“Everybody stood up and gave me a standing ovation,” Moulton said earlier this month. I’ll never forget that. I said to myself, ‘I was appreciated.’ That’s all you can ask for.”
Moulton, a 6-foot-4 guard, ranks 105th in school history with 580 points. After playing limited minutes as a sophomore, he averaged 9.6 points as a junior in the 1974-75 season and 11.3 points a year later as a senior.
Moulton has stayed connected to the program in part because he settled in Dayton. He’s from the Detroit area, River Rouge High School, to be exact. That program won three state championships during his career. He did move back to River Rouge for a few years after graduation but then returned to Dayton and worked 25 years as a production coordinator for an agricultural company, Cargill Inc., in Dayton.
“They make dextrose and sucrose and fructose and all that stuff,” Moulton said. “I had a good career at Cargill. Cargill was the No. 1 private industry in the world before Walmart and Microsoft came and knocked them out. They pay very well. They took care of retirement and everything.”
After retiring from Cargill, Moulton taught at the elementary school level in the Dayton Public Schools system and then got a job with the Montgomery County Board of Developmental Disabilities. After retiring from that job four years ago, Moulton started his own transportation company for individuals with disabilities. Although the pandemic hit the business hard, he has three vans and sometimes even drives them himself. He’s trying to build the business back up.
“That really gives me a purpose,” Moulton said. “When I wake up in the morning, I’ve got something to do. That retirement thing, that ain’t me.”
Moulton remains a fan of the Flyers and was close to Brian Gregory during his years as the Dayton coach. Moulton’s also a proud Detroit Flyer. Two of the program’s top-20 scorers, Johnny Davis and Negele Knight, are from Detroit. Darrell Davis, Ryan Perryman are all 1,000-point scorers from Detroit.
Moulton played three seasons with Davis, and he played a role in recruiting Knight, who played for Dayton from 1986-90. Moulton said Donoher’s assistant coach, Jack Butler, called to tell him about Knight, who was considering Pepperdine as well as Michigan and Michigan State.
“I told him, ‘If you come here, you’ll be the man, and the only other thing I’ll tell you is if you come here, I’ll always look out for you,’” Moulton told him.
Moulton said Knight lived with him in Dayton his freshman year after his mom, Alma, died. Although Moulton has lost touch with Knight, who did not attend the reunion of players from the Don Donoher era last fall, he has kept in touch with other players and appreciates his time at the University of Dayton more than ever these days.
It’s the friendships Moulton made in his four seasons and the brotherhood he joined that continues to impact his life. At the reunion, he told current coach Anthony Grant, who like Moulton played for Donoher, he would one day have to lead the reunions because Grant bridges the gap between the Donoher era and the current era.
“You’re the common denominator,” Moulton told him.
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