Clair Bee is a 50-year-old dynamo with more jobs than most men tackle in a lifetime. In addition to being athletic director and assistant to the president of Long Island University (enrollment: 4,200), busy Bee writes a regular column for the New York Journal-American, manages a productive upstate New York farm, and also turns out magazine articles and books of fact & fiction for children (twelve published). These activities are just Bee's sidelines. His main job: basketball coach of L.I.U., the team with the best early-season record in the East.
Bee's passion for work started when he was orphaned at nine and...