Tony Spino helps John Wooden as Vin Scully applauds during an event at the Nokia Theatre in 2008. Wooden and Spino were inseparable for years before the former UCLA coach died. (Bernstein & Associates)
When it came time to say goodbye, he could not.
John Wooden was dead. He was Tony Spino's friend and "I wouldn't leave him," says the UCLA athletic trainer who became Wooden's 24-hour caretaker in the coach's final years.
T.J. Simers
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"To see him slowly die in front of me was hard, yet I had a job to do to take care of him," Spino says. "But it really hit me when he died. I was the only one left in the hospital room and I cried my eyes out.
"I couldn't go away. I waited for the mortuary to come and get him, bag him and tag him. It was so weird, it was like I wanted them to take me and not him.''
It has been more than a year since Wooden's death, and Spino, 61, understands now Coach's undying devotion to his wife, Nellie, who passed 25 years before her husband.
"He never got over the loss; that emptiness was always there,'' Spino says. "I now know that emptiness.''
It gets no easier for Spino. He loses his brother-in-law in March, his own father in June, his father firm and loving like Coach.
"It's like losing two fathers,'' he says, "And most people lose only one.''
Wooden fell 132 days shy of making his 100th birthday, and what a celebration it would've been.
"He wouldn't have liked it,'' says Spino. How many times did the two men argue about dying — Wooden wanting to go but Spino trumping him with, "It's God's will.''
Spino was a trainer for Wooden's freshman basketball team in the early '70s, and took a job as the Milwaukee Bucks' trainer when Wooden retired in 1975.
He returned to UCLA in 1981, and when a doctor asked Spino to look in on Wooden, he didn't stop until the day Coach died.
"First time I walk into his condo there's all this Abraham Lincoln stuff on one side, Mother Teresa on the other and John Wooden sitting in the middle. Holy smokes!''
For the next 25 years Spino goes to the Wooden condo three times a week, 6 to 9 a.m., before continuing to UCLA to work with its athletic teams. As Wooden grows older, it becomes five days, and then six.
"When I drive the 101 and I don't get off at Exit 22, it's like I'm making a mistake," he says, his car already making that turn a while back before he realizes there's no reason to be exiting.
When Wooden finishes his morning exercise routine, Spino drives him to Vip's, Wooden's favorite breakfast hangout. Always the same booth, most often No. 2 on the menu, but on wild and crazy days, No. 1 — which is No. 2 with pancakes.
Spino does not order breakfast because Coach does not allow him to pick up the tab.
"People join him all the time,'' Spino says. "One lady comes in, says hi to me, hi to Coach and sits down. She starts talking to Coach and eating his pancakes.
"When she leaves, Coach wants to know, 'Who's your friend?' I think he's kidding. I thought it was his friend. He says, 'Well, I think she enjoyed her breakfast.' ''
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