Jeff Gildea will continue to visit Indiana's fading gyms as long as cancer lets him
There was never enough time.
For almost a decade, Jeff Gildea traversed the state of Indiana in search of high school gyms. Many times, he would bring along a buddy. Sometimes, a date. He always had a plan – to see, and photograph, as many of those gyms as he possibly could until daylight disappeared into the night. Sometimes those plans ran counter to the thoughts of his ride-along partner.
“I’d wear them out,” Gildea said with a smile. “They would want to have a sit-down lunch and I’d say, ‘We just don’t have time.’ There would be another gym six miles down the road. And one three miles after that. Next thing you know, we are 50 miles out.”
It was a labor of love for Gildea, a 61-year-old Indianapolis native with an insatiable desire to visit as much of Indiana’s rich high school basketball history as possible. The results of that labor of love is a staggering chronicle that lives and breathes on Gildea’s Facebook page, sorted alphabetically in photo albums of each school.
Gildea had never added them all up until this week. In all, he has visited 1,239 high schools or high school sites and photographed 855 high school gyms. Those numbers, jaw-dropping as they are, were never the goal. There was no goal. For Gildea, it was about the journey.
“It was really cool for me to get off the interstate and go on the highways and back roads to all of these little towns,” he said. “It took you back, 50, 60 years in time. You could take yourself back in time and place yourself back in that era, when the high school team was there. It was also sometimes depressing to see what had become of those towns, particularly where they had lost their high school. It was a way of going back in time for a day.”
Friends have told Gildea he should put together a book. In addition to gyms and high schools, he also has photographed slices of Americana on his trips. These photos show off his sense of humor. The Mt. Healthy cemetery in Bartholomew County. An auto service in Orleans promoting itself as “The best place in town to take a leak.” A sign for Financial Arts Inc. in Demotte with the regrettable – or perhaps brilliant – Fartsinc.com web site.
There is enough material for a book, perhaps a couple. Gildea had planned to make a binder for each letter of the alphabet. But again, time. There is not enough. Gildea does not know how much he has left. He is not complaining. It is simply reality for a man who was diagnosed with inoperable bile duct cancer a little more than a month ago. When he went in for surgery last week to remove the tumor, doctors told him it was too late for surgery – the cancer had spread into his abdomen.
What is next? He does not know.
“The attitude I’ve tried to take is that I’ve packed 80 years into my 61 years,” Gildea said. “If you are going to feel sorry for somebody, feel sorry for kids who don’t ever get to live a full life. My life is filled. I can’t say I’ve been cheated. I’ve done everything I’ve wanted to do and lived a charmed, blessed life. I’m going to fight this, but I’m going to enjoy every day that I have.”
That may mean a few more road trips.
***
Every so often, I will get a text from Jeff at a high school basketball game. “Fifth row, center court, facing press row.” I will look up and there he is, waving. Our lives intersected in 2009 when I wrote a story about Indiana high school basketball gyms for IndyStar that turned into a web page with map dots and photos of gyms and, a year later, a book.
Gildea was always a basketball fan with a sense of history. His father, Bob Gildea, covered Branch McCracken’s “Hurryin’ Hoosiers” in 1953 for the Bloomington Herald-Telephone (now Herald-Times) before later going on to a long career in public relations. Jeff grew up in Indianapolis. He was the self-described “worst starter” as a 5-foot, 105-pound eighth grader for the School 83 team that went 16-1 and won the Arlington school district title.
“I was born in the late 1950s and when we grew up we had five TV channels,” he said. “No air conditioning in our house. No computers, no cell phones, no electronics. You went outside and played all day. Every house, every backyard, had a basketball goal. You just played all day. After dinner, you went out and played again. I just developed a love for basketball.”
Gildea did not play in high school but continued following the sport passionately as a student at Arlington and then Howe, which he graduated from in 1976. As a student at IUPUI, he was hired in the advertising department at the Indianapolis Star and Indianapolis News, where he stayed for 22 years.
“It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle every day,” Gildea said. “Each section had a budget and I loved the math of it because I am a stat freak.”
Gildea had always loved the distinct features of the different gyms he played in and visited as a kid. The little cracker box gym at Howe. The “thump, thump, thump, thud” of dribbling on the old Coliseum floor of the Indiana Pacers. The wall that separated the stands from the court at the Hawthorne Rec Center. The old 1920s gym at Tabernacle Church.
“I loved all the nooks and crannies that made them different,” he said. “I loved the uniqueness of each gym.”
I wrote about 100 gyms in the book – probably visited 50 more. Life moved on. Other projects, day-to-day work and life. Two kids with activities of their own.
But the story, the website and the book sparked something in Gildea. Armed with a map and a list from the Indiana High School Athletic Association on every school that had ever existed in the state, he set off on an adventure.
Almost 10 years and 855 gyms later, the adventure never really ended. Does he have a favorite?
“I would put it into two categories,” he said. “When I first went into the Wigwam (in Anderson), my jaw dropped. The seats seemed to go on forever into the darkness of the corners. I wanted to walk all around the hallways and look at all the old photos. It was like walking into a history museum. Same thing at Muncie Fieldhouse. I got in there on a Saturday when a construction crew let me in. I went into the trophy room to get a photo and it took me about an hour to get everything set up just right. When I came out, everybody was gone. I was alone in the building. I’m at center court in Muncie Fieldhouse, the sunlight coming through, the eight banners illuminated by the light. I’m like, ‘I’m in church.’”
The visits to the middle of nowhere also appealed to Gildea. On every trip to Southern Indiana, he will make it a point to stop by the barn at Little York, where high school games were played from 1936 to ’47. It is, literally, a barn. “My favorite of all,” he said. Or the since-demolished gym of Dover, in the Western Boone district. He grabbed a brick to give to a friend who graduated from there. He dug a frozen brick out of the ground at Fairmount. He sneaked into a few places, and has been denied a few times. He’s stepped on nails and over broken glass in Milroy and had rain water drip on his head in Seymour
He has made return visits to gyms only to find out time was up.
“Probably 15 or 20 that I’ve photographed are gone,” Gildea said. “Some of them are in jeopardy. Some are barely hanging on.”
***
Gildea has been attending Indiana All-Stars games in Louisville and Indianapolis for years with Mike Ayers, a longtime friend. Ayers knew Gildea was not going to be able to make it this year because of his surgery. But last week, just a couple of hours after Gildea was supposed to have begun surgery, he texted Ayers that he was back on.
“That’s when he found out surgery wouldn’t be of any help to him,” Ayers said. “I can’t imagine getting that type of news.”
But Ayers did not expect anything less than a positive attitude from Gildea, either. Gildea’s goal throughout this process has been to put his friends at ease and still want to be around him. “I still want to live my life,” he said. That means going to concerts, basketball games, dinners and lunches with friends.
“The more I can fill up my calendar, the better,” Gildea said.
His girlfriend, Holly Wilson Harmeyer, organized a surprise get-together for him last weekend. She sold 115 “Jeff Strong” T-shirts and said even more were there. Gildea could not even get through the door before he realized what was happening and broke down in tears.
“He’s like George Bailey,” Wilson Harmeyer said of Gildea, referring to the Jimmy Stewart character in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” “He touches people’s lives just being who he is and doing what he does. If he says, ‘I’m going to watch this band,’ it’s not uncommon for 10 or 15 people to go with him. I’ve never met anybody like him.”
Gildea said he has been brought closer to his three children – Aaron (32), Katy (30) and Chris (28) than ever before. He also has a 16-month-old granddaughter, Madilyn, to enjoy spending time with.
“I’m lucky,” he said.
There will be more meetings with doctors this week that will give him a better idea of what is next. The prognosis for those with Gildea’s type of cancer is not great, especially now that it has spread to his abdomen. But there are clinical trials he could explore.
“I can be a guinea pig,” he said with a smile. “What do I have to lose?”
There are still a few places he wants to see. Getting inside the little gym in Economy is a goal he would like to check off his list. But it is OK if not. As long as his days are filled with conversations with family, friends and a few laughs, his heart will be full.
“There are a few more dots on the map,” Gildea said. “But I’m taking it one day at a time.”
Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.