LEXINGTON, Ky. — Tucked toward the back of “Memorial Coliseum: 75 Years as Monument, Stage, and Arena” — a new book chronicling the history of the Lexington landmark — a series of memories from Kentucky basketball greats can be found.

There’s UK’s all-time leading scorer, Dan Issel, recalling the inside of the locker room and the lengths players in his day would go to in order to sneak friends into the building on game days.

There’s Kentucky basketball legend Jack “Goose” Givens fondly remembering the final home game in Memorial Coliseum — he was a sophomore at the time — before the move to Rupp Arena.

There’s UK Hall of Famer Jim Andrews looking back on his recruiting trip to campus in the late 1960s, highlighted by a first visit to the arena that ultimately had a “big influence” on his decision to commit to the Wildcats.

And there’s a whole lot of other words — from former Kentucky players, well-known broadcasters and others that have lived inside the UK basketball orbit — that are sure to pique the interest of longtime fans of the program.

But the real treat of this new history of Memorial Coliseum lies in the visuals.

“I wanted this to be an illustrated history, so the pictures are large,” said Kevin Cook, the book’s author. “Basically each page will have a large picture or two, and then it’ll have text to explain it. People can enjoy the pictures without the text, but I think the text is important. I looked for things that were milestones in the history of the Coliseum, but also some offbeat-looking pictures. I’d look, and it would be like, ‘What is this?’ ”

The finished product will surely delight diehard Kentucky basketball fans, but there’s also plenty here to occupy those with a passing interest — or no interest at all — in UK hoops.

“I think there’s something for everybody, whatever your cup of tea is,” Cook said. “If you like architecture, there’s that. If you like men’s basketball, there’s that. Women’s sports, there’s that. And then a tip of the hat, big time, to those from Kentucky who gave their lives for their country.”

Cook grew up in a Navy family, moving in and out of Kentucky several times throughout his life but always referring to the commonwealth as home.

He was a toddler living inside the state during the Rupp’s Runts season that ended with a loss in the 1966 national title game. Cook never attended a UK basketball game in Memorial Coliseum, but he did see Issel and Louie Dampier lead the Kentucky Colonels against the Utah Stars in an ABA contest not long before the Wildcats made the permanent move to Rupp.

Cook was about 10 years old at the time.

“It was just overwhelming. It was beautiful — the nicest arena that I’d ever been in,” he said. “And seeing these Kentucky stars that I grew up hearing about — I was already a Kentucky fan — but it got me even more interested, especially in Memorial Coliseum.”

Five decades later, that interest has led to this illustrated history of the building.

Cook, a Navy veteran who moved back to Central Kentucky in 2000, lives in Nicholasville and authored a 2022 book titled “House of Champions” — a chronicle of UK’s basketball homes in the pre-Rupp Arena era.

While researching that book, he was frustrated to find that there were very few quality photographs depicting the inside of Alumni Gym, which was the Wildcats’ home from 1924 to 1950, when the team moved into Memorial Coliseum.

Alumni Gym is now a fitness center on UK’s campus, completely renovated and unrecognizable from the time the Wildcats called it home. Upon hearing about the recent renovations to Memorial Coliseum, Cook feared a similar historical fate might be in store for that arena.

“I thought, ‘Man, depending on how big this renovation is, all of this historical stuff — a lot of it that has not changed since it opened in 1950 — will be lost,’ ” he recalled.

Cook asked around to see if anyone was planning to extensively document the inside of the building before those renovations took place. He discovered there were no such plans, and the idea for this book was born.

Since he’d done so much research on Memorial Coliseum for his 2022 book, he figured completing this chronicle would be a relative breeze.

“Well, of course, it ended up taking two years,” he said.

Memorial Coliseum’s storied history

Thumb through the pages of Cook’s illustrated history, and it’s clear why this work took much longer than expected to complete. The book is filled with hundreds of photographs of Memorial Coliseum, inside and out, with extensive research to put those images into context.

There are historical photos starting from the time of the construction of the building, with black-and-white images throughout its busiest years to color photos (many taken by Cook himself) of the Coliseum just before the recent $82 million renovation and the aftermath of that makeover.

Obviously, UK basketball is the star of this chronicle.

The first Kentucky team to play in Memorial Coliseum won the NCAA title, the final UK squad to call it home ended up as NIT champions, and plenty of hoops history was made in the years between.

The early text of the book sets the stage for the building’s construction, which was necessitated by the need for a bigger space for the UK basketball team, which had long outgrown the cramped confines of Alumni Gym as coach Adolph Rupp oversaw the program’s rise to national prominence.

World War II delayed plans for a new arena, and that conflict ultimately led to Memorial Coliseum becoming a reality. UK wanted a bigger home for basketball, and the university’s president went to the state legislature with the idea of a facility that could meet that need while also honoring those from the commonwealth who were killed in the war.

“It became a $4 million arena, which was just unbelievable for the time,” Cook said.

On Memorial Day 1950, the building was opened to the public — a combined event that included UK’s baccalaureate service and a consecration of the Coliseum as a war memorial.

The Wildcats moved in for the 1950-51 season, and the building became home to some of the program’s greatest stars.

Cook’s book chronicles the Cats’ history there in painstaking detail — with photos of big games, household names and memorable moments — but there’s also plenty of space reserved for the non-basketball aspects of the building, including some quirky features of the Coliseum.

“One thing people ask a lot about is, ‘Was there a swimming pool in the Coliseum?’ And the answer is yes,” he said. “If you jump off the high dive, you could — probably, if you want to — hit the ceiling. There’s a picture in the book of a guy in a competition, and I don’t know how he’s missing the ceiling.”

In addition to becoming the home to women’s basketball, volleyball, gymnastics and other UK teams, Memorial Coliseum hosted all sorts of sporting events — from that ABA game that sparked Cook’s interest 50 years ago to an indoor tennis match between John McEnroe and Jim Courier.

The building was also the stage for speeches by U.S. presidents and a major concert venue. Billy Graham preached inside the Coliseum. Bob Hope entertained there. Thousands showed up for a memorial service honoring John F. Kennedy. The basketball court was even used for high school sock hops and other community events.

It’s all chronicled in Cook’s history. A personal highlight for the author is a special section dedicated to the military history behind the Coliseum.

“To be honest, just from a personal standpoint, it was documenting and honoring the memorial aspect of it,” Cook said. “That was personal to me. I think it’s personal to a lot of people. I wanted that to be in there, for those that it was important to to be able to have something about that. And I don’t think that had been sort of documented in the way that I had.

“Obviously, the Coliseum means a lot. There are a lot of fun aspects to it, but it does have a very serious aspect to its purpose as well.”

Event with UK basketball stars

Copies of “Memorial Coliseum: 75 Years as Monument, Stage, and Arena” are available for pre-order ahead of Monday’s release date through the publisher, Acclaim Press, for a list price of $39.95.

The book will also be available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other local bookstores, such as Joseph-Beth Booksellers.

And there’s a special book launch Monday evening inside the building itself.

The UK Alumni Association is hosting that event, which will feature appearances by more than a dozen Kentucky basketball figures — Givens, Andrews, Kenny Walker and Sean Woods, among them — who will be there, alongside Cook, to sign copies of the book.

Tickets are $10 — those interested can register online through the Alumni Association — and copies of the book will be available for purchase for $40 at the event.

Cook thanked Jim Host — who also wrote the foreword to the book — for helping facilitate Monday’s event. Issel and current UK coach Mark Pope are among those who have supplied endorsements.

“There have been hundreds of books written about Kentucky basketball, but none as unique as ‘Memorial Coliseum: 75 Years as Monument, Stage and Arena,’ ” wrote Issel, who starred for the Cats from 1967-70. “This is a book that belongs in every Big Blue fan’s collection.”

Issel’s Kentucky teams had a combined regular-season record of 40-1 inside Memorial Coliseum.

Though the Wildcats moved to Rupp Arena for the 1976-77 season, the Coliseum remained the team’s primary practice facility through the Tubby Smith era, before the completion of the adjoining Joe Craft Center.

The cast of former players and other UK basketball figures scheduled to appear Monday night stretch from Rupp’s heyday to Smith’s tenure as the coach of the Wildcats. They’ll all be there to share tales of Memorial Coliseum’s history.

“Some of the younger people may not know some of the older names. I think it’s a great opportunity to find out about them,” Cook said. “I was sort of focusing on those that had either played in the Coliseum or had practiced there, prior to the Craft Center. So it’s those who really know the Coliseum from a firsthand standpoint — that’s what I was looking for. All of these players kindly agreed to come, and I’m tickled to death.”

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