Rare photo offers new angle on '48 Braves tourney team

After more than 70 years, a storied La Conner High basketball team is sporting a different lineup.

Not in terms of a revised roster but instead how the 1948 Braves, who placed eighth at the State ‘B’ Tournament, were lined up for a team photo taken separately from those that appear in the school yearbook or on the history wall in the foyer of Landy James Gym.

The black-and-white shot shows players standing sideways to the camera, an angle that focuses on their profiles rather than the standard straight-ahead look.

The rare photo was recently re-discovered by Gail Thulen, who long ago had been given mementos collected by Jack Whittaker, the legendary one-armed coach and school administrator for whom the school’s football field is named.

“I unearthed it going through a drawer,” said Thulen, who over the years had passed along to others most of the photos and items he received from the Whittakers.

“There was so much stuff,” he said. “This photo was probably part of that.”

While Whittaker (1896-1966) is best known for his tenure at La Conner, where in the late 1940s he put together a plan and used volunteer labor and donations to build a gymnasium worthy of a championship team, he also spent more than a decade at Edison and Burlington schools.

“He had a box of stuff from Edison,” Thulen recalled, “that I was able to take over to the school there. They were very happy to get it.”

Especially since its contents were linked to one of Skagit County’s most famous residents.

“There was a scorebook,” explained Thulen, “that had Edward R. Murrow’s name in it.”

The La Conner memorabilia has proved priceless as well.

Thulen grew up watching La Conner basketball under Whittaker in the 1940s. The 1947 Braves placed seventh at State and featured All-Skagit County selections Monte Hanley, Claude Wilbur, Sr. and Ken Nokelby plus All-State player Landy James, the area’s leading scorer.

With the nucleus of that team – including James – returning in 1948, there was much excitement among Braves fans, further spurring Whittaker’s mission to build a new gym.

Up to that point, the team played games in what is now the Bruce Performing Arts Center.

“My dad used to say there was a place where you could shoot over the rafters,” James’ younger son, Loran James, La Conner High’s head softball coach and a girls’ basketball assistant, said of the former site.

The Swinomish Tribal Community cut and furnished piling for the new gym project in the summer of 1947. When completed, it boasted the largest playing floor in Skagit County. In addition to basketball games, the building hosted the original Tulip Show and wrestling and volleyball matches prior to its demolition in 2015.

Whittaker and Sam Cram, whose great-grandson, Charlie Cram, is a starter for the Braves this season, are pictured in the July 17, 1947 issue of the Puget Sound Mail as part of a work crew – aided by an Otis & Beckley pile driver – that drove more than two dozen piles in a single day at the gym construction site.

The La Conner project gained regional notoriety when it was reported upon in detail by famed Seattle Times writer Phil Taylor.

The team that took the floor when the gym was completed is the one pictured in the photograph Thulen found. James, who would play football and baseball at Washington State University and later compile a 181-89-3 mark in a 30-year Hall of Fame high school football coaching career, is second from the left in the photo.

As had the 1947 team, the 1948 Braves played state games at the University of Washington’s basketball arena, which had recently been r-named Hec Edmundson Pavilion – now the only college venue in America to have hosted 1,000 wins by the home team.

La Conner split its four contests at Hec Ed, with James twice scoring 25 points and finishing as the 1948 tourney’s leading scorer.

Thulen, who in 1956 set what was then the single-game (41) and four-day (118) tourney scoring records, has enjoyed sharing his rare find with others.

“I showed the picture to Jerry Hedbom at coffee,” he noted.

Hedbom, who played on the 1947 La Conner team, would return to the UW campus often to superintend construction work there, including a major addition to historic Suzzallo Library, perhaps the university’s most recognizable building.

Now a long-lost La Conner Braves team photo is gaining recognition as well.