ULM’s Tarbutton collection expands with donation of personal scrapbook and Hall of Fame trophy

By the end of her 33-year coaching career, Edna “Tiny" Tarbutton singlehandedly placed the tiny northeastern Louisiana town of Baskin on the women’s basketball map, having secured an incredible 218-game winning streak and setting national records that have yet to be broken.

Now officials at the University of Louisiana at Monroe Library Special Collections are pleased to announce that Joe Kramberg, Tarbutton’s nephew, will donate a personal scrapbook highlighting Tarbutton’s history-making coaching career, along with other personal items, including Tarbutton’s 2005 Women's Basketball Hall of Fame Trophy, to its archives. Kramberg travelled with his aunt to receive the trophy in Knoxville, Tenn., following her selection for the award.

Kramberg will present the university with the scrapbook and other items at 10 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 24, in the ULM Library Special Collections. Tarbutton died in 2009 in West Monroe at the age of 87.

“These items represent Tarbutton’s coaching victories spanning 1947 to 1953 that brought nine state titles wins, eight of them in a row,” said Cynthia Robertson, ULM’s special collections coordinator. “For the avid researcher these items really complete the Tarbutton collection we’ve already begun, and we are incredibly fortunate that Mr. Kramberg is traveling from Houston to make this significant contribution that will help tell an important story in the history of women’s basketball in Louisiana.”

Tarbutton, who attended then-Northeastern Louisiana University for two years before completing her degree at then-Normal College in Natchitoches, ended her coaching career in 1977 with a record of 654-263-2. All of her victories were at Baskin.