A helping hand

Harold Bardo is an American success story, but he has never forgotten all the assistance he had along the way

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Things are different now.

Sylvester Willis doesn't have to worry about whether a restaurant will allow him to dine.

Jermaine Dearman isn't concerned with whether he can go to a pool hall with teammates.

But Harold Bardo had to deal with these types of situations on a regular basis.

As a basketball player at SIU from 1957-1961, Bardo was one of a tight-knit group of black student-athletes who used the University as a springboard to success.

He was forced to sit in the upper reaches of his hometown movie theater. He was not allowed to eat at just any restaurant. He couldn't enter a Cape Girardeau, Mo., pool hall with his teammates.

But he didn't dwell on these injustices. He used them to his advantage.

"[Racism] helps drive you, because you know what it is you don't want to do," Bardo said. "You know that you don't want to have to report to people who don't respect you as a human being."

He didn't have to face these problems alone. He received a host of helping hands along the way that assisted him in rising from a blue-collar upbringing fraught with prejudice to a position as a highly respected academic at SIU.

Bardo's teammates and coaches showed solidarity in the face of racism.

When the team went to restaurants that only served whites, all members left. Coaches always made sure that black team members would be fairly accommodated before scheduling a road game.

But it wasn't just team members that helped this son of a Sparta coal miner along his path.

Teachers in his segregated elementary school prepared him well for the transition to Sparta's integrated high school.

To prepare him for college, one high school teacher assigned and graded papers for him during the summer, but he was forced to wait on the porch while she evaluated them.

The many black athletes at SIU also paved the way for him and helped him adjust to college life.

One of his allies was Seymour Bryson, who was already on the basketball team when head coach Lynn Holder recruited Bardo to play for the Salukis.

Bryson, who still holds SIU's career rebounding record, shared whatever he could with Bardo.

In addition to working the boards, Bryson worked a regular job and shared his money and car with Bardo.

He realized how important this assistance was to his success and it plays a major role in his life. Bardo is now director of SIU's MedPrep program, which helps educationally disadvantaged students gain admission to medical school, but he doesn't play up his accomplishments.

"He is very low key," Bryson said of his dear friend. "He's probably a lot more helpful to people than people realize. He's not going to call a lot of attention to himself."

Bardo also helped pass along his care for others to his children. His son Stephen, who starred on the University of Illinois' Final Four team in 1989, has his own foundation dedicated to help youngsters focus on sports-related careers not involving playing. And this is the norm for the Bardo family.

"It's just an extension of what our family likes to do in terms of always giving back because none of us made it to where we are by ourselves," Stephen said. "There was always someone there to help."

But this isn't the only trait for which the family is known.

"He's a tremendous competitor," Stephen said of his father. "He loves to compete and he passed that on to his children. I was probably one of the biggest competitors that many people have seen, but they never ran into my father. He, next to Michael Jordan, I think is the most competitive person I've ever met."

Harold Bardo has certainly come a long way from meager beginnings. His mother died when he was 6, and neither parent received more than an eighth-grade education.

Growing up in the southern Illinois town of Sparta, Bardo attended a segregated elementary school and an integrated high school in the primarily working-class hamlet about 50 miles northwest of Carbondale, where he dealt with racism as a mere formality.

"I don't ever remember being called a 'nigger,' for example," Bardo said. "We just knew where we could go and where we couldn't go. When I'd go to the theater at home, I'd automatically go right to the right and find a seat. I would never think of sitting any place else."

Though the black population of Sparta was restricted in its actions, most of the minority weren't that much different than their white neighbors.

"Everybody was one class in that community," Bardo said. "If your parents worked, they all worked at the same place basically. Some people were far more industrious than other people and, as a consequence, maybe had more material things, but everybody was pretty much on the same level. You had to go to the same school. You went to same churches."

But there was discrimination evident in Sparta, and Bardo said that he couldn't have fought through the injustice to get where he is today without the help of others.

"We were told one time if you see a toad sitting on a fence post that there was no way he could get there by himself," Bardo said. "Someone had to help put him there, and I've been blessed in that I've had people help me all throughout my life. Everybody tried to pitch in it seems, to help me get to the point where I am today.

"I've just been helped all of my life, which is a good feeling."

Reporter Ethan Erickson can be reached at eerickson@dailyegyptian.com