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Former UCLA coach John Wooden led the Bruins to 10 NCAA championships in a 27-year run.

The road to coaching greatness began after Wooden graduated with honors from Purdue and married Nell Riley, his high school sweetheart.

In a 2008 public appearance with Los Angeles Dodgers announcer Vin Scully, in which the men were interviewed in front of an audience, Wooden said he still wrote his late wife — the only girl he ever dated — a letter on the 21st of each month. “She’s still there to me,” he said. “I talk to her every day.”

He coached two years at Dayton (Ky.) High School, and his 6-11 losing record the first season was the only one in his 40-year coaching career.

He spent the next nine years coaching basketball, baseball and tennis at South Bend (Ind.) Central High School, where he also taught English.

Wooden served in the Navy as a physical education instructor during World War II, and continued teaching when he became the basketball coach at Indiana State Teachers College, where he went 47-17 in two seasons.

In his first year at Indiana State, Wooden’s team won the Indiana Collegiate Conference title and received an invitation to the NAIB tournament in Kansas City. Wooden, who had a black player on his team, refused the invitation because the NAIB had a policy banning African Americans. The rule was changed the next year, and Wooden led Indiana State to another conference title.

It was then that UCLA called, though Wooden didn’t take the job to get rich. He never made more than $35,000 in a season, and early in his career he worked two jobs to make ends meet.

St. John’s coach Steve Lavin followed a similar career path as Wooden, coaching seven years at UCLA after serving as an assistant at Purdue.

“Even though we anticipated this day, the finality still strikes with a force equal to a ton of bricks,” Lavin said. “There was the common affinity we shared for Purdue and UCLA, and that forged a unique bond. I turned to him for perspective at every critical juncture over the past 20 years. Ninety-nine years of goodness, and now he’s back with Nell.”

Nell, Wooden’s wife of 53 years, died of cancer in 1985. Besides his son and daughter, Wooden is survived by three grandsons, four granddaughters and 13 great-grandchildren.

Funeral services will be private. A public memorial will be held later, with a reception for former players and coaches.

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