A Chester basketball legend, buried for years in an unmarked grave, gets his memorial

In the 1990s, as the national basketball conversation was dominated by Michael Jordan, Bo Ryan could only think of someone else, a Chester guy like himself.

"People wouldn't stop talking about Michael, about how he could dunk from the free-throw line," Ryan said Thursday. "But I would say, 'A guy from my hometown has already done that.' "

Emerson Baynard's name still commands respect in Delaware County's largest city, where he dominated the court at Chester High in the early 1960s. Decades later, he died with little to his name after working a series of odd jobs, buried in a grave without a headstone at Haven Memorial Cemetery. Ryan, now retired after a successful run as the head coach of the University of Wisconsin men's basketball team, found out about the unmarked interment earlier this year from a local author researching Baynard. He was floored.

"It was just inexcusable," Ryan said Thursday to a packed crowd at the Delaware County Historical Society in downtown Chester. "And I think it was just because we didn't know, not enough people knew."

Ryan was among a group of donors that funded a headstone for Baynard, set to be installed at his grave two decades after his death at 56. It was unveiled at the historical society event, attended by luminaries from Chester's sports history, city leadership, and members of Baynard's family, beside themselves in appreciation at the gesture.

"When people talk about basketball in this city, his name is always at the top of the list," said Deborah Dejarnette, Baynard's cousin. She pulled a quote from William Butler Yeats to best capture her feelings about her cousin: "Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends."

"This was all so gratifying for us," Anthony Dejarnette, another cousin, added. "We hadn't talked about him in years, and hearing these old stories again brought him back for us."

Those stories have long captivated Jack Lemon, a self-declared sports historian: Baynard playing warm-up games against men twice his age before the Philadelphia Warriors took the floor at their arena in the city. Baynard starting on Chester's varsity team as a freshman.

"I started doing research to prove no one could be as good as all the stories I had heard," Lemon said. "But not only was he as good as I had heard, he was better. And he was the best player I've ever researched."

That research, for a book due out in the spring, led him to contact anyone with a connection to Chester basketball. One call connected him with Ryan, and a passing comment about the conditions under which Baynard was buried spurred action.

Ultimately, 10 donors pitched in $2,500 toward Baynard's new headstone, according to Jim Vankoski, president of the Sports Legends of Delaware County Museum, the group that organized the fund-raiser.

"It brings back the pride and love we have for the city, and it encourages us to continue to instill these feelings in our youth," said Cliff Wilson, a former principal and basketball coach at Chester High. Wilson brought the team to a victory at the state championship in 1983.

"This shows confidence and inspiration to them to continue the future we all saw with basketball," he said. "It tells them to help bring the city around, to show them why we love this city."

And as Randy Legette, a former athletic director at Chester High, said, the success of men like Ryan and other alumni shows that basketball can be the means to a much greater end.

"When I was coming up, we looked to go to college, because everyone went to college," he said. "I try to show kids that when they play the sport of basketball, don't let the sport use you, but use the sport to get where you need to go."