From 1953 to 1956, a Cold-War drama, “I Led Three Lives,” was broadcast on TV weekly. The show’s main character was alternately a white-collar worker, a Communist agent and an FBI operative foiling dastardly Soviet plots. If a documentary is ever made about Don Leroy Hennon, the gifted basketball player at Wampum High School and the University of Pittsburgh in the 1950s, “I Led Three Lives” would be an apt title for it.

To say that Don Hennon is more than a basketball player is to say that Leonardo da Vinci is more than a painter. In the three distinct phases of his life, all of which were anchored in western Pennsylvania, Don Hennon has excelled: as a record-shattering guard in high school and college basketball; as an esteemed general surgeon for 40 years; and, in retirement, as an award-winning breeder of Hereford beef cattle.

Triple threat

In basketball his intense competitive spirit, camouflaged by a placid demeanor, helped propel tiny Wampum High School in southern Lawrence County, the smallest school in the state, to its first WPIAL and state championship in 1955. In four years at Wampum he scored 2,376 points — a WPIAL record that stood for 38 years.

At Pitt he was a two-time All-American. In three seasons on Pitt’s varsity squad, from 1956 to 1959, he scored 1,841 points, a school record at the time, and averaged 24.2 points per game. He accomplished all this despite measuring a mere 5 feet 9 inches. But his stature in the sport was towering: He was elected to the Helms Athletic Foundation Hall of Fame in 1971 and the initial class of the Pitt Athletics Hall of Fame in 2019.

In medicine he achieved his goal of becoming a surgeon, a profession that he practiced at four local hospitals. He chose to pursue surgery rather than pro basketball despite being drafted by the Cincinnati Royals in 1959. In operating rooms he capitalized on the extraordinary eye-hand coordination that enabled him to flourish on the court. “I always liked working with my hands,” Mr. Hennon, now 84, says, “so surgery appealed to me. If you don’t have dexterity, the patient on the operating table is going to be in trouble.”

In agriculture he “collects blue ribbons for his Hereford cattle at farm shows with the same ease that he once scored points on basketball courts,” says Pat Nardelli, a former sportswriter in Beaver Falls. Among his honors, he was named the Seed Stock Breeder of the Year by the Pennsylvania Cattlemen’s Association in 2021. At the Pennsylvania Farm Show, he won the premier breeder award for three consecutive seasons, from 2005 to 2007, and at the Keystone International Livestock Exposition, one of his prize Herefords was named grand champion senior bull in 2001.

His father’s son

When he began his basketball life at Pitt, he was called “a triumph of pedagogy” by Doc Carlson, the university’s former basketball coach. The pedagogue was L. Butler Hennon, Don’s father and the celebrated basketball coach at Wampum High School for 28 years.

The teaching began when Don was four years old. Wampum lore has it that Butler Hennon arranged for his father, Ernest, to fashion a makeshift basketball hoop with an onion-bag net, which was hung on a door in the living room. Little Don was then given a small ball to shoot, and he took to the game so enthusiastically that he wore out the living-room rug.

He subsequently accompanied his father to the Wampum Gym each morning before classes began. While his father heated and cleaned the gym, he began to develop his shooting repertoire, including a hook shot that would become a devastating weapon against taller defenders.

Later, as varsity basketball players, he and his teammates benefited from the innovative drills his father designed. For instance, Wampum players wore weighted jackets to improve their mobility and blinders to prevent them from watching the ball while dribbling. Once freed of such hindrances, they flourished against opponents; to them, the games seemed a reprieve, a lesser challenge than practices.

Wampum players say that when you have a coach as intelligent, creative and passionate about imparting good habits as Butler Hennon, you build a solid foundation for succeeding not only in basketball but in other phases of life. And Don Hennon is proof, they say. They point out how he has internalized his father’s lessons in each of his three lives: above all, the habit of doing more than is required.

Home sweet home

At Pitt he was a bona fide student-athlete, the antithesis of many current college stars, who qualify as students only in the loosest definition of the word. Mr. Hennon earned top grades in demanding natural science courses, such as biology and physics. He majored in chemistry.

Mr. Hennon’s decision to enroll in Pitt’s medical school seemed heretical to people who believe pro sports are the pinnacle of human achievement. But to Mr. Hennon, it was a long-term career choice: “When all is said and done, you have to remember it’s just basketball, it’s not life and death. At a Pitt sports banquet, I said it’s wonderful to score a lot of points and win games. But in my estimation there’s nothing to compare with being a surgeon who saves the life of a dying patient in the emergency room, and he shakes your hand and walks out of the hospital. That’s the ultimate as far as I’m concerned.”

Today, the ultimate for him is his collection of three farms totaling more than 300 acres in Sewickley, New Galilee and Mercer, where his Hereford cattle graze. He says he draws special satisfaction from raising the cattle in western Pennsylvania, where he has lived his entire life, with the exception of two years’ service as an Army surgeon in North Carolina and South Korea in the 1960s.

“I’ve always considered myself fortunate to have grown up in western Pennsylvania, in Wampum. People in town were always 110% willing to help. In grade school, when my classmates and I would play in basketball tournaments, people were eager to volunteer to drive us wherever — clear up to Rome, New York, for one. I believe that Wampum’s record in basketball reflected more than just good coaching or good players; it was also due to a wonderful community spirit, to the feeling of a close-knit family. Times change, but I sense the spirit of community that I associate with Wampum to apply to western Pennsylvania as well. I’ve spent practically my whole life here, and it’s been a good place to live.”

Or rather, it’s been a good place for him to live three lives.

Bruce Zewe, now retired, was the director of corporate communications and a principal at Turner Investments. He lives in Pine Township.

First Published: September 11, 2022, 4:00 a.m.