Man of many talents

Bryce Alderton

The death of Hall of Famer and Newport Harbor High product George

Yardley Thursday stirred memories of a man friends said put effort

into everything he did.

Yardley, 75, died early Thursday, 15 months after he was first

diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s

disease.

Ken Stuart, owner and general manager of the Palisades Tennis Club

in Newport Beach, knew Yardley for 35 years. The two often played

tennis and golf together.

“I feel like I was a part of his family,” said Stuart, who

received a call at 7:05 a.m. Thursday about the news. “It’s like I

lost my older brother.”

Buck Johns, former chairman of the annual Yardley golf tournament

that raised money for the Newport Harbor golf team, remembered the

first man to score 2,000 points in an NBA season as someone who was

“good at everything” and someone who “immersed himself in Newport

Harbor athletics.”

“He had a sharp wit and a sense of humor,” said Johns, who started

the Orange County Sports Hall of Fame with Yardley, who was inducted

into that shrine in 1981.

The two became friends in the 1970s.

“It was remarkable when you realize he was arguably, if not the

greatest, athlete to come out of our area and he had an electrical

engineering degree from Stanford, where he was an All-American in two

sports,” Johns said. “He was involved both with family and his

business. He was never in a hurry and that was one of the engaging

things about him. He made you feel like you were important.”

Yardley (Newport Class of ‘46) took the NBA by storm in his

seven-year career -- he was a six-time all-star and broke George

Mikan’s single-season scoring record with a 27.8 points-per-game

average in the 1957-’58 campaign. He retired at age 31 to provide for his family.

The 6-foot-5 forward walked away with a 19.2 points per game

scoring average and 8.9 rebounds per game for his professional career

spent primarily with the Fort Wayne, Ind., and eventually Detroit

Pistons.

Yardley was enshrined into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in

Springfield, Mass., in 1996.

Stuart said Yardley was instrumental in recruiting tennis players

to join the former John Wayne Tennis Club -- now Palisades Tennis

Club -- in 1974. That year, the two sat down at the request of the

John Wayne Tennis Club’s former owner to brainstorm a list of the top

32 tennis players in Orange County.

Stuart, general manager, part owner and head tennis professional

at the club during that time, and Yardley, who sat on the club’s

board of directors, hosted a day of tennis and dinner for those 32

players.

Thirty-one signed up.

“He was one of the most respected people I’ve ever known,” Stuart

said.