That’s Amore

Friday, Nov. 8, 2002 | 10:06 a.m.

Deane Martin has been in town for a year, as one of UNLV basketball coach Charlie Spoonhour's assistants, and he is now nonchalant about showing his driver's license, to prove his name, to curious new acquaintances.

Some have requested a song, but this Martin is no crooner.

"They want me to start singing, like, 'Everybody Loves Somebody,' and I tell them I can't," he said. "The best singing I can do is turn up the radio when I'm driving down the road, so I can't hear myself singing."

Spoonhour looked like he had bitten into a lemon when asked about Martin's ability to carry a tune.

"I'm not ready for that," Spoonhour said, "and I'm not sure I'd want to."

On the telephone, the silence on the other end is inevitable after Martin announces his name and where he's from. When he is introduced to someone, a pause and a brief stare-down are predictable.

"Three or four seconds later, they see he hasn't flinched," said Jay Spoonhour, the coach's son and assistant, "and they go, 'Oh, you're serious!' "

Martin wants to get a copy of the famous photograph of the Rat Pack, standing before their names on The Sands' marquee, as well as a Dean Martin CD or two. He enjoys the music that Martin and Frank Sinatra made in the 1950s and '60s, and he relishes the era when that troupe ruled The Strip.

"I was born in 1964, and the Rat Pack was pretty strong then," Martin said. "At that time, wouldn't it have been fun? It would have been a blast, more original. All of those stories are fascinating.

"To know the lives of each of them, like if you see one of those documentaries on TV. It's really interesting, the lives they lived. The things they did. Dean would play golf all day, then go out, party all night and do his act. It would have been fun, a good time."

Deane Martin is 38, the only single member of Spoonhour's staff and is 6-feet-5 with dark hair, fitting the legend of his namesake to a T.

"I guess," he said, "I kind of slid right into my role pretty easily."

Spoonhour revived Martin's career when the former was at Saint Louis. When he got the UNLV gig, one of Spoonhour's first calls was to add someone of Martin's character, ability and loyalty to his staff.

"He's real steady," said Jay Spoonhour, who previously coached with Martin at Central Missouri State from 1994-96.

"There's no loss that gets him down too much and no win that gets him so excited. Players see that, and that's what they do. He's real sharp, and he knows people. He also always picks out the positive traits in everyone."

According to Helen Martin, the youngest of her two sons was a pleasant singer, too, in his youth in Mercer, Mo. She treasures a video tape of a very young Deane, standing on a chair and singing "Joy to the World" beside his father, Wayne, behind the pulpit of the local church.

"People thought it was wonderful," said Helen Martin.

The population of Mercer, about 100 miles from both Des Moines, Iowa, and Kansas City, Mo., is about 300. Helen and Wayne have known each other since they were in grade school, and they named their second son Jeffrey Deane, deriving his middle name from Helen's father, Deane Ragan.

Deane stuck as his given name when Jim, Deane's year-older brother, had difficulty pronouncing Jeffrey when the two were young.

"I've been Deane," Martin said, "for as far as I can remember."

At Boy Scout summer camps when he was 14 and 15, his best friend was named Jerry Lewis. They had some fun with it, but Martin said he did not fully appreciate the likelihood of that relationship until much later.

When he visits home, Martin often hunts quail with his maternal grandfather. Deane Ragan retired from his 1,500-acre farm -- on which he raised cattle, and grew soybeans and corn -- in the mid-1980s. Deane's parents had combined to log 70 years at the local John Deere plant until they lost their jobs a year ago.

Deane never cared to get his hands dirty.

"We were eating breakfast one morning, wondering which way he was gonna go," said Wayne Martin. "He said, 'Dad, I'm not going to dig ditches all my life.' "

Deane gained state-wide recognition as a basketball player at North Mercer High, and his parents discovered the true nature of his passion for the game at Central Missouri. "I don't know if I could do that," Wayne Martin told his wife at a typical game in which Deane hardly played.

Martin became a regular aid at Spoonhour's camps and began coaching in the junior college ranks. He hit a major crossroads when he didn't get the top job at Cowley Community College, after serving on that staff for four years, in 1992.

Disenchanted, Martin worked at a health club before helping a coaching friend, for free, for a couple of months at a college in Louisiana. Unfulfilled by that experience, he moved to Kansas City and started learning how to sell life insurance. When he found himself in the back of the classroom, sneaking peeks at the sports page, he followed his heart.

Spoonhour added Martin to his Saint Louis staff in 1997, then brought him to UNLV after Martin spent three seasons at Tennessee-Martin. Yes, UT-M coach Brett Campbell found it rich that Deane Martin would be leaving Martin, Tenn., for Las Vegas.

Spoonhour didn't bring Martin here for his lounge act.

With his ties to the Midwest and inroads he's making in the San Francisco Bay Area, Martin is a key recruiting figure for the Rebels. Of the three oral commitments that have recently been given to UNLV, junior college center Chris Adams and guard John Winston hail from the Bay Area.

Even more important, Spoonhour said, are Martin's work ethic and loyalty.

"You know where he is without knowing where he is," Spoonhour said. "And there are a lot of geniuses in the business, but if a person isn't loyal ... if they're loyal, they're all good."

Spoonhour couldn't resist the obvious, either.

"And I'm sure the name has opened some doors for him," said Spoonhour, laughing.

Derek Thomas, another of Spoonhour's assistants whose Johnson County Community College team played Central Missouri when Martin played there, shook his head at Martin's name recognition.

"Typically, the response is, 'UNLV? Deane Martin? I'll remember that,'" Thomas said. "People remember him on second occasions. It's kind of funny."

Deane Martin laughs, too, about the uniqueness of having that name in this town, but he and his family, and Spoonhour, know the challenges he has hurdled to get to Las Vegas.

"He's had a hard road to hoe, to get where he's at," said Wayne Martin. "We're very proud of him. Of course, he isn't done yet. But he's done what he's set out to do."

That's Amore.

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