not unusu­al to find him up way up in a tree trim­ming limbs. 

I was sad to learn that Freida passed away only two months after they moved away, and Red fol­lowed her four years lat­er. I attend­ed his memo­r­i­al ser­vice at Berea College. His sons brought Red’s ash­es here to scat­ter on this place that he loved so much.

Sources:  Winchester Sun back issues; Tom Chase, B for Berea, Volume 1: Triumph and Toil, 1895-1969 (2000).