ASHLAND — When Ashland-native Jack Miller, now 86, was around 13 years old, he played basketball under the tutelage of Harold “Bully” Rader, a local coach known for his Whiz Kids and his dedication to the sport.
“Wherever there was a job to be done — for the kids or for Ashland, that’s where you would most likely find Bully Rader. And, as often as not, he was the little guy doing the work and accomplishing the most,” his obituary reads.
Harold “Bully” Rader passed away in 1949 at the age of 37. At the time of his death, he was a basketball coach, city council member, president of the Ashland Booster Club, and the chairman of a stage production known as “The Best is Yet to Come,” according to his obituary.
His nickname, Bully, came from his love of “shooting the bull,” his daugher-in-law, Carolyn Rader, said.
“Bully loved to be around people, and they sought him out to talk to them,” she said.
The kids he coached were known as his Whiz Kids, and four of them came to Brookside Park on Friday to dedicate a new plaque to Rader.
When Jack Miller was playing basketball, he kept his nose down and focused on the sport, but even then he knew that Rader was a great man.
“At that age, my interest was in basketball. I know he was a wonderful man and really giving and kind,” he said.
Over 70 years later, Miller was visiting the Brookside Park basketball courts when he saw a small plaque dedicated to Bully.
Miller, who funds a few scholarships with the Ashland County Community Foundation, decided that wasn’t enough to tell Bully’s story. He went to the community foundation and the city, and they went to work to install a new, larger plaque with a lengthy memorial.
A few weeks ago, when the site was roped off for pouring cement, three of Rader’s grandkids, who live in Strongsville and see Ashland as a “second home” just happened to be visiting Brookside Park.
They normally stopped by the old plaque to pull weeds and tend to the area, but were shocked to see that something else was being installed.
“We were like ‘Oh my gosh, what’s going on?’ So, we went up to the city and (found out) Jack Miller had donated the funds to update it,” Bully’s granddaughter, Corinne Bongers, said.
Miller’s generosity didn’t stop with the new memorial. He announced at the plaque’s dedication that he would also be starting a $15,000 scholarship for the outstanding boy’s basketball player every year at Ashland High School.
After working with Bully, Miller continued his basketball career into high school. When he was a senior he was Ashland High School’s playmaker in a season where AHS went 20-2, one of the best seasons in the school’s history.
But for Loren W. Tibbals, who wrote Bully’s obituary, there was one man responsible for the Whiz Kids future success in basketball.
“Whatever success they enjoy in high school basketball will be largely as a result of the hundreds and hundreds of hours Bully devoted to their development during their grade school and junior high years,” he wrote.
“The Whizzers, themselves, are living memorials to Bully Rader.”
