Raymond Pimlott Kaighn

Only 18 men can boast that they played the first-ever game of basketball. Raymond was one of those players that put the uniquely American innovation to the test when a member of his football team, James Naismith, announced the 13 rules he came up with for the new game in 1891.

The boys were students at the International YMCA Training School (now Springfield College) in Massachusetts. But Raymond’s life story begins at his birthplace in Philadelphia with his parents, who were both natives of Camden, New Jersey.

His father, William, served a three-month tour of duty in the Civil War as a private with the 4th New Jersey Infantry, then married Elizabeth Pimlott on New Year’s Day, 1865. Their daughter, Blanche, was born later that year, followed by Raymond four years later after the family moved to Philadelphia. Another daughter lived only four months in 1871 and was the first in the family to be buried here.

Young Raymond left school by age 14 to work two office jobs. Taking a night course in business gave him the incentive to pursue that field as a career, which led him to the YMCA school. Raymond studied to be an “executive secretary” or director of a YMCA facility, whose stated aim was to put Christian values into practice by helping men develop a healthy spirit, mind, and body.

As a freshman in the fall of 1891 he was elected class president and played on the football team. But between football and baseball season there was nothing for athletes to do. A coach invited the boys to come up with something, so Jim Naismith, a graduate student, did.

This is how Raymond described his invention, from a 1957 newspaper interview: “He installed a peach basket at each end of the gym, fastening it at the base of the balcony running track. Then he told us the rules of the new game and showed us the soccer ball we’d use. For that first game, Jim chose 18 players. I was one of them.”

The rules stressed the importance of passing the ball. There was no dribbling and no running. When the ball went into the peach basket the game stopped, a janitor got on a ladder beside the basket to retrieve it, then the players would return to the center circle and put the ball in play again. The final score of that first scrimmage on December 21, 1891 was 1-0.

Raymond left Springfield 18 months later after completing the program, but he took the new game with him when he enrolled at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He spent five years there serving as the physical education director to pay for his Bachelor of Philosophy degree, which he earned in 1898. 

In 1894 he introduced the game as an important part of his curriculum and encouraged another school to learn the rules and form a team. Then, on February 9, 1895, Hamline hosted the first-ever intercollegiate basketball game, but they lost to the Minnesota State School of Agriculture by a score of 9-3. Raymond also started a women’s basketball program, and some sources credit him with introducing five-on-five basketball to the Midwest.

In his spare time, Raymond was also the quarterback of the football team and editor of the student newspaper. It was there that he met another Hamline student, Pearl Benham, but they took their time getting to know each other. Their June wedding took place at her church in Minneapolis in 1901.

By then, Raymond had been the general secretary of the Holyoke, Massachusetts YMCA for two years. He was recommended for the job by Charles Powlison, the man from the Philadelphia Y who encouraged him as a teenager to go to the YMCA training school.  

A few years later the couple moved to New York where Raymond served the Association in several roles and earned his Master’s degree from Columbia University. He became executive secretary of the national council’s personnel division in 1914 and took charge of the retirement fund in 1925.

The couple remained childless but had strong bonds with the Baptist Church of the Redeemer in Yonkers where Raymond was a deacon and Sunday School superintendent. He took on the leadership of the alumni association of what was then known as International YMCA College, growing the endowment and building a dormitory in 1927 called Alumni Hall. Then he was awarded an honorary master’s degree and elected to the Board of Trustees. 

As part of his work he was called to speak at YMCA functions across the country. He also kept in touch with Jim Naismith and hosted him whenever he came to New York. Both of them arrived in Springfield in 1935 when they were among the first four recipients of the college’s annual distinguished awards program. (After earning a medical degree, Jim served for 40 years in various roles at the University of Kansas until his death in 1939.)

Raymond surrendered his position at the YMCA in 1940 but knew he wasn’t going to be simply retired, just repurposed. In 1942, the Kaighns moved to Greensboro, North Carolina and this photo appeared in the 1946 Greensboro College yearbook. For that one year he was a part-time instructor in Bible. 

It was in the summer of 1948 that Pearl, his wife and closest companion of 47 years, died, followed just six weeks later by the death of his sister. He was almost 80 but chose not to withdraw from living, publishing a book entitled, “How to Retire and Like It.” In 1951 he married the widow of a long-time co-worker who served with the International YMCA.

The following year they moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina where Raymond found ways to help others in the YMCA tradition of “healthy spirit, mind, and body.” He was active at church and in meeting with other retired men who seemed to feel sidelined and useless. An obituary said the discussion groups he started and the help he offered in his later years was more fulfilling than the notoriety of his youth. 

He was the subject of magazine articles and interviews as word spread about the creation of a basketball Hall of Fame. Raymond was inducted into the inaugural class in 1959, and attended the dedication of the first location of the Hall, on the campus of Springfield College, on November 6, 1961.

For many years he was hailed as the oldest surviving member of the original team of 18, but just weeks after that dedication ceremony it was discovered that Ernest Hildner was still alive. “I have been out of contact and had forgotten all about those old days,” he said, after receiving a letter of apology from the Hall of Fame. A letter came from Raymond as well, who joked, “Now with you to share the glamor, I will no longer feel like the last leaf on the tree.”

Just a few months after that, however, Ernest became that last leaf. Raymond had a massive heart attack in August while on vacation in the mountains of North Carolina. He took his place here beside Pearl, his parents, and his baby sister overlooking Cobbs Creek on the Yeadon side of the cemetery.