Jackie Moreland

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Jack Wade "Jackie" Moreland (March 11, 1938 - December 19, 1971) was an American basketball player for the Detroit Pistons and the former New Orleans Buccaneers. Originally from Minden, the seat of Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana, he played in 1955 and 1956 for the Minden High School Crimson Tide, where under Coach Cleveland S. "Cleve" Strong (born 1924), he was his school's first ever to have been named "All American" in basketball. Thereafter, he played for a semester at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. He then excelled on the court at Louisiana Tech University (Louisiana Polytechnic Institute) at Ruston, where he was again "All American" in 1958, 1959, and 1960, under Coach Cecil C. Crowley (1908-1991). He then completed three and a half-years at Tech.

Moreland was the only Minden High School graduate to have played with the National Basketball Association. He was selected by the Pistons in the first round in the 1960 NBA Draft and remained with the team until 1965. He was the fourth selection in the 1960 draft - behind only Oscar Robertson, and Jerry West, and Darrall Imhoff. From 1967-1970, he played for the Buccaneers.

He earned 5,030 points in his career, an average of 21.3 per game. His 1,419 collegiate points was the fourth highest in the history of Louisiana, where he played three, instead of the customary four, years for the Bulldogs.

Moreland was also an outstanding student at Minden High School, where he garnered many awards, including annual honors in U.S. history. He graduated in 1956 as the class salutatorian. At Tech, Moreland procured his bachelor of science degree in civil engineering. After he retired from basketball, he was a project engineer on the Louisiana Superdome, having been employed for the preceding year by Shilstone Laboratory.

In August 1971, Moreland, at the age of thirty-three, had severe stomach pains. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died in intense pain some four months later in the new family home on the West Bank of the Mississippi River in New Orleans. The cancer spread to the liver, the stomach, and throughout his whole body. Medical bills soared, and friends from across the state and from Detroit as well contributed to a fund to sustain the young family. While Moreland was ailing, he received a call from then U.S. Representative Edwin Washington Edwards, the leading candidate for governor, who tried to cheer up the patient by telling him to "get out of that bed and come and help me campaign."

Moreland was survived by his wife, the former Jeanette "Jenny" Woodard (born August 14, 1939), a champion swimmer, beauty contestant, singer/dancer, and a 1957 graduate of Minden High School; two children, now Jennafer Moreland "Jenna" Litschewski (born 1961), the wife of Jack A. Litschewski of the District of Columbia, and James Steven "Jamie" Moreland (born 1965) of Shreveport, who is married to Francesca Benten; his parents, James Burgess Moreland and the former Lucille Wade, the daughter of Moreland's maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Edd Wade; two sisters, Nita and Marlene, and four brothers, Joe, Edd, Ralph, and Lloyd Moreland.

In 1974, Jenny Moreland married Jackie's MHS classmate, Francis Edward Kennon, Jr., a Shreveport developer and a Louisiana Public Service Commissioner from 1973-1984. They subsequently divorced in 1983. Jenny Kennon and her son Jamie operate Lea Hall Properties, a real estate company in Shreveport named for its founder, Lea R. Hall, Sr. (1937-1995).

Moreland's services were held in the First Baptist Church of Minden on a particularly cold and wet day just prior to Christmas 1971. Interment was in Bethlehem Cemetery in the Harris Community between Minden and Homer, the seat of neighboring Claiborne Parish. Moreland and his family had lived in the Harris Community prior to their move to Minden in time for his senior year of high school. On her death, Jenny Kennon will be buried beside first husband Jackie Moreland.

Kerry B. Garland (1951-1983), then the sports editor for the Minden Press-Herald summed up the 6 foot, 7-inch Moreland, called "Our Giraffe" by classmates, as follows: The victory bell remains silent in Minden today; the hero is dead. Cancer's inexorable finality has humbled Jackie Moreland; something no athlete could do."

Moreland was inducted posthumously into the Louisiana Basketball Hall of Fame in ceremonies held in Natchitoches. Jenny Kennon accepted the award for the family.