Charlotte Lewis, 52, died last Monday.

Her high school in Peoria had no girls basketball team, so in 1973 when she arrived at Illinois State Lewis had never played organized ball. "There were no park programs. There were no programs at Carver Center. She didn’t have the opportunity unless she played pick up games with the guys in the neighborhood" said her former ISU coach Jill Hutchison.

At ISU she flourished, helping her team to 63 victories and 4 AIAW state championships over the next 4 years.. “She was the best female athlete during our time that I had seen,” said Cyndi Slayton Jackson, a friend and former ISU teammate of Lewis. “We would scrimmage against the men, and they couldn’t penetrate the lane against her. She also could dunk the ball, and at the time that was rare."

Lewis still holds the ISU basketball records for rebounds in a single game, season, and highest rebounding average. A Kodak All-American and Wade Trophy finalist, Lewis she was a teammate of Ann Meyers, Lucy Harris, Nancy Lieberman and Pat Head (Summit) when the US reclaimed gold in the 1975 Pan Am games.

She and her teammates were also part of the 1976 Olympics, the first to include women's basketball. The US team won a silver medal (surprising many). After college, she played professional basketball for 15 years in Italy, Brazil and the US.

You can see a news clip about Lewis and an interview with Lewis from 2002 on WGLT on the occasion of the retirement of her ISU jersey.