That was my promise to him — to take care of him until he doesn’t know who we are. – Kimberly Reardon, Hundley's girlfriend

It is cruel irony that Hot Rod Hundley can no longer complete a sentence. As a TV and radio play-by-play announcer for the Utah Jazz, he described more than 3,000 games, stringing together thousands and thousands of sentences in his rapid-fire staccato delivery. Now he struggles to make one of them.

Hot Rod has Alzheimer’s.

“You wouldn’t be able to get a complete sentence out of him if you tried to talk to him now,” his girlfriend, Kimberly Reardon, says.

Hundley and Reardon were in his hometown of Charleston, West Virginia, last weekend to attend a number of events honoring the basketball and broadcast legend. Saturday was designated as Hot Rod Hundley Day, which was duly noted above the masthead of the local newspapers. The governor issued a proclamation. The local YMCA — a former refuge for Hot Rod during his lonely boyhood days — named its gym after him. At halftime of the West Virginia-Marshall basketball game on Sunday, he was honored again. Meanwhile, there is an effort underway to build a statue in his honor.

“We thought about waiting until the spring,” said one official of the weekend events. “But after seeing him, I’m glad we didn’t.”

Many old friends and mentors from Hundley’s high school and college years attended Saturday’s ceremony at the YMCA, all of which seemed to rally Hundley’s faculties. Andy Richardson, a city councilman who presented the honors, recalled, “Despite his Alzheimer’s, he stepped over to a group of little boys at the dedication and asked each of them their names and encouraged them to be good boys and work hard to be good basketball players. It was amazing. He just turned it on and connected with those kids as one who had been there.”

The 80-year-old Hundley was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s about 18 months after he retired from the Jazz in 2009. Reardon, who is no stranger to the disease, recognized the signs prior to that. Her mother, grandmother, aunt and former mother-in-law all had Alzheimer’s. She met Hundley about seven years ago and saw the early warning signs: Repeating himself in conversation, difficulty remembering things when he was on the air, a halting walk.

“I could see what was coming,” she says. “I’m not overly religious, but God put us together for a reason.”

Like some Alzheimer patients, Hundley has sundown syndrome in which he becomes disoriented and hallucinatory when the sun goes down.

“His mind is failing pretty badly,” says Reardon. “We had a good time together. I just want to make it as good as I can. Every day you just want him to be happy. We travel a lot, and people say he’s not going to remember it; so what, he’s happy (at the time).” Otherwise, with some irony she notes, “He is healthy. That’s the sad part. My grandmother lived (with Alzheimer’s) for 15 years. They say you lose them twice — once mentally and once physically.”

Reardon is one of the driving forces behind the project to place a bronze statue of Hot Rod (performing a hook shot) in front of the basketball arena at West Virginia University, adjacent to the statue of Jerry West. The plan is to raise $250,000 through a series of fundraisers and private donations. Reardon shows Hundley photos of the statue repeatedly because she believes his disease will be too advanced to appreciate the statue when it is completed in about nine months.

“In another four months or so, he’ll probably be placed (in a care facility),” she says. “That was my promise to him — to take care of him until he doesn’t know who we are.”

The weekend of events was a victory lap of sorts for Hundley. The idea for honoring him in his hometown began with the local YMCA. According to Richardson, “(The YMCA) was doing some reflecting and decided they hadn’t done a good job of recognizing their heritage.”

Hundley, whose life has been the subject of two books (and a movie that never got off the ground), is part of that heritage. The YMCA was a second home for him during his troubled childhood. His teenage mother was abandoned by her husband shortly after Hundley was born in 1934. As Hundley recounted in a lengthy Deseret News profile in 2003, she was unable to care for him and placed him in a number of foster homes, where he was abused and neglected.

Eventually, Hundley was placed with a kindly elderly couple. He lived with them until he was 16 and then, restless and wild, he moved into a cheap hotel and lived there for years without supervision, hanging out in pool halls and bars — anywhere where there were people, he said, because he didn’t want to be alone.

He was happiest when he was playing basketball. He sneaked into the YMCA and spent most of his free time honing his basketball skills there. He became a sensation on the court. He was named all-state three times, averaging 30 points per game, and had more than 100 scholarship offers. At West Virginia, he became only the fourth player in history to score more than 2,000 points (averaging 24.5 points per game for his career), and did it in three years (because freshmen were banned from the game).

Hundley was a two-time All-American and the first pick of the 1957 NBA draft. He was selected for two NBA All-Star games while playing for the Lakers, but his career would last only six years, which he later blamed on his hard-living life off the court in Hollywood.

"Boy, you talk about regrets," Hot Rod told the Deseret News in 2003. "I'd have a nice pension now. If I had had Jerry (West's) dedication. I had more natural talent than he did. I was an idiot. I was too busy Hollywooding it."

He wound up winning just as much acclaim for his work in the booth as he did on the court. He worked four seasons for the Suns and four more seasons for the Lakers before becoming the voice of a new NBA team, the New Orleans Jazz, in 1974, a job he would hold, either on radio or TV or both, for 35 years, well after the team moved to Utah.

“He’s iconic,” says Richardson.

According to Reardon, a movie is in the works about Hundley’s life, but she says he won’t be able to contribute much to it. For now, she says, “He’s pretty aware” of some of the things that are being done in his honor. Meanwhile, she adds, “I just keep showing him pictures of that statue. That makes him happy.”

Doug Robinson's columns run on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Email: drob@deseretnews.com