LEBANON, Ind. – This is the life Rich Mount chose. It didn’t choose him, as life can sometimes do, putting us on roads that lead where they lead, pulling us to places we’d never been. Ever lived in Richmond, Va.? Neither had Rich Mount, not until … well, not until he looked around, and there he was. That was 1992, before he chose this life – this difficult, dangerous, pressure-packed career with the Lebanon Police Department.
Major Rich Mount was meant to find this, to lead cops in patrol cars – road guys, they’re called – and to get on the road himself. This is what he does with no hesitation, responding to 911 calls and patrolling the streets and checking on kids in the same city park where he’d spent so much time as a kid himself.
So much has changed since his childhood. When Rich Mount, 56, visits with kids in Memorial Park, they’re chatting or eating or smoking or doing whatever kids do these days. They’re almost never doing what he did in that park, for hours on end, as a kid.
They’re not shooting a basketball.
Pressure? People think it’s hard to be a police officer, and Rich Mount won’t tell you it’s easy. The public discourse is ugly in almost every direction, and the discourse about police officers is no different. Lebanon has a coming population boom, with major projects involving Lilly and Meta bringing thousands of new jobs, and the city wants to hire 200 officers in the next 10 years – but it wonders: How?
“Every police agency in Indiana is struggling to hire,” Mount says from his office on Main Street.
As he talks, pictures on a shelf are peeking over his shoulder, clearing their throat, waiting to tell Rich Mount’s life story. So is the toy next to his desk, given to him by an officer under his command. It’s a Little Tikes basketball hoop for other officers’ kids when they’re hanging out here. And they’re in here a lot.
Kids like Rich Mount. They’re fascinated by him. He’s 6-3 and 265 pounds of muscle and bone, soft eyes and hard tattoos. Little kids love his size, his gentleness.
And what little kid doesn’t love basketball?
No, being a police officer doesn’t feel like pressure.
Try growing up in Lebanon, Indiana, as the son of Rick Mount. Greatest shooter in Indiana high school history, some would say. He graduated from Lebanon in 1966 as the IHSAA’s No. 4 all-time scorer, and the first schoolboy in a team sport to make the cover of Sports Illustrated. He led Purdue basketball to the 1969 NCAA title game against UCLA and became the school’s career scoring leader, then played five seasons in the ABA, two with the Indiana Pacers.
Try being that kid in Lebanon, in a gym full of locals who’d seen his dad score so many of those 2,595 points and were now comparing him to Rich Mount. Try going into opposing high school arenas with every eye on you, every taunt aimed at you, every defense focused on you.
Try enduring all that – and then signing with Purdue, of all schools.
Rich Mount knows pressure. He knows the kind of hard that can make you want to head in another direction, but that’s not his life now, not even when the lights are flashing and sirens are blaring and he’s running with three other Lebanon police officers toward an apartment on fire. Not even when he races toward that apartment on July 3, 2011, so focused on saving others that he doesn’t even think about another apartment fire in Lebanon, 21 years earlier, that had killed perhaps the best athlete in Lebanon history:
Pete Mount.
Rich Mount’s granddad.
One family, three top-10 IHSAA scorers
The pictures are talking loudly in here, offering a running commentary on Rich Mount’s past, present and future. So does the coffee maker on the table, an old-school drip pot. Old school, baby. No Keurig for Rich Mount.
Most prominently displayed are photographs of his four kids – Jordan, Derek, Jade and Ava – tremendous athletes, all of them. Jade, the second-youngest, is a Lebanon senior committed to play at Earlham. Ava just finished her sophomore season of high school, and colleges are already paying attention.
When Lebanon has another Mount, people notice.
They’ve noticed since Pete Mount was arguably the best player in the state in the early 1940s. Pete was a 6-4 forward who led Lebanon to the state title game as a junior, being named “Star of Stars” of the 1943 IHSAA boys basketball tournament. That was one year after he’d outscored West Lafayette by himself, pouring in 32 points in Lebanon’s 47-31 victory. Pete scored 1,133 career points, eighth in Indiana boys basketball history when he graduated in 1944.
Well, he sort of graduated. This was World War II, remember, and Pete had already enlisted before his senior season. He was summoned to report on March 1, 1944 – the Monday after Lebanon’s loss at sectional. Pete played on the U.S. Army team at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and scored 35, 39 and 42 points in consecutive games. After his discharge in 1946, he turned down a chance to pitch for the Triple A Indianapolis Indians to play for the Sheboygan Red Skins of the NBL, a precursor to the NBA.
After basketball, Pete Mount worked 32 years for Allison Transmissions, retiring in 1983. Seven years later an electrical fire started in the kitchen of his apartment in Lebanon, and first responders found him dead – smoke inhalation, the IndyStar reported in February 1990 – next to a spent fire extinguisher. He was 64.
No pictures of Pete Mount, basketball star, in his grandson’s office. None available. Too long ago.
But see that blonde kid in the Purdue uniform, driving to the basket against Saint Louis? That’s from December 1989, Rich wearing a No. 4 jersey and a crewcut, old school even then.
Just one photo of Rich in action, but several of his kids, and his father. Hanging on the wall is Rick Mount’s 1994 induction plaque into the Purdue Athletic Hall of Fame. Why doesn’t his father have it anymore? Well, his dad never had it.
“He didn’t show up to get it,” Rich says, laughing – and that’s Rick Mount for you. Skipped his own HOF induction. By 1994 he’d had a falling out with Purdue, unhappy with how the school handled Rich a few years earlier.
“There were things that happened to (Rich at Purdue) and I’m bitter,” Rick Mount told the IndyStar in 1994. “I still hold grudges.”
A loyal man, Rick Mount. And a hard one. And once upon a time, he was the best basketball player this state had ever seen.
Imagine growing up as his son – as his basketball-playing son.
“I was fortunate,” Rich Mount says.
He’s tougher than most of us, Rich Mount.
‘Rick never let Richie win at anything’
Rich grew up at Memorial Park, learning the game from his dad, losing at one-on-one and H-O-R-S-E.
“You know how it is playing card games or board games with little kids – you let them win. No big deal,” Rich’s mom, Donna Mount, told the IndyStar in 1989. “Well, Rick never let Richie win at anything. They’d come home from playing one-on-one, and you knew it had been a real war. They wouldn’t be talking. They both hate to lose.”
Sitting now in Rich Mount’s office, under the stare of his father’s photos on the wall, I have to ask: Rick never let you win?
“Never,” he says.
Did you ever beat him?
“No. When I got to 15, 16 and he was getting older, sometimes I could drive by him. But in H-O-R-S-E, it wasn’t going to happen.”
Did he stop playing you, as you got older, because he knew you might beat him?
“No,” Rich Mount says. “I just never could.”
That tracks. Rick Mount was that good. Rich tells a story from 1985.
“Dad and I had the same varsity coach – Jim Rosenstihl,” Rich says. “Before my freshman season, (Rosenstihl) said all I had to do was be a quarter of the player my dad was to be a great player.”
Were you? That’s what I’m asking Rich Mount in his office. Were you a quarter as good as your dad?
“At least,” he says around a big smile.
Rich became the third Mount to finish his career as a top-10 scorer in IHSAA history, including 22 points in his freshman debut and a particularly satisfying 34 later that season at rival Frankfort. He made 13 of 15 shots from the field that night as the Case Arena crowd of 6,000 showered the court with pennies and Christmas light bulbs. After the game a police escort led Rich safely back to the Lebanon bus.
By Rich’s senior season, his dad had stopped coming to games. Rick couldn’t stand the abuse his son received on the road, but worse were the mutterings of Lebanon fans, unaware they were sitting within earshot of Rick Mount as they announced Rich couldn’t hold a candle to his father.
“I was getting close to hitting somebody,” Rick Mount told the IndyStar in 1989, “so I just decided to stay home.”
Rich scored 2,139 points, ninth in IHSAA history in 1989. Today, Rick Mount is eighth on the IHSAA list. Rich is No. 42.
Rich Mount at Purdue: Matt Painter, Gene Keady and Soviets
Rich Mount signed with Purdue in the same class as current Purdue coach Matt Painter. He played 17 games as a freshman, scoring 12 points in 70 minutes, but seemed poised for a bigger role as a sophomore. In two exhibitions Mount made 16 of 17 shots from the floor – no misprint – including 13 points in 16 minutes against a team from the Soviet Union. Afterward, Soviet coach Vladas Garastas was asked which Boilermaker had impressed him most.
“No. 4,” Garastas said through an interpreter.
Rich Mount wore No. 4.
That was Nov. 7, 1990. Three weeks later Mount was gone, leaving Purdue after playing just 21 minutes in the first two games.
“I don’t think Rich was having any fun,” Purdue coach Gene Keady told the IndyStar on Nov. 29, 1990. “I believe he needed more playing time to be happy. He’s a nice kid, and I wish him well wherever he goes.”
Why didn’t Mount play more? He doesn’t know, other than to say Keady “had his five guys” – and Rich Mount wasn’t one of them.
“I don’t know,” he says now. “I really don’t know.”
He transferred to VCU, sat out a year, then didn’t play much: 26 minutes, total, in 10 games. After that season he came home.
By 1993, Rich Mount had found his purpose in life. And it wasn’t basketball.
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Basketball gives way to weights, tattoos
Mount was a Purdue freshman when he returned to Lebanon for a summer job at Ulen Country Club. Another part-time worker, Mark Woodard, was a full-time Lebanon police officer.
“I rode with him one night,” Mount says. “I grew up here, and I couldn’t believe what they were dealing with. That kind of started it.”
An interest in law enforcement dovetailed nicely with Mount’s new athletic passion, weight-lifting. Measuring 6-3, 180 as a high school senior, Rich Mount returned from VCU weighing 210 pounds with 4% bodyfat. He could bench press 350 pounds. He didn’t touch a basketball for five months.
More than his physique had changed, now that he was done with organized basketball.
“He’s just Rich – that’s what he is now,” Donna told the IndyStar in 1994, as Rich was embarking on his career in law enforcement. “He always said he didn’t feel a whole lot of pressure (in basketball). I don’t know. I couldn’t get inside his mind, but he’s a different kid now. The kid didn’t smile for four years. The day he came back from Virginia Commonwealth and the whole next week he was just a completely different person.”
Mount’s first job was as a corrections officer at the Boone County jail in October 1993, and nine months later he joined the Lebanon police force. By then he’d acquired another passion: Tattoos.
“An inmate (there) drew my first tattoo – a dog flexing,” Rich says. “I got it covered over later, but they’re kind of addicting. I like the tribal stuff.”
Among the ink is a tattoo honoring the family’s three generations of Indiana All-Stars – Pete, Rick and Rich – that peeks out from the left sleeve of a shirt straining to cover his enormous arms. He has outgrown uniform after uniform, adding 50 pounds of muscle to the 215-pound frame he’d carried into the Lebanon Police Department in July 1994.
That size, those tattoos, even that crewcut – he bears more than a passing resemblance to WWE star Brock Lesnar – have served Mount well as a cop. I ask if he’s ever been hurt on the job.
“No,” he says, then laughs. “No-o-o-o-o. But I have had people come at me, and you have to stop people with aggressive behavior. If they come at you, you have to do your job.
“We’re taught defensive tactics. I’ve been fortunate to pick up on one thing, if I have to stop their aggressive behavior, that I use.”
Show me, I ask him – politely.
“It’s just a one-arm takedown,” he says, reaching for my wrist. “You grab here and – boom – escort someone down.”
Like that, I’m forced to a knee. No pain though. He’d escorted me down gently.
Along with his size, Mount believes the family name has helped on the streets of Lebanon.
“From the start, people respected me,” he says. “Even the people we take to jail, they knew me. It really has worked out pretty well for me here.
“From my grandpa to my dad to me, those generations of basketball in Lebanon, the Mount name was really popular – and Dad really made it. People from around here go to Hawaii, and people (there) remember my dad: ‘Oh, you’re from Lebanon? Rick Mount.’”
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‘I probably shouldn’t have left Purdue’
The walls aren’t done telling their stories about Rich Mount. On a shelf is a gavel engraved with the words “The A-Team,” the name of the department’s 2-10 p.m. shift. That gets Rich talking about the camaraderie, the transition from road guy to supervisor, how he considers himself “a player-coach for the road guys.”
He talks about kids in the park, the A-Team, the one-arm takedown he’d like to never use again. But ask him for his finest moment, any acts of heroism, and he’s quiet.
“I don’t know,” he says eventually, but then comes up with something.
“Working with the youth of the community, trying to better their thought process,” he says. “Making sure kids go the right way.
“Right now there’s a lot of fear of the police. I can’t stand when a parent says, ‘Hey, I’ve got a bad kid here. You come and talk (some fear) to them.’ Well, I’m not the scary police. I’m not trying to scare the kid. If he needs help someday, I don’t want that kid to be scared of the police.”
That’s where the topic stays – your finest moment? – for more than hour until it’s time for me to leave his office and one last picture on the wall clears its throat. It says:
State Fire Marshal’s Award of Valor
Presented to RICH MOUNT
For your heroic act during the rescue of persons trapped inside a burning apartment fire on July 3rd, 2011
Now I’m staring at Mount. More like glaring, nicely, and scolding him: The next time someone asks for your finest moment as a cop, I’m telling him, show them this.
“Right,” he says. “Sorry!”
Ask him about that day, and about his grandfather dying in the kind of fire confronted in 2011 by Mount and three other Lebanon officers – Tony Bayles, Jeff Nelson and T.J. Nelson – and he says there is no connection.
“At the time,” he says, unaware of how brave this is about to sound, “I didn’t think about what happened to my grandfather.”
He speaks softly, this tattooed giant of a man surrounded by family pictures and a Little Tikes hoop, and he sounds contemplative, reflective, even regretful of one thing. It’s basketball-related.
“I probably shouldn’t have left Purdue,” he says. “It’s been a long time, but I didn’t have good advice and made that decision on my own, and I shouldn’t have.”
That was a long time ago, as he said, and Rich Mount will talk about it – about basketball – if asked. But he’d rather talk about his family, his kids, his wife of nearly 20 years (Cecily Mount) or another former Lebanon basketball player, Det. Trey Hendrix, who ranks fifth on the school’s scoring chart (1,592 points). It was Hendrix who had bumped Pete Mount from the top 10 in 2012.
The name rings a bell. Hendrix? Didn’t his dad…?
“That’s right,” Rich says, filling in the blanks. “Albert Hendrix coached Lebanon for 15 years.”
So much changes, but not everything. Not in Lebanon – where Rick Mount still lives up the road, and Jade and Ava Mount are the next two basketball stars coming down the road, and Rich Mount is often somewhere on the road, doing what he was born to do.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Doyel: From Lebanon to Purdue and back, Rich Mount – yes, Rick’s son – found his calling as a cop
Reporting by Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Gregg Doyel, Indianapolis Star | USA TODAY Network
