KNOXVILLE, Tenn. Dick Campbell, a former head basketball coach at The Citadel from 1968-71, passed away Tuesday afternoon at Blount Memorial Hospital in Knoxville after a short illness at the age of 81. Campbell recorded the second-highest winning percentage of any Bulldog coach in the modern era.
Campbell coached basketball on the high school and college level for more than 40 years and went 45-54 for the Bulldogs from 1968-71, a .455 winning percentage. Former Bulldogs head coach and athletic director Les Robinson was an assistant coach under Campbell.
A native of Greenville, S.C., he graduated cum laude from Furman in 1953 as he received his bachelor's degree. He acquired his master's degree in physical education from Tennessee in1961.
From 1953 to 1958, he was basketball coach and athletic director at North Greenville then a junior college. While at North Greenville, Campbell posted a 135-29 record and his teams had won 50 consecutive conference games when he left.
In 1958, Campbell was named head coach at Carson-Newman College, where he posted a 227-64 record. The National Basketball Writers Association named him the NAIA Coach of the Year in 1965.
Campbell was selected by the United States Department of State to coach the State Department team and conduct clinics on a 51-day goodwill tour of South America and the Caribbean Islands during the summer of 1964. His team, co-sponsored by the AAU, established a 91-1 record on the trip.
After The Citadel, Campbell went on to coach at Xavier for two seasons and at Belmont for four seasons before coaching Halls and Carter High Schools. In 2008, Campbell was inducted into the Greater Knoxville (Tenn.) Hall of Fame.
"Looking back, I had accomplished everything I could have accomplished (as a coach)," Mr. Campbell said in a Knoxville News Sentinel story in July 2008 concerning his induction that year into the Greater Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame.
"The good Lord blessed me," recalled Mr. Campbell in that story last year. "I know that what I did was what I was supposed to do."
Campbell also served in the Navy. His wife, Betty, passed away in 2001. His son, Chris, serves in the military and had shipped out for Iraq on Monday.
Funeral services are incomplete.
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