Coach William Falls’ family finds closure and connection in Hopkinsville

It had been a little more than three years since Bill Falls and I first met through email and then a phone interview concerning his late grandfather, Attucks High School basketball coach William Falls.

Early in 2021, the grandson was searching online for information about his grandfather’s coaching career when he was surprised to learn through a Hoptown Chronicle article that William Falls had been inducted into the Kentucky High School Basketball Hall of Fame in August 2019.

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Bill Falls told me it was the first he had heard about it. Bill and his immediate family members — mother Ronnie Falls and siblings Linsey Falls and Mia Falls-McIntosh — were initially deeply disappointed that they hadn’t been made aware of plans for the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Elizabethtown.

Coach Falls amassed a record of 663 wins to 233 loses at Attucks. His teams at the segregated school for Black students won two state titles in the Kentucky High School Athletic League Championships and four times advanced to a national tournament.

After local schools became fully integrated and Attucks graduated its last class in 1967, Falls became an assistant basketball coach at Hopkinsville High School. He died in a tragic accident near the school on Dec. 13, 1973, when a train hit his car at the tracks on LaFayette Road near Country Club Lane.

Although none of Coach Fall’s surviving relatives still live in Hopkinsville, they remain keenly interested in the community as a vital place in the family’s history. After our first interview, Bill Falls told me that he hoped to visit soon. But the pandemic and life in general pushed those plans off for a while.

I finally got to meet Bill Falls in person a few days ago when he and several relatives came to Hopkinsville.

Sadly, the family was in town because Bill and Mia’s brother Linsey died last November of natural causes at his Chicago home. He was 50 years old. An actor, Linsey Falls was widely known in his city’s theaters, the Chicago Reader and other news outlets reported.

Along with their mother, spouses and children, Bill and Mia came to Hopkinsville for the interment of Linsey’s ashes at Cave Springs Cemetery. Their father, Howard Falls, uncle, William Falls Jr., and grandfather are all buried at Cave Springs.

The family, having traveled from their homes in Michigan and New York, spent two days in Hopkinsville. The trip gave them time to delve into their family history, especially Coach Falls’ legendary coaching career.

The Pennyroyal Area Museum staff arranged several of Coach Falls’ artifacts — including the Hall of Fame trophy and ring, one of his playbooks and some Attucks yearbooks — in the new bell hooks Legacy Room so they could spend time looking at the items and taking photographs.

Mia Falls-McIntosh, who has collected a treasure of family genealogy records and photographs, spent some time with museum executive director Alissa Keller to ask about additional local resources to trace her family’s history.

I never met Coach Falls. When I was in elementary school in the early 1970s and my parents took me to Hopkinsville High School basketball games, I would have seen him on the sidelines — but I have no memory of it. Back then I didn’t understand what Coach Falls meant to the community and his players. Meeting his family this week felt like catching up to something that had escaped so many of us.