– 2018 Individual Inductees –
Elmo John Mahoney
&
Kenneth James Mahoney
Brother inventors Elmo John Mahoney (top left) and Kenneth James Mahoney (top right) were the sons of Thomas and Anna (Thielen) Mahoney. Their inventions of the Toss Back and the breakaway rim helped to revolutionize sports across the entire world. It is no wonder that they were easy choices for inclusion in the First Class of the Russell County Kansas Hall of Fame.
Elmo John Mahoney (born October 29, 1908) was a star basketball player and graduate of Kansas State University and later a member of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. He farmed his entire life in the Dorrance area and was named the Kansas Wheat King in 1938.
Elmo was president of the Russell County Farm Bureau, served as mayor of Dorrance and was a member of both the Dorrance Lions Club and Dorrance School Board, as well as a president of the Lake Wilson Development Association. Elmo was a charter member of the Kansas Flying Farmers and organized and promoted the first Wilson Czech Festival and Threshing Bee in Wilson, Kansas.
Elmo married Regina B. Schwartz in 1932 in Wilson.Together they raised a son, Garry, and two daughters, Linda and Janet.
In 1949-1950 Elmo served in the Kansas Legislature House of Representatives. He later worked as a Kansas state grain inspector and was a consultant in the United States Department of Agriculture during the Kennedy Administration.
His proficiency at engineering led him to invent the long-life sickle drive used on 18-22 foot harvester combine headers. This drive was particularly adapted where the crop was down and damp and matted and loaded with weeds. Together with his younger brother Kenneth he invented and manufactured the famous basketball and baseball Toss Back device as well as the automatic relief basketball goal (the breakaway rim), both of which revolutionized sports at all levels.
Elmo took time from his farming enterprises to be the curator and general manager of the National Agricultural Hall of Fame at Bonner Springs, Kansas when it first opened in 1965. Through his vision and many contacts the Ag Hall of Fame was able to accumulate a wide variety of fine antique and restored machines used in the early years of agricultural production. Many restorations that are presently on exhibition there were completed by Elmo.
Elmo was also a nationally-recognized authority on Avery steam and gasoline threshing rigs. His collection of Avery catalogs, literature, pictures and memorabilia was one of the largest in the country. Elmo died on February 7, 1979, of an apparent heart attack while driving his car. Friends saw his car lodge in a snow bank and rushed to his aid. They gave expert cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but it was too late. Elmo was laid to rest in the Saint Joseph Cemetery at Dorrance, Kansas.
In writing of Elmo’s passing, editor R. T. Townley had this to say in tribute: “The sudden death of Elmo John Mahoney, after 70 tumultuous years, seems almost out of character. He was a man who one might believe would have been gored in a bullring; trampled by a herd of charging elephants; lost on a flight to the Gobi Desert; or wasted by the CIA. Of course, none of these would or could happen to Elmo. He was first, last and always a family man, a man of consideration, love and devotion.”
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Kenneth James Mahoney (born graduated from Dorrance High School in 1942 and served in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II, participating in both in the Normandy Invasion and the Battle of Iwo Jima. After the war Kenneth enrolled at Kansas State University during the fall of 1946 and tried out for the freshmen basketball team along with 200 other hopefuls. He and one other player were chosen. Mahoney was quoted as saying, “I still remember Coach Jack Gardner coming over and pinning a number on my underwear.”
Kenneth played three seasons of basketball. He was a member of the Wildcats’ 1948 Final Four team, which was coached by fellow Kansas Sports Hall of Famers Jack Gardner and Tex Winter. From there Kenneth returned to Dorrance and took up farming, operating Quima Dairy in partnership with Martin Quint. From 1957 to 1967 Kenneth taught junior high students in Dorrance and Wilson. For several summers he assisted Tex Winter operating in Colorado one of the first basketball camps for aspiring high school players. In 1967, he and his family traveled to Sierra Leone, West Africa, where he directed newly minted Peace Corps volunteers and then worked with the University of Illinois’s USAID program to promote agricultural improvements.
Kenneth and his brother Elmo established Tossback, Inc. in 1970. This Dorrance-based company developed, manufactured, and marketed innovative sports training equipment and techniques. Ken and Elmo held several patents, including one for the famous Toss Back device that became a must-have device in the sports world and in the private home. The brothers also invented a breakaway basketball rim to be used on basketball goals, as too many were being shattered when players dunked the basketball. The National Basketball Association began using their rim exclusively, and soon they were being installed in high school and college basketball arenas around the world. Kenneth also redesigned the basketball backboard to make it safer for players, reducing injuries dramatically.
Late in life Kenneth’s contributions to the game of basketball were honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kansas State Basketball Coaches Association and induction into the Kansas State Sports Hall of Fame in 2009.
Kenneth passed away peacefully on his farm near Dorrance on January 31, 2010. He was laid to rest in the St. Joseph Cemetery at Dorrance, Kansas.
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Mahoney Breakaway Rim and Glass Backboard Adjustments Changed the Game
Ken Mahoney was a member of Kansas State’s first Final Four team in 1947. His older brother Elmo led the charge in the Kansas legislature during the late 1940’s to get the funding to build Ahearn field house. Together they changed the game of basketball with their breakaway rim and backboard adjustments that are still being used in basketball gyms and arenas throughout the world.
I first met Ken during the spring of 1962 when he arranged for me to visit Kansas State basketball coach Tex Winter in Manhattan. Mahoney was a good friend of Norbert Dreiling – a very bright and astute Hays attorney who was chairman of the Kansas Democratic Party and later strategist to get Robert Docking elected to four unprecedented terms as Governor of Kansas between the years 1966-1972.
Dreiling was also a close family friend – and Mahoney must have known Dreiling’s Volga German connection with a“HACE” city boy would be a useful recruiting strategy. Ted Owens, assistant to Dick Harp at Kansas, started recruiting me during my junior year. I had already made a visit to Lawrence; then Dick Harp came to our home in Hays to meet my parents. I was definitely leaning toward the Jayhawks.
But Mahoney’s trip set the stage for my eventual decision to become a Wildcat. Dreiling served as chauffer during our drive to Manhattan, while Mahoney, riding shot gun in the front seat talked up Kansas State as my dad and I listened. Later Tex came to Hays to seal the deal with a full scholarship offer, and I enrolled as a freshman to play basketball at K-State in the fall of 1962.
During the summer of 1963, Mahoney and Tex invited me to be a counselor at their summer basketball camp near Ward, Colorado. Mahoney said he’d provide the transportation and arrived at our home in Hays just before dark with a big pick up loaded with everything but the kitchen sink including heavy equipment, camping gear, sleeping bags, tools and a huge amount of supplies.
My parents looked startled as we waved goodbye and backed out of the driveway with a heavily overloaded truck. Mahoney’s daughter Rosemary, who was age 12, rode in the front seat and I drove the first shift, while Mahoney slept in the back of the truck.
We stopped for gas in Goodland, Kansas at around 11:30 p.m. When the attendant reached for the gas cap, Mahoney sat up in the back of the truck-bed covered with a blanket. The guy started shaking and turned as white as a sheet thinking Mahoney might have a gun under the blanket and was going to rob him.
Mahoney calmed the guy by saying, “Don’t worry, we’re just farmers heading west to Colorado.” We arrived at Camp Audubon to see a beautiful Colorado sunrise while standing at 10,000 feet above sea level. Mahoney’s first job was to get the diesel generator going with a hand crank. After many tries with a pop-pop-pop sound it finally started. I slept until noon.
Mahoney and Tex had a great set up because this was not just an ordinary camping experience. During a period of about seven years beginning in the early 1960s hundreds of boys ages 12-16, came from all over the country and enjoyed all the thrills of the Rockies including hiking canoeing, cook outs, riflery, archery, and basketball every night. Tex was the drawing card, but Mahoney made it work.
Mahoney was elected Favorite Man on Campus at Kansas State by the coeds and played as a reserve on the 1947-48 Final Four team. He was also a crowd favorite in Nichols Gym because of his razzle-dazzle globetrotter style with no look behind the back passes and ball fakes. When K-State had a comfortable lead, the crowd would chant, “We want Mahoney, we want Mahoney.”
After leaving Kansas State, he married his high school sweetheart Dorothy Major, in 1949, and they began farming just west of Dorrance. Dorothy was a Colorado University graduate and spent a brief career as a geologist. She played a major role (no pun intended) in Ken’s success and I always enjoyed hearing her say in her raspy voice, “Kenneth”. I never knew if that meant Ken was in trouble.
It was during one of those summer Colorado camping sessions at Camp Audubon in the mid 1960’s, when Ken asked Tex Winter what he needed most as a teaching tool. Tex told him, “I need a device as a developmental tool – something like a pitch back they use in baseball.”
Ken went to work and he and his brother Elmo came up with a device made with rectangular pipes with 3’ x 3’ dimensions using inner tube material as rubber bands to fasten a stretched volleyball net in the middle. He called it a Toss Back. I was a graduate student and assistant basketball coach at Kansas State in 1968 when Ken asked if I’d do a research paper on how to use it. We spent lots of time in Ahearn gym together to make it work, and I used the paper as part of my graduate degree research requirement.
We devised various passing drills where a player would pass the ball into the net and it would bounce back. We even did a few demonstrations on T.V. sports shows, and soon it caught on and became a tool used by coaches all over the country. Years later, Michael Jordan even demonstrated it at a clinic for Mahoney while Jordon played at North Carolina.
But the Mahoney brothers’ real game changer was the breakaway rim. The NCAA outlawed dunking the basketball in 1967, but brought it back in 1976. The NBA kept the dunk in the game, but soon problems arose. During the 1979-1980 NBA basketball season, Daryl Dawkins, known as Chocolate Thunder, shattered two backboards early in the season, one having occurred in Kansas City’s municipal auditorium in a game between the Kansas City Kings and Dawkins’ Philadelphia 76ers.
In 1980 NBA commissioner Larry O’Brien had heard about Mahoney’s breakaway goal and invited Ken to New York City along with five other vendors with similar devices to test the rims to see which one would meet the test. Mahoney’s rim was collapsible but had to be pushed back up by hand. The NBA wanted a rim that would snap back in place without stopping play.
“Within two weeks, my uncle Elmo and dad used the spring idea to come up with the solution,” said Tom Mahoney, during our phone visit from his home in Dorrance, Kansas where he still maintains a resemblance of the Mahoney business now called ProBound Sports.
The idea of using a piece of heavy duty coil spring from a sheer plow solved the problem and snapped the rim back in place. But, the Mahoney brothers didn’t know until several years later that another farm boy, Arthur Ehrat, about the same age as Mahoney, had filed a patent for the idea in 1975. Ehrat was recognized by the Smithsonian Institute in 1995 as the inventor of the idea of a snap back rim because his patent was the first one approved in 1982.
That didn’t matter, because Erhart’s model didn’t make the NBA’s final cut. “Ehrat didn’t have a workable rim, and we and another company made it to the finals after guys off the streets of New York were brought in to try and tear down the goals,” said Tom.
Ken was the visionary and salesman, while his brother Elmo was the engineer. Ken used his dynamic personality and did some improvising to convince the NBA officials that his product was superior to his competitors’ Slam Dunk rim.
“Dad brought out a step ladder and a hammer to make his point,” said Tom. “Dad told the NBA officials, look, do you want a rim that breaks away straight down in a teeter-totter motion when the rim pops back in position without putting any pressure against the glass like our rim does? Or, do you want a rim that pulls away from the glass and returns and slams up against the glass?”
According to Mahoney’s son Tom, “Dad said, let me give you an example – then climbed up the ladder and took his hammer and started tapping on the glass backboard. While looking at the NBA folks down below he said, how many times do I have to do this pounding, or how hard do I have to do this before the glass breaks because the rim returns against the glass?”
Game over. The NBA people said that’s obvious, the glass will break if you hit it in that direction, and they awarded Mahoney the contract.
Mahoney and NBA officials headed to Philadelphia to see if Chocolate Thunder could give it a try. According to Mahoney, “Dawkins hammered on the rim like you wouldn’t believe.” Dawkins was unable to shatter the backboard during the test, and in 1981, Mahoney’s breakaway rims were installed throughout the NBA, and later in high schools and college basketball arenas throughout America and in other parts of the world.
But the Mahoney brothers weren’t done yet. In 1984, Dr. J (Julius Erving) hit his head on the bottom of the backboard – 9 feet from the floor in an NBA slam dunk competition. Mahoney was called on again by the NBA, and this time he reduced the size of the backboard by six inches, padded the bottom section and made it concave instead of rectangular to eliminate the sharp edges. The backboards were changed from 9 feet from the floor to 9 feet six inches. The change has reduced hand, head and finger injuries dramatically.
Bill Walton, former UCLA and NBA star, said, “Newcomers to the world of basketball would not recognize the game played prior to the changes Ken Mahoney has instituted.”
One big change by Mahoney is the reinforcement devices added to the glass backboards as a precaution that led to a possible discovery as why the glass backboards were breaking in the first place. “During the process of stabilizing the backboards throughout the NBA, we found deficiencies by the glass backboard manufacturers where the 4 holes to attach the rim to the backboard were not lined up or installed properly with the right components which in itself would eventually have caused a failure of the backboards even with the breakaway rim,” said Tom. None of the Mahoney breakaway rims attached to backboards were ever shattered in the NBA.
Mahoney has rubbed shoulders with all the big names in the game including sportscaster Dick Vitale. During a 2008 feature article with Amy Bickel of the Hutchinson News, Mahoney said, “Vitale bought so much stuff from me and we weren’t getting paid.” Mahoney and his wife Dorothy planned a trip to Florida and stopped by a venue where Vitale was signing autographs. “I wanted an autograph put on a blank check,” said Mahoney. Vitale assured Mahoney the check was in the mail, “and it was,” Mahoney said.
Toss Back was sold to Gared Sports Inc. out of St. Louis in 1988, and Mahoney stayed on as general manager, keeping the manufacturing location in Dorrance. He continued to stay active and was recognized by the Kansas Basketball Coaches Association with an award in 2008, and then was inducted into the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2009.
He died peacefully at his farm home near Dorrance surrounded by family on January 31, 2010. I attended his service on February 4th at St Joseph’s Catholic Church in Dorrance. Just as the service was drawing to a close I could hear that pop-pop-pop sound I first heard at Camp Audubon in 1963 and felt Ken’s presence, and was filled with emotion. This time it was a John Deere tractor pulling a trailer with Mahoney’s coffin draped in an American flag, waiting outside the church for friends and family to take him to his final resting place at the cemetery nearby.
The next time you are driving west on I-70 and pass the Dorrance exit, start looking for a beautiful brick home with adjacent buildings about 5 miles west to your left just off I-70, pause a moment and pay your respects to Ken Mahoney, the man who changed the game of basketball. And, don’t forget Elmo too. May they rest in peace.” – Larry Weigel, March 15, 2016, www.proboundsports.com/pbs-news/.
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SOURCES:
www.farmcollector.com/steam-traction/as-unusual-story
www.pvpmortuary.com/index.asp?DocumentID=479
Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.
Ancestry.com. U.S. WWII Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.