Myles Brand tribute in Indy draws big names, high praise

INDIANAPOLIS – When Nils Hasselmo thinks about Myles Brand, he pictures the former IU president “charging across the desert on a fast horse, notebook in hand.”

Brand, an avid rider, was the president of IU from 1994 to 2002 and the National Collegiate Athletic Association from 2002 until he died Sept. 16 of pancreatic cancer.

About 1,000 friends, family and coworkers attended a tribute to Brand on Wednesday at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. Hasselmo, a former president of the University of Minnesota, was one of several speakers and performers at the tribute.

“(Brand) will be sorely missed by us, his personal friends, and he will also be missed in higher education,” Hasselmo said.

During the tribute, which lasted about two hours and was hosted by sportscaster Jim Nantz, John Mellencamp and singer Sylvia McNair performed musical tributes.

Co-workers, family members and three NCAA basketball coaches spoke on the influential president’s legacy.

IU President Michael McRobbie also announced a new endowed professorship for cancer research named after Brand.

“He changed me and how I view the world, and I was not alone in that response,” said John Walda, one of the trustees who helped hire Brand and a close friend of Brand’s.
“It struck me from (our) first conversation that Myles Brand’s philosophy about higher
education was exactly what a university is all about.”

During his eight-year tenure at IU, Brand was known for spearheading efforts to improve information technology systems, consolidating IU Medical Center hospitals and Methodist Hospital to form Clarian Health, and his controversial firing of former men’s basketball coach Bob Knight.

As the first former university president to preside over the NCAA, Brand worked to make academics a more important part of the collegiate athletics experience, insisting that athletes should be in college to get an education first and foremost.

Duke men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, Georgia Tech’s men’s basketball coach Paul Hewitt and Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt testified to Brand’s impact on the collegiate game. Summit called Brand a “powerful leader without an ego” and “a difference-maker in our game.”

McRobbie said IU has already received 145 gifts totaling $1.1 million for the new endowed professorship, and IU will contribute an additional $1 million.

“It was one of the greatest honors of my life when (Brand) chose me as one of his vice presidents,” McRobbie said. “He was an outstanding president and a truly great man of dignity and grace.”

Brand’s son, Josh, closed the ceremony with an emotional tribute to his father, calling himself “his father’s son,” and remembering how “we’d cross and uncross our legs at the same time” and seemingly think and speak the same thoughts. Like the rest of the speakers, it was the happy memories that stuck out, Josh Brand said.

“Now Myles has ridden off into the sunset,” Hasselmo concluded, “but I can still hear the beating of his horse’s hooves.”