Basketball legend Garry Donna dies at 73

I first met Garry Donna shortly after starting at the Indianapolis Star in the spring of 2008. We met at a restaurant on the west side and talked – Garry talked, I mostly listened – as lunch turned into mid-afternoon.

In the course of that lunch and the several years that followed, two things were obvious: Donna cared deeply about basketball in the state of Indiana and the people around the game. And Garry knew everybody. Seriously, you could not spend five minutes with Garry Donna without running into somebody who knew him.

Donna, the longtime owner, editor and publisher of Hoosier Basketball Magazine, died Sunday at age 73. After 46 years of publishing the magazine — a comprehensive preview of every team in the state — Donna had turned over the business to longtime assistant Kip Wesner last year.

I last talked at length with Donna late last summer at his office near W. 38th Street and Guion Road. It was clear that his health was in decline and he needed prodding at times from Wesner to answer questions, which was unusual for the normally quick-witted Donna. But we talked for almost three hours about his time developing the magazine, which became a staple of the high school basketball scene after he purchased it for $2,600 from former Indianapolis Star columnist Tom Keating in 1970.

The magazine came along at the perfect time. The framed covers, which lined his third-floor office, displayed the faces of stars such as Glenn Robinson, Steve Alford, Yogi Ferrell and many, many others through years. Earning a spot on the cover of Hoosier Basketball Magazine was almost equal in Indiana to a Sports Illustrated cover.

“It wasn’t too difficult to pick out the people for the cover,” Donna said last summer. “Particularly who should be the main pictures. It was a little tougher who should be down the sides. But basically, I just did it. I pretty much knew who the best players were.”

Donna knew because he was so well-connected, through his work for the magazine and his visibility at games. Donna knew the players because he’d seen them in person, many of them on multiple occasions.

“I used to go to 200 games a year,” Donna said. “Later on, I cut it back to probably 100. One time, several years ago, I’d figured I’d been to around 7,000 games.”

He was also one of the first to recognize girls basketball, putting it on the same level as the boys’ game with its early stars on the Hoosier Basketball Magazine covers. Donna later started the North/South Indiana All-Star Classic, which will be played on April 9 at Logansport. He also started the Hoosiers’ Reunion Classic in Knightstown a decade ago and was the longtime coordinator of the boys and girls Top 60 Senior Workouts.

In 2006, Donna was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.

“At one time, I had started the magazine and I was also teaching and coaching at Cathedral,” he said. “I was coaching baseball and basketball. I had a lot going on.”

Donna never anticipated the long-term success of the magazine. In the early years, he relied heavily on the help of sports writers like Jimmy Angelopoulos of the Indianapolis News and Bob Williams of the Star. Chris Theofanis, a longtime public relations director at Butler, was also a key contributor. Charlie Jenkins of WXVW Radio and Dennis Kraft of the Elkhart Truth were named by Donna, as well as Don Bates, Mike Chappell and Pat McKee from the Star.

“There were so many people who helped,” Donna said. “It’s hard to single out any one person.”

Wesner met Donna one day in 1991 at Purdue and helped him sell a box of magazines. He became a full-time employee for Donna in 1993. By that time, Hoosier Basketball Magazine was entrenched as “the Bible” of high school basketball.

“It took a lot of work for him to get it off the ground,” Wesner said. “And it still took a lot of work to keep it going. But I think once he had established that name, it made it a lot easier to reach people. They knew who he was.”

Donna was a standout basketball player in high school, leading Cathedral in scoring as a junior and senior (graduating in 1961). He was also a standout baseball player, president of the student council and graduated second in his class of 215 students. Donna went on to graduate from Butler before beginning work as a teacher and coach.

Though he was a successful businessman, Donna didn’t dress the part. He was known for wearing sweatsuits or windbreakers instead of a shirt and tie. But Donna valued substance over style and his opinion held value with those who followed the game.

“It did mean something that people did, for the most part, respect my opinion,” he said. “I think that’s why I never got too much negative feedback. They knew that I knew what I was talking about. I traveled. I went to 200 games a year. People saw me everywhere.”

Donna often called Hoosier Basketball Magazine “a labor of love.” Even amid the mounting challenges of producing the magazine in an increasingly digital world, its release remains one of the lasting traditions of high school basketball.

“Once I started doing it, I never thought about not doing it,” Donna said. “It just came natural to do it. People wanted it. They looked forward to it. They’d be calling to find out who was on the cover. Obviously it’s a labor love to do it for 46 years.”

Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.