(Photo: Nikos Frazier | Journal & Courier)
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — There were a pair of conversations, each more than four decades ago, that foreshadowed the type of basketball career that Bruce Parkinson, a member of the 2020 Purdue Athletics Hall of Fame class, characterized himself having: unexpected.
The first came right before his freshman year at Yorktown. Parkinson was in the park shooting baskets by himself when Dan Thornburg, a member of the 1951 and 1952 Muncie Central state championship teams and former Yorktown coach, approached him.
Thornburg was replaced as the Tigers' head coach by Don Rogers the summer leading into Parkinson's freshman year but still taught history at the school.