Obituary: Lee Johnson was one of the greatest from Elyria's greatest era of basketball

Maybe now the basketball will fall through the hoop and Lee Johnson can rest in peace and celebrate a big victory. Johnson died Jan. 20 at 83 years old, but his legacy will live forever. In 1961, Johnson became the first Elyria player to be named All-Ohio first team after leading the Pioneers to their first state tournament appearance since 1936. Johnson would recall the final moments of the state tournament loss to Portsmouth in which he took the final shot in the waning seconds. The ball rolled around the rim and off, giving Portsmouth a 54-52 win. Johnson scored 17 points and grabbed 14 rebounds to lead Elyria's effort. Portsmouth went on to win the state championship the next night. The week before the state tournament, it was Johnson who made a turnaround jump shot in sudden-death overtime to beat Lima Senior 44-42 in the regional semifinals. Johnson didn't invent the turnaround jumper, but it was his signature move and no one could stop it. Elyria defeated Toledo Libbey the next night 68-51 to advance to the first Final Four in school history (the state tournament had a field of 16 teams in 1936). Libbey had ousted Buckeye Conference champion Sandusky, a two-time winner over the Pioneers during the season, in the semifinals. In 1961, when the game was tied at the end of regulation, the teams played a two-minute overtime. If the score remained tied, they played a sudden-death overtime where the first field goal won the game. Johnson's basket was the final time a game was decided by sudden death in Ohio. The rule was changed the next season to play another timed period to decide the winner. Johnson epitomized Elyria High basketball in an era of greatness that hasn't been duplicated. He was inducted into the Elyria Sports Hall of Fame in 1995. Johnson was 6-foot-4 and with long arms and spring in his legs, he could outjump anyone. He still holds the school record for rebounds in a game, grabbing 31 at Findlay in a winning effort, breaking his record of 27 in a game the year before. He also scored 26 points that night against the Trojans as Elyria won 62-48. "Six-foot-4 was considered pretty tall back then," said Bill Gast, who played with Johnson on the 1959-60 team and remains a resident of the city. "There weren't too many players bigger than that." Elyria was coached by Dale Reichenbach in those days and "Rick," as he was affectionately known by Pioneers fans, was said to be able to take any five kids off the street and turn them into a respectable basketball team. That "Cinderella" team in 1961 proved Reichenbach's coaching prowess. His starting five were seniors Johnson, Rick Coven and Jim Garbash along with juniors Kenny Dick, Bill Jackson or Steve Hays. They also had a slick ballhandler from New York City named Fred Bernstein, but Reichenbach had to let him go when he couldn't prove his eligibility status as a transfer student. The team in 1959-60 had graduated a couple of veteran stars and future Elyria Sports Hall of Fame inductees: Gast, Sam Davis and Steve Lengel, along with Hilton Murray and Bill Madden. Not much was expected of the 1960-61 team. "We didn't start out so great," said Hays, who lives in Texas. "But we ended up pretty darn good. I remember Lee was always happy. He was never down about anything." Johnson turned out to be the star of the team, and Reichenbach saw the potential when he tried out as a freshman and the proverbial "can't walk and chew gum at the same time" was the early scouting report. He had grown quickly and was somewhat uncoordinated, but Reichenbach instructed his freshman coach to keep working with him. The patience paid off. Johnson got a taste of varsity as a sophomore on Elyria's unbeaten 1958-59 team, and by the time he was a junior, he was a force to be reckoned with scoring and rebounding. He led the team in rebounding his junior (411) and senior (372) seasons and led the scoring as a senior with 409 points. Reichenbach, who stood 6-7, claimed Johnson could jump higher than any player he had coached. Coven, whose father, Wilbur "Lank" Coven, played professional basketball for the Rochester Royals in 1947, was cut from the varsity his sophomore year but begged Reichenbach to let him practice with the team to improve his skills. He made the team as a junior and became a reliable scorer and rebounder as a senior, averaging nearly 13 points. Coven scored more than 20 points four times during the season. Garbash played in the YMCA league as a junior, but Reichenbach was told about his ballhandling by fans and Garbash won the starting point guard position, averaging a shade under 10 points. His high game was 19 in a win over Ashland. Dick was a good shooter, averaging 11 points. Jackson was better known on the baseball diamond and Hays as a football player. Reichenbach's teams won eight straight district championships from 1957 through 1964 and added a ninth in 1966 before he stepped away from coaching to become principal at Midview. He won 216 games and lost only 83 in his 13 years at Elyria. During his tenure, the Pioneers won 40 straight sectional and district games from 1957 through 1965. At one point, they won 34 straight at home and 31 straight in the Buckeye Conference. His teams won five conference championships. Johnson was one of the best players Reichenbach coached and earned a scholarship to Texas Southern University. He played basketball there until his junior year, when a knee injury cut short his career. An Army veteran, he worked at General Motors in Elyria, retiring after 39 years. Johnson's wife of 49 years, Dorothy, died during the COVID pandemic, which took a toll on his health. They raised four stepchildren, Joann, Melba Jean, Douglas and Darlene. Johnson had three sisters and four brothers, including the late Sam Johnson of Elyria West basketball fame. Visitation is scheduled for today at the Brown-Robinson Funeral Home in Lorain. Contact Tim Gebhardt at (440) 329-7135 or timothygeb@msn.com.