Hopkinsville City Council will consider naming the 1,400-foot Hopkinsville Greenway pedestrian bridge, which spans Country Club Lane and LaFayette Road, for Kentucky Basketball Hall of Fame coach William Falls.
Mayor James R. Knight Jr. proposed it during the Committee of the Whole meeting Thursday night. Council members agreed to forward the measure to a regular council meeting for a vote.
Falls was the head basketball coach at Attucks High School from 1935 to 1967. His win-loss record was 663-223. The Attucks Wolves won two state titles in the Kentucky High School Athletic League Championships and four times advanced to a national tournament for Black schools during segregation.
When Attucks closed in 1967 with the integration of local schools, Falls became an assistant coach at Hopkinsville High School.
Falls was driving players home from practice on Dec. 13, 1973, when a train struck his car at the tracks near Hopkinsville High, killing the coach and a student. The crash occurred where the pedestrian bridge now spans LaFayette Road.
Knight said the city wants to recognize the coach’s devotion to students. “He was there to make sure that every young person had a chance to do what they needed to do,” the mayor said.
“He was a lot more than a coach,” said Wendell Lynch, the former mayor who played basketball for Falls.
He recalled once asking the coach why he didn’t leave for another head coaching job when Attucks closed. At Hopkinsville High, Falls served as an assistant to white coaches who had less experience and fewer accolades than he had.
“In his usual fashion, he said, ‘Brother Lynch, I enjoyed coaching, and I’m still doing some of it, but I am first an educator,’” Lynch said, “And that’s the way he felt. He really wanted to pour back into the lives of young people.”
Former players nominated Falls for the Kentucky Basketball Hall of Fame, which inducted him during a ceremony in 2019 at Bowling Green. A reception at the Pioneers Complex in Hopkinsville followed the induction. Falls was a founding member of Pioneers, a men’s service organization.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
