A lifetime courting the game

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BANGOR – Friday night, the 2nd of December, 1955. Quick, now, who played the first high school basketball game at the “New Bangor Auditorium?”

Had to be the Bangor Rams, defending state champions, who beat the Old Town Indians 65-52 on a Friday night – right? Of course, that was the first varsity game played in the new facility. Bob Morin scored 18 points that evening and was tough on the boards.

But the first to take the floor that night were the Bangor Jayvees, who lost their game to the Old Town Jayvees, 63-44.

On the court for the young Bangor team were Blackwell, Smith, Chrisakos, Predaris, Murray, Goode, Bryant, Wallis, Vomvoris, White and a sophomore named Wayne Lawton, who racked up 14 points and went on to referee basketball games at the auditorium and numerous other facilities in eastern Maine for some 20 years – including back-to-back state finals in the 1970s.

For Lawton, a 1958 graduate of Bangor High School, a lifelong passion for basketball began during his youth in Southwest Harbor.

“Pemetic [High School] had good teams,” he recalled. “To go to the tournament at the old Bangor Auditorium, that would be like Christmas to me.”

Then, to be on a Bangor team that played the first high school game at the new auditorium,Lawton said, “It was the equivalent of playing the Boston Garden to play in that beautiful facility.”

It was a good era for Bangor, whose varsity teams won state titles in 1955 and 1959, and also had excellent records in 1957 and 1958, the years Lawton played varsity.

“My senior year, we were Number 1, but lost to Caribou in the tournament,” he said.

“I felt basketball was in its zenith. When I played, basketball was as good as it ever was. It peaked in the late ’50s and early ’60s.

Lawton’s teammates at Bangor included William S. Cohen, future city councilor, congressman, senator and U.S. secretary of defense from Maine.

It wasn’t Cohen’s natural athletic ability that made him outstanding on the court, Lawton said.

“Bill Cohen was an extremely hard worker,” he said. “He really made himself a good ballplayer, just as when he studied.”

After high school, it was a couple of years before Lawton became a basketball official.

“I guess I was maybe 20, when I got into refereeing an adult recreational league, then into JVs,” he said. “After five or six years I took a board test,” and thus began two decades of refereeing a lot of varsity games, and even some small-college games, from 1966 to 1985.

From the very beginning, Lawton knew refereeing was for him.

“I loved it,” he said. “I loved basketball and I wanted to be involved in basketball. To me refereeing was always much better than coaching.”

Sure, there were fans, and coaches, who didn’t agree with all of his calls.

“It never bothered me,” he said. “The next night, we’re refereeing in another town.”

When he started officiating in the 1960s, “the schools hired you – up to four home games a year,” Lawton recalled. “In the ’70s, they started the assignment system.”

Some weeks he would be on the road every night – Penobscot County, Piscataquis County, Hancock County, parts of Washington County, and down to Fairfield, Waterville and Rockland.

Lawton enjoyed going to the various towns and cities, “especially those where basketball was so important to the community. Basketball was the only game in town in the winter.”

His favorite games to referee, of course, were the tournament games. “I loved it,” he said. “I refereed state finals back to back – Rumford and Stearns [in 1977], and the next year, Cony and South Portland.

“The more pressure, the better I liked it,” he said. “It was a form of relaxation” after his day job in advertising with the Bangor Daily News.

There are a few basketball rules the fans sometimes don’t understand, Lawton acknowledged.

“The back-court rule,” he mentioned for one, “and blocking and charging – a very subjective call. I think referees by and large do a very good job calling it.”

With all the running up and down the hardwood floors, it’s important for a referee to be in shape at the beginning of the season.

“I used to start in the fall, running out on the roads,” Lawton said. “Then I started refereeing preseason scrimmages. In later years, I would ice my ankles after every game – I was refereeing virtually every night.”

He had things thrown at him on occasion while he was officiating – everything from money to an apple that went whizzing over his head at the Bangor Auditorium.

“But for the most part, the fans are good,” he said.

Coaches who got ruffled didn’t bother him very much either. “You always had in mind – it’s the kids” that the game is about, he said.

Lawton has long since hung up his whistle, but sports arenas still call to him.

These days you can often find him among the spectators at a place named Alfond on the University of Maine campus – still loving a game called basketball.