Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Jim Palmer of Lee, Virginia
Before Jim Palmer became a University of Dayton Hall of Famer, before he wore the uniforms of the Cincinnati Royals and New York Knicks, before he became part of the strange and lively basketball world that connected company teams, college gyms, and the early NBA, he was a boy from Keokee, Virginia.
Keokee sat high in Lee County, close to the Kentucky line, in a country shaped by coal, company stores, railroad lines, and mountain roads. It was not the kind of place most people expected to produce a professional basketball player. That is partly what makes Palmer’s story worth remembering. He did not come out of a large city program. He did not rise through a famous high school basketball pipeline. The story preserved by those close to him says that he grew up in a high school class of only sixteen and had not played basketball before Dayton.
He was tall, quiet, and still growing into himself. In another place, someone might have built a sports future around him earlier. In Keokee, his early love was baseball, the mountains, and the ordinary adventures of a boy in the Appalachian coalfields. Basketball came late. When it came, it changed his life.
Keokee and the World Palmer Came From
Keokee’s history was already tied to coal by the time Palmer was born there on June 8, 1933. Earlier known as Crab Orchard, the place became Keokee as coal and coke interests built up the town and connected it to the larger industrial world of Southwest Virginia. The Keokee Coal and Coke Company, Stonega Coke and Coal, and related companies helped shape the community, its buildings, its labor, and its memory.
That setting matters because Palmer’s journey was not simply a sports story. It was also an Appalachian story of movement. Young people from Lee County and the surrounding coalfields often left home for work, education, or opportunity. Some went north to factories. Some joined the military. Some followed relatives into Ohio, Indiana, or Michigan. Palmer’s path took him to Dayton, Ohio, where work and chance placed him near one of the strongest college basketball programs in the country.
In the family account preserved by the Catwalk Institute, Palmer went to Dayton for work. There, University of Dayton coach Tom Blackburn saw something in him. Blackburn was one of the central figures in Dayton basketball history, a coach who built the Flyers into a national power in the 1950s and early 1960s. Palmer, a 6 foot 8 young man from Lee County who had not been formed by years of organized basketball, became one of Blackburn’s discoveries.
Becoming a Flyer
At Dayton, Palmer learned the game at a high level and learned it quickly. University of Dayton Athletics identifies him as James Palmer, a men’s basketball player from 1953 to 1957, born in Keokee, Virginia. The same official Hall of Fame biography says he stood 6 foot 8, played power forward for the Flyers, averaged 7.8 points per game during his time at Dayton, and was drafted in 1957 by the St. Louis Hawks.
The statistics only tell part of the story. A player who begins late has to build habits other players have practiced since childhood. Footwork, rebounding angles, positioning, timing, and touch around the basket all have to be learned under pressure. Palmer did not just make a college roster. He became valuable enough that the professional game noticed him.
Dayton basketball in the 1950s had national ambition. The Flyers were becoming a program known far beyond Ohio, and Palmer played during those rising years. Later draft records and college basketball references list him as a Dayton forward and center who finished his Division I career with 76 varsity games, 7.8 points per game, and 8.8 rebounds per game. His rebounding especially shows the kind of player he became. He was not only tall. He was useful in the physical work of the game.
In 1957 the St. Louis Hawks selected him in the second round of the NBA Draft. For a young man from Keokee, that was a remarkable leap. Only a small number of players entered the NBA in those days, and the league itself was still growing into the national institution it later became.
The Peoria Cats and AAU Basketball
Palmer’s professional life did not begin in the NBA right away. Instead, he entered another important world of mid century basketball, the National Industrial Basketball League and Amateur Athletic Union competition. Before professional basketball fully dominated the sport, elite company and industrial teams could offer talented players steady work, good competition, and sometimes better practical opportunities than the NBA.
Palmer joined the Peoria Cats, the Caterpillar backed team from Illinois. The Catwalk Institute account says that Palmer chose a more lucrative offer with the Peoria Cats after being drafted and helped them win the national championship in 1958. Basketball history sources confirm that the Peoria Cats won the 1958 AAU title, defeating Denver-Chicago Trucking in a four overtime championship game, 74 to 71.
Palmer’s name also appears among the 1958 AAU All-Americans. That matters because AAU basketball was not a minor footnote in that era. It was a high level national stage. Some of the best American players passed through AAU and industrial basketball before or between professional stops. For Palmer, the Peoria season proved that his Dayton success could travel. He could leave college, face older and stronger competition, and still stand out.
The family account also links him to the first United States team that played against the Soviet Union. That detail places Palmer near the Cold War sports world of the late 1950s, when basketball, like track, hockey, and gymnastics, became part of a broader contest of national image and athletic prestige.
Cincinnati Royals
Palmer’s NBA career began with the Cincinnati Royals. RealGM’s transaction log records that the Cincinnati Royals acquired his draft rights from the St. Louis Hawks in August 1958 and that he signed with Cincinnati soon afterward. The University of Dayton Hall of Fame biography says Palmer’s NBA career started later than he expected, but once he got his chance with the Royals, he produced immediately.
During the 1958 to 1959 season, Palmer played 67 games for Cincinnati. RealGM lists him at 10.3 points and 7.0 rebounds per game that season. For a first year NBA player who had taken an unusual road through Dayton and the Peoria Cats, those were strong numbers. He was not a bench curiosity or a hometown novelty. He was a real contributor in the best professional league in America.
The Royals of that period were a franchise in transition. Cincinnati basketball had talented players, but the league itself was rough, compact, and unforgiving. Travel was harder. Rosters were smaller. Pay was not what later generations would know. Players fought for minutes in a sport still finding its national television audience. Palmer entered that world as a big man from a small Appalachian community and held his own.
New York Knicks
Palmer began the 1959 to 1960 season with Cincinnati, then moved to the New York Knicks. RealGM records the transaction on December 4, 1959. The official NBA profile lists him with the Knicks, number 19, as a forward from Dayton. New York placed him on a larger stage, in one of the most visible basketball cities in the country.
With the Knicks, Palmer played 54 games in the 1959 to 1960 season and 55 more in the 1960 to 1961 season. RealGM gives him averages of 8.0 points and 5.1 rebounds per game with New York in 1959 to 1960, then 5.3 points and 3.3 rebounds per game in 1960 to 1961. The NBA’s official career profile gives Palmer’s overall NBA averages as 8.1 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 0.8 assists per game across three years.
The University of Dayton Hall of Fame biography gives his full NBA totals as 1,595 points, 1,040 rebounds, 165 assists, and 3,794 minutes played. Those numbers give shape to a career that was brief but substantial. Palmer played 196 NBA regular season games. He scored, rebounded, traveled, battled bigger names, and became part of the record of two historic franchises.
A Career Larger Than the NBA Box Score
It is easy to judge older players only by NBA statistics, but Palmer’s career stretched across several basketball worlds. He belonged to Dayton’s rise as a national program. He belonged to the last great period of AAU and industrial basketball. He belonged to the Cincinnati Royals and New York Knicks. He also appears in later American Basketball League records, including references to the San Francisco Saints, Pittsburgh Rens, and Los Angeles Jets.
That variety tells us something about basketball before the modern era. The sport was not yet a single straight road from high school to college to draft night to guaranteed contracts. Players moved through company teams, regional leagues, barnstorming circuits, military teams, AAU tournaments, and early professional leagues. Palmer’s path through these worlds was unusual, but it was not accidental. He kept finding places where his size, skill, and willingness to learn could matter.
His nicknames also tell part of the story. Later basketball reference sources preserve names such as “Keok,” “Keokee Kangaroo,” and “Vaulting Virginian.” They sound like old sports page language, but they also show that his mountain origin followed him. Even when he played in Ohio, Illinois, Cincinnati, or New York, Keokee remained part of the way people remembered him.
The Man Remembered at Catwalk
After basketball, Palmer lived a life that moved far beyond the court. The Catwalk Institute biography remembers him as a man without pretension, someone shaped by team values and grounded in the lessons of his youth. In 1967 he met Purcell Scheu, and their life together eventually became tied to Catwalk, an art residency and creative place in the Hudson Valley.
The biography describes Palmer as a steady presence, someone who helped keep the project moving, talked with tradesmen and residents, and found meaning in care, humor, and practical work. It remembers his last days at Catwalk, near the Hudson, with the woman he loved. That ending feels far from the coal hills of Lee County, but in another way it returns to the same theme. Palmer’s life was marked by places and communities. Keokee formed him. Dayton found him. Peoria tested him. Cincinnati and New York placed him in the national record. Catwalk remembered him not only as an athlete, but as a man.
Most basketball databases list his death as September 16, 2013, while an obituary page connected to Millspaugh Camerato gives September 17, 2013. Because of that small discrepancy, the safest wording is that Palmer died in September 2013.
Why Jim Palmer’s Story Matters
Jim Palmer’s life belongs in Appalachian history because it shows how far a person from a small mountain community could travel in the middle of the twentieth century. He was not a celebrity on the scale of the NBA legends who came after him. He did not play in a sports world of endorsement deals, endless highlights, or modern media coverage. His career was built in a harder and quieter age.
That may be why his story fits Lee County so well. It is a story of being overlooked until the right person noticed. It is a story of leaving home without leaving home behind. It is a story of a young man from Keokee stepping into college basketball, industrial basketball, international sports memory, and the NBA during a period when the game was still being made.
From a high school class of sixteen to the University of Dayton Hall of Fame, from the Peoria Cats to the Knicks, Jim Palmer carried Keokee into places few people from that corner of Virginia ever reached. His name remains in official NBA records, Dayton history, AAU basketball lists, and local memory. For Appalachian history, that is enough to bring him home.
Sources & Further Reading
University of Dayton Athletics. “James Palmer (2004).” Dayton Flyers Hall of Fame. https://daytonflyers.com/honors/hall-of-fame/james-palmer/63
University of Dayton Athletics. “Hall of Fame.” Dayton Flyers. https://daytonflyers.com/honors/hall-of-fame?type=sport
National Basketball Association. “Jim Palmer.” NBA.com. https://www.nba.com/player/77792/jim-palmer
Basketball-Reference. “Jim Palmer Stats, Height, Weight, Position, Draft Status and More.” Basketball-Reference.com. https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/p/palmeji01.html
Sports Reference. “Jim Palmer College Stats.” Sports-Reference College Basketball. https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/players/jim-palmer-1.html
The Draft Review. “Jim Palmer.” The Draft Review. https://www.thedraftreview.com/nba-players/1957-nba-draft/jim-palmer
The Draft Review. “1957 NBA Draft.” The Draft Review. https://www.thedraftreview.com/history/drafted1957/index.htm
RealGM. “Jim Palmer Player Profile.” RealGM Basketball. https://basketball.realgm.com/player/Jim-Palmer/Summary/70262
NASLJerseys. “Jim Palmer.” American Basketball League Players. https://www.nasljerseys.com/ABL/Players/P/Palmer.Jim.htm
Association for Professional Basketball Research. “Amateur Athletic Union Basketball.” APBR.org. https://www.apbr.org/aau.html
Caterpillar Heritage Services. “1957-58 Caterpillar Basketball Team.” Caterpillar Basketball History. https://cobalt-icosahedron-n4ha.squarespace.com/basketball-1957-58-caterpillar-basketball
Catwalk Institute. “Jim.” Catwalk Art Residency. https://catwalkinstitute.org/jim
Millspaugh Camerato Funeral Home. “James Palmer Obituary.” Millspaugh Camerato Funeral Home. https://www.millspaughcamerato.com/obituaries/James-Palmer?obId=1992276
Internet Archive. “Powell Valley News (1956).” Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/powell-valley-news-1956/Powell%20Valley%20News%20%281956%29_djvu.txt
Internet Archive. “Powell Valley News (1958).” Internet Archive. https://archive.org/stream/powell-valley-news-1958/Powell%20Valley%20News%20%281958%29_djvu.txt
The Lee County Legend. “Lee County Legend, Vol. 1, No. 4.” https://www.leecountylegend.net/images/pdf_LEE_COUNTY_LEGEND%2C_VOL._1%2C_NO._4.pdf
New York Knickerbockers. New York Knicks Media Guide, 1962. https://library.sfo2.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/publications/basketball/yearbooks/KNYKNMG-1962.pdf
Getty Images. “Jim Palmer Basketball Photos.” Getty Images. https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/jim-palmer-basketball
Hayes, Tim. “Keokee’s Jim Palmer Played Collegiately and in the Pros, but Never in High School.” Bristol Herald Courier. Check newspaper archive, NewsBank, or Bristol Herald Courier archives.
Harris, Doug. “Palmer, UD Hall of Famer, Dies.” Dayton Daily News, September 18, 2013. Check Dayton Daily News archives, Newspapers.com, NewsBank, or local library access.
Author Note: Jim Palmer’s story is a reminder that Appalachian history is not only found in courthouses, coal camps, and battlefields, but also in the lives of people who carried small mountain communities into larger American arenas. I wrote this piece to bring a Lee County athlete back into regional memory with the same care usually given to more famous names.