Gonzaga doesn’t actually hang retired jerseys in the gym rafters. The number and name of the commemorated Zag are placed on a Navy blue banner and raised on high with appropriate ceremony.

And since the upper reaches of the McCarthey Athletic Center will showcase three additions this season, it’s timely to rewind and update the newer vintage GU fans with details of the “44” that was elevated in 2005.

The number belonged to Frank Burgess, Gonzaga’s first basketball All-American, more than 60 years ago. The stats trumpet Burgess’ unprecedented and still unmatched production. He holds the all-time scoring record (2,196 points) although he played three seasons rather than four, and in an era without 3-point baskets.

For contemporary reference relatable to youngblood Zag fans, All-American Drew Timme already has played 26 more games than Burgess and stands more than 500 points short of his career record.

More compelling than the stats is how his story substantiates the value of sports as a societal door-opener, and witnesses the capacity of a determined man to reach unimaginable personal potential.

Burgess died of cancer in 2010 at age 75. The previous year, I had a chance to chat with him about his life. Crucial to his story was the Tacoma site of the interview: His chambers as a presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed United States District Court judge.

It was a surprising place, with the expected heavy furniture and colorful ranks of law books sharing space with a pair of framed All-American certificates, and, unexpectedly, one of those gag singing-fish plaques. The office told much about Burgess, a man of stentorian oratory and magisterial bearing, blended with whimsy and mischievous humor.

The extent of Burgess’ rise can only be plumbed by understanding where he started. Asked about Eudora, Arkansas, near the Mississippi River and the borders of Louisiana and Mississippi, Burgess kidded that a hurricane once blew through his hometown and did “$100,000 in improvements.”

Damages, you mean?

“No, improvement.” He belly-laughed at that one.

Mike Roth, as former GU athletic director, got to know Burgess well.

“His dad was a sharecropper and they were literally dirt poor,” he said of Burgess. “He was so humble about everything, including the success he had. But what he was able to accomplish, considering the state of how things were in our country, was mind-boggling.”

His father had a fourth-grade education, and the eight Burgess children were raised with much love and discipline. The intense segregation in Arkansas in the late 1940s and ’50s, was defined by the official name of his school: Eudora Colored High School.

Burgess could shoot a basketball with such accuracy, though, he was invited to play at what is now called Arkansas-Pine Bluff for a year. He joined the Air Force in 1954, and while stationed in Germany, earned recognition playing on service teams.

Of the colleges that came seeking his attendance, GU was the only one, Burgess said, that stressed academics. He eventually would be voted class president.

Asked of his basketball memories at GU, he said only that he remembered “feeling silly running around in those little britches.” He could have mentioned leading the nation in scoring (32.4 points per game) as a senior, or hanging 40 points or more on seven opponents, but that was not his way.

The Lakers drafted Burgess with the 27th pick in the 1961 NBA draft, but he chose to play with the new American Basketball League’s Hawaii franchise. When the league soon folded, he entered Gonzaga Law School.

Married, with twin daughters, Burgess worked the night shift at Washington Water Power, answering calls for emergency services, while advancing his law studies.

Based on his subsequent achievements rising through the legal and justice system, Burgess, in 1994, was nominated by president Bill Clinton to the U.S. District Court.

Burgess often returned to GU for alumni events, Roth said, and his influence seemed even stronger among recent alums than contemporary players.

“I think Frank’s greatest impact on Gonzaga basketball was on the guys who had already finished,” Roth said. “They looked at him as an example of what could be accomplished once you were done.”

Gonzaga’s law school probably should retire his judge’s robe, too.

Of the thousands of people interviewed over the years, those who succeeded or failed intrepidly, strivers and achievers, I found Frank Burgess one of the rarest and most compelling.

He joked whenever he had a chance to brag, and he spoke of others when he could have spoken of himself. He was a difference maker in people’s lives – especially as an inspiration.

I told him that the arc of his story, from poverty in Jim Crow Arkansas to a place on a Federal Court bench, in my mind, made him a genuine American Success Story.

He laughed and shook his head at first, but put on a satisfied smile as he thought about it.

“I guess I’d have to say I’m proud of what I was able to overcome, that I got past some stuff,” he said. “I learned that if you get knocked to the ground, you have to decide if you are going to quit or you’re going to fight through it.”

Few ever came so far to reach so high.

All the way into the rafters.