The world knew him as Bill Russell. They knew him as dad.

From [Globe.com](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/08/30/sports/bill-russell-children/?s_campaign=audience:reddit):

By Adam Himmelsbach

Late in the summer of 1980, Karen Kenyatta Russell and her father were making the nearly 3,000-mile drive from Seattle to Washington, D.C., so she could begin her freshman year at Georgetown. Flying would have been easier, but they had packed a lot of things, and her father loved cars and the open road and new memories. So this choice was perfect.

One evening, they were cruising through the Midwest in their Jaguar, the radio pulsing, when the music was interrupted by a tornado alert. Listeners were urged to seek shelter. It sounded treacherous.

“And my dad looks at me, and I look at him,” Karen Russell said, “and we drove straight to where the tornadoes were. We were like storm chasers before people even did that. I think my father invented everything.”

That’s what it was sometimes like having perhaps the greatest basketball player of all-time, Bill Russell, for a father. He was fearless and stubborn and loving, and he often told his three children that he learned as he went, and so should they.

[Russell’s death on July 31, 2022](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/07/31/metro/celtics-legend-bill-russell-towering-champion-boston-dies-88/?p1=Article_Inline_Text_Link), at the age of 88 rekindled appreciation for his accomplishments as a Celtics legend who won 11 world championships, and for his work as a civil rights activist. [His No. 6 was retired throughout the NBA](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/08/13/sports/inside-movement-retire-bill-russells-iconic-no-6/?p1=Article_Inline_Text_Link) and a black patch displaying the number was put on the right shoulder of every player’s jersey.

William Jr., Jacob, and Karen grasped Russell’s towering essence, but he was also just Dad, a role he relished but that the public rarely saw. William Jr. died of cancer in 2016, but in recent interviews, Karen, 61, and Jacob, 64, described the fatherly side Russell kept private, the side they remember most.

The cross-country drives. The bicycle lessons. The failed cooking attempts. The stern glare that made their puppy have accidents in the house. The joyous cackle that warmed those around him.

“He laughed,” Karen Russell said, “like he was being tickled.”

by bostonglobe