This Week: How a committee in Clinton is working to honor former football player, alumni Duke Slater

Published: May 04, 2024 Duration: 00:04:45 Category: News & Politics

Tags : sports news ncaa [ local community education ] iowa-hawkeyes

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Intro Welcome back. Duke Slater is a hometown hero. He moved to Clinton as a teenager and helped take his high school football team to two state championships. He led the Hawkeyes to a national championship. A few years later, he spent a decade in the NFL before turning to a career in law, eventually becoming a judge in Chicago this morning. You'll hear about a fundraiser. You can attend to benefit the Duke Slater memorial scholarship and about the progress on a Duke Slater statue set to be unveiled later this year Who was Duke Slater and joining us now is Gary de Lacy. Gary. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us this week. Absolutely. We're, we're thrilled that there's interest in the Duke Slater story. Yeah. And I want to talk about everything that you're doing to honor him. But in order to do that, we first need to understand for anyone who maybe doesn't know um who Duke Slater was um because there was so much to his life. Yeah. And, and the Duke's later story goes back to the in the 1914 15 when he event, uh he moved to Clinton, uh uh led Clinton high school to a couple what they would call mythical state champions. They didn't have playoffs back then. But, uh, back in like 1914 and 1915 went on to the University of Iowa, uh, was a three time all American. And at that point in that point in history, one of the few African Americans that was playing at that level. So the barriers that he had to overcome to do that. And then at the same time when he was, went to the NFL, and it was a six time all pro went back and got his law degree. And you get, I mean, goes to Chicago uh becomes the first black judge, uh moves up in Cook County and becomes, you know, on this first circuit court. Uh just a tremendous amount of success. But the barriers that he had to overcome in that era for someone of his race, uh just tremendous perseverance that I think rings true in a story that needs to be told. The decision to honor him And what was the decision to honor him? I know you've been through kind of now a years long process to basically get to where you're at. But um how did that come along that now was the time? Uh I think a couple of things came through. Uh First of all, I would say that uh when we found out that Duke Slater was gonna go in the professional football Hall of Fame, you know, and I think that decision was made around 2020. Uh that, that brought it. And then I'm gonna be honest, I'll give a lot of credit to Neil Rosendal. Uh He's been an author of a number of Duke Slater books that has really brought his story to light and it certainly showed up at the University of Iowa. You know, they, they have a dorm that's named after him, but probably even more prominent now as the football field in Kinnock stadium is named Duke Slater Field. And that just happened a couple of years ago. And so I think some of the momentum of this committee uh came forward of just this tremendous uh information about Duke and, and Alia his exploits, the University of Iowa. And it was like, well, remember he started at Clinton High School and I think our committee said, hey, when you look at his story, how could you not have a better role model for current Clinton high school students than Duke Slater? And as a superintendent, I'll be honest, that's something I really gravitated to. How the committee is honoring him So tell us about the two very special things that uh you guys are doing, uh to, to honor him. So, uh first of all, we're gonna, uh on May 9th, we're actually holding a fundraiser to try to generate money for a scholarship that we wanna be able to start giving out annually in Duke's name. And uh we're very fortunate to have the head Hawkeye football coach Kurt Ference to come in on, on May 9th and, uh, hold that fundraising opportunity and hopefully that'll give us a good, a strong push to begin that, uh scholarship for next year. It's a little bit late with, uh, this late in the spring for this year. But for next year, it's our hope that we will start giving out something in his name. And then secondly, probably more prominent, uh for people visually is is that we're actually having a lifestyle, a life size statue that is actually uh in the final stages of being made. It's been about a one year process, but we're expecting that to get delivered to.

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