Coro: Integration led to legacy

Opportunity knocked at the Matthew Henson Projects home of T.C. Dean in 1956.

White visitors, often police officers or tax collectors, normally did not bring good tidings to public housing built for segregated Phoenix. This one at Dean's doorstep, a 31-year-old man with flat-top hair, was blazing a trail for Dean's life and what would become his college.

"Hi, I'm Coach David Brazell from Grand Canyon," said Dean, 83, recalling the late Lopes basketball and baseball coach's greeting. "I want to ask if you'd consider playing for us. We have shooters and you're a good rebounder."

That moment gave Grand Canyon more than a record-setting rebounder who led Arizona's only undefeated basketball season by a four-year college in the past 75 years. It integrated Grand Canyon with a student so popular that he won an award, opened doors with its first Black graduate and touched thousands of lives during Dean's 50-year career as an educator and school administrator in Phoenix.

"I couldn't afford to mess up," said Dean, sitting in his home near campus. "Look at how many Blacks have gone to Grand Canyon now."

Dean finds basketball

After his mother died, Dean lived in a Memphis, Tennessee, orphanage at age 4 with his younger brother, Charles. An aunt from Arkansas, Willie Steele, adopted them and moved the family to Arizona a year later in 1941.

Phoenix was segregated in schooling and housing at Van Buren Street with no Black families able to lease or buy homes north of downtown.

Dean attended all-African American elementary and junior high schools, the same ones where he later worked. His aunt cleaned homes with holes in her shoes, forcing Dean to save his only shoes for church until sixth grade. He was part of the last graduating class at Carver High School, which desegregation closed in 1954.

Dean did not try out for Carver basketball until his senior year, when his math teacher could not reach a piece of chalk. At 6-foot-3, Dean quipped, "Let a tall man get that." The teacher said, "If you have all that height, come out for my team."

Dean debuted against future Arizona State football star Morrison Warren, whose son, Kevin, became a Lopes basketball star and now is the Big Ten Conference commissioner. Dean intended to play football at Phoenix College but missed the tryout because of illness and shifted to basketball, where his rebounding earned a uniform despite a scoreless tryout.

Upon helping Phoenix College finish fifth nationally, Dean caught Brazell's interest and never lost it.

Dean leaves the back row

Dean accepted Brazell's offer to the gym-less college, as did another African American player who quit school before the season. Dean could not move to campus so he made a 7-mile trek, walking it when he lacked gas money from his overnight custodial job.

"On the first day, I sat in the back of the classroom to not bother anyone," said Dean, who now sits in the first row at GCU Arena for games. "When it was over, everybody in class welcomed me. I didn't take a back seat after that."

The Christian atmosphere was cordial to Dean, who said he never endured racism on campus. In fact, it was the opposite with students voting him "Campus Favorite" when he was a senior.

"I didn't even run for it," Dean said. "That's impossible."

Dean went astray on rules once in his first year but Brazell assured him, "Come hell or high water, I've got your back." Fearing expulsion, Dean met the dean and the issue was resolved with a prayer.

"You have to admire how T.C. stuck to it and turned out so well," said Mildred Brazell, the coach's wife who taught Dean. "He got along well with everyone on campus. Everything was positive about T.C."

Dean faces foes, racism

"Big T," as Thomas Calvin Dean was dubbed, averaged 19.6 points and 13.8 rebounds in his first season. He averaged 20.1 rebounds, still a program record, the following season (1957-58) and led the Lopes as a senior in 1958-59 by averaging 18.3 points and 17.1 rebounds for a 20-0 team. Dean remains second for career rebounds and sixth in career points.

Brazell was demanding of Dean, whether the topic was punctuality ("This is the earliest you've ever been late") or underreporting Dean's rebound totals to the team at halftimes ("Three!?").

"I made you," Dean said Brazell told him later when they became good friends. "I made you so mad that you played over your head."

Brazell did have his back, once pulling his team from a road restaurant that refused to serve Dean. Teammates did the same – Ed Shipp moved a motel bed between floors into Dean's sequestered room and got the pair kicked out of Golden Drumstick in then-north Phoenix for berating staffers who denied Dean service.

Dean said he was targeted in games with tough tactics and trash talk but only because of his talent.

"I had to be cool," Dean said. "I couldn't retaliate. I knew what would happen."

Dean makes a legacy

Dean worked in the Phoenix Elementary School District as a teacher, assistant principal and principal for 50 years while serving as a church deacon and founder of job training programs and summer camps.

He was voted Grand Canyon's Most Outstanding Alumnus in 1977 and was inducted into the Lopes' Sports Hall of Fame in 1991 with his 1958-59 team.

Dean lost his wife, Betty Jean, in 2018 but has their six children and a legion of friends, including GCU parents Melanie and Steve Haynes. Dean is a weekday fixture at the Haynes' business, P.R.O. Motion Physical Therapy, where his story moved them to fund an annual $1,000 Students Inspiring Students Scholarship in Dean's name.

"When I'd go to GCU games and see how much joy he brought people and how he shared his story, I thought, 'This is something that needs to live on; generations beyond us need to know his story,' " Melanie said.

Dean sees to that with his affable presence at GCU games and renown for the GCU Sports Hall of Fame's 1958-59 team photo.

"Can you find me on there?" he asks.

Follow Paul Coro on Twitter: @paulcoro.

Grand Canyon University Athletics

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