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The next Induction Ceremony for the International Scholar-Athlete Hall of Fame will be held in 2008. Keep an eye on this website for information on the 2008 ceremony.
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Pierre de Coubertin (posthumously) |
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1940 Cornell Football Team (2004)
It was a cold, rainy Saturday afternoon in 1940 when the Dartmouth Indians, with a 3-4-0 record, took the field against the Big Red of Cornell. Cornell had not lost a game in three years, and had been the number one team in the Associated Press Top 20 poll all year, only falling to second the week before behind Minnesota. The Big Red was coming into the Dartmouth game undefeated and untied for the season, sporting a prefect 6-0-0 record, with hopes of a national title.
By the time the game got underway, the fans in attendance were already cold and shivering in their seats. The Dartmouth squad was coached by Earl “Red” Blaik and, despite their dismal record, seemed prepared for the powerful Cornell team. The gridders from Dartmouth were hitting the Cornell players as hard as they’d been hit all season long. Carl Snavely coached the Big Red and they were bigger, heavier, quicker and more experienced than their opponents. Yet despite the advantages, Cornell could not generate offence, and at halftime there was no score. Cornell entered the game averaging 30 points per game.
The two teams battled each other in the cold through a scoreless third quarter before Dartmouth kicked a 27-yard field goal early in the fourth quarter. Cornell fought hard but Dartmouth held as the clock began ticking down. Then the Big Red began to click, and Cornell pushed the ball to the Indian’s six-yard line with 45 seconds remaining.
On first down the full back, Mort Lansberg, crashed into the line for a three-yard gain. On second down the tailback, Walt Scholl, carried the ball to the one. Lansberg got the call again on third down and he was slammed to the turf a foot short of the goal. With nine seconds remaining, Coach Snavely called time out, and referee “Red” Friesell then whistled Cornell for a delay of game penalty, walking off a mandatory five yards. Scholl, now playing at quarterback, took the snap and threw a pass into the end zone, where a Dartmouth defender broke up the pass play.
The game was over for Cornell – or so it seemed. As the Dartmouth fans cheered what appeared to be an unlikely victory, there was confusion on the playing field. Friesell wasn’t sure if the previous play had occurred on third or fourth down. Confused by the penalty, Friesell gave the ball to Cornell again. With the clock now reading three seconds, Scholl tossed a pass over a stunned Dartmouth defense to Bill Murphy for a touchdown. After the game had ended Cornell kicked the extra point and had apparently triumphed, 7-3.
While in the referee’s locker room after the game, Friesell was approached by Howie Odell, a scout for Penn, who informed him that Cornell has actually had five downs. Game films were hastily developed and studied by both schools and Friesell, and it was indeed revealed that Cornell had won illegally on five downs. Friesell then contacted Commissioner Asa Bushnell of the Eastern Collegiate Football Association and advised him of the error, but was informed that once a game had been entered into the record books, the error was now part of the game. The result would have to stand.
Cornell’s Coach Snavely and the President of Cornell concluded that the only honorable thing to do was to concede the game to Dartmouth. They sent a wire to Dartmouth that read: “We congratulate you on the victory of your fine team. The Cornell touchdown was scored on a fifth down and we relinquish claim to the victory and extend congratulations to Dartmouth.”
The record books now reflect the final score of the 1940 match-up as a 3-0 Dartmouth victory. The honesty of “Red” Friesell and the sportsmanship of Cornell will forever make the “Fifth Down” game an afternoon of college football to remember.
1944 Cal Tech Football Team (2003)
The 1944 California Institute of Technology football team holds a special place in the school’s athletic history and in college football history. In the two years prior to 1944, there was no football at CalTech due to World War II. Young men throughout the United States, who should have been enjoying a pursuit of a college education, were overseas. That all changed with the Allies’ victory. With the war over, and GI’s returning home and to school, CalTech re-instituted football, and tried to find opponents to fill its schedule. Finding opponents for the resurrected program was nearly impossible, so the school formulated a schedule consisting of just four games - two against conference rival Redlands and a game each versus the Southern California and UCLA Junior Varsity teams. With a squad featuring 42 service veterans, of a roster of 45 players, CalTech swept through the opposition, finishing the season undefeated, untied, and un-scored upon. Coached by Chief Specialist Mason Anderson and utilizing the single and double wing back formations, the 1944 CalTech football team outscored its opponents by a combined score of 159 to zero. The undefeated season included 67-0 and 39-0 victories over Redlands, a 20-0 shutout of the USC Junior Varsity, and a 33-0 triumph over the JV team from UCLA. The starting lineup consisted of just two players who were not veterans. The offensive line didn’t even average 200 pounds a man, and only half the players on the team had ever played football in high school. The swift and athletic backfield teamed with the quick and aggressive line to forge a formidable offensive attack that overwhelmed its opponents. Despite the late start, the inexperienced players, and the limited schedule, the 1944 CalTech team not only won each of its games; it earned a place in college football history.
1975 Delta State Women’s Basketball Team (2003)
The 1975 Delta State women’s team was among the most improbable champions in the history of college athletics, and sparked an era of dominance that is virtually unmatched for a school its size. Delta State had not played women’s basketball for 42 years when it resurrected the program for the 1973-74 season. Two years later, it won the AIAW women’s Basketball Championship. It did so with an incredible group of women, who captured the imagination of a University, a city, and the entire state of Mississippi. The team became so popular, in fact, that the athletic department switched the starting time of home games to 9:00 pm, to allow more and more people to come to campus for the games. Delta State was coached by all-time great and Basketball Hall of Fame honoree Margaret Wade. Wade, of course, has her name on the trophy that is given annually to women’s college basketball’s best player. The team members were talented and incredibly close. Each of the five starters on the team hailed from Mississippi, and each went on to start for the next two seasons, when they also won AIAW National Championships. The leader of the team was Lusia Harris, one of the greatest women’s basketball players of all time. 1975 marked the first of her three First Team All-America awards. Obviously, she didn’t do it by herself. Feared as an aggressive zone defensive team, Harris combined with Cornelia Ward, Debbie Brock, the 4-11 point guard, Wanda Hairston, and Ramona Von Boeckman to run to the championship and into the history books. That same starting five repeated a run to the championship twice more before graduating.
1996 Williams College Women’s (2004)
The accomplishments of the 1996 Williams College women’s lacrosse team are among the most impressive within the sport. Under the direction of head coach Chris Mason, the Ephs finished the season undefeated with a13-0 regular season record and an overall mark of 15-0, becoming only the second Williams team ever to go undefeated. The 1996 perfect season established the team’s longest winning streak and culminated with its 12th consecutive Little Three championship, the ECAC-New England championship, and a Number One national ranking. The team featured five All-Americans, with Alyse Claymen, Lauren Gioia, and Kasia Sullivan receiving first team honors, and Alana Teutonico and Tanya Gogaolak on the second and third teams, respectively. Paced by the record-setting Sullivan, the Ephs proved to be a potent attack. In addition, Claymen was named the Goalie of the Year, Chris Mason took home the award for Coach of the Year, and Sullivan finished the year as College Sports Magazine’s 1995-96 Division III Female Athlete of the Year. The three-time Lacrosse All-American wrapped up her magnificent career as the nation’s all-time leader in points, including goals, goals in a game, goals in a season, and tied Teutonico for most points in a season. Despite the wonderful season put together by the Ephs, the team was denied the opportunity to participate in the 1996 NCAA tournament, due to a schedule that conflicted with the school’s exam period. College authorities made the controversial decision to withdraw the team from the NCAA Tournament preventing a potential bid for a national championship. The ruling, backed by the school president, sent a clear message that academics come before athletics at Williams. Despite the lost opportunity, the 1996 season stands as one of the most memorable in the program’s illustrious history.
Pindar (2001)
Voltaire wrote: "Everyone admires Pindar; no one understands him." Everyone? No one? For the few for whom Pindar wrote in his day, and for the few who make the effort to understand him today, what he had to say then is just what everyone still needs to hear, and no one wants to hear.
Between the 490's and the 440's B.C.E., Pindar's lyric poetry offered the finest trophies to the athletic victors at the greatest Panhellenic festivals, the Olympics, preeminently, but also the Pythian, Isthmian and Nemean Games. Then as now, all athletes, even the very best, the youngest and the strongest, would inevitably age, weaken and die, and all, even the most favored, would have to endure various hardships while they lived. Typically, Pindar honored the victor, the family, and the community not only with measured praise but also with moral instruction, often rather cautionary than triumphalist in spirit. But there was good reason for pride, the athlete's and the poet's, too, who offered his victors a possession forever and an immortality of repute. His poetry has not aged or died, and the athletes whose achievements he honored still live in it, those ancient boxers, sprinters and horsemen, the best for a day at a place twenty-five hundred years ago.
His lyrics almost never showcase the athletes in ways easily appreciable by us, and he gives us nothing like detailed reportage about particular competitions. Perhaps perversely, the writer who won't talk about the athletic event does insist on athletic imagery for himself, a poet who prefers to think of himself as an archer, a thrower, or a jumper. His words will hit the mark; they will go far; and as he jumps from theme to theme, the spring in his knees is light. Knees, a poet-athlete's knees, all those years ago! We can still admire, if not fully understand, the athleticism of his poetry itself, its love of speed and strength, skill and courage. These qualities are not merely archaic, and Pindar still reaches moderns.
Plato (1999)
Plato is considered by many classicists to be the "first scholar athlete" for his work in advancing the notion of the scholar-athlete ideal. Through his writings, Plato legitimized the scholar-athlete ideal by recognizing the integration between the body and the mind. Classicist E.N. Gardiner, who is recognized as the world authority on the ancient Greek games, suggests in his 1920 and 1930 writings that Plato was not only an outstanding wrestler, but could have possibly won at the Olympics. Professor John R. Cole, of the Bates College Classics Department, cites that Plato found the first philosophical school in western tradition, locating it outside the walls of Athens in a shaded grove known as the Academy, and so he has every right to be considered "the first academic." He is generally acknowledged as having been one of the most original and most powerful thinkers of all times and places. Among his greatest achievements was to articulate ideals relating education, politics and ethics. All this makes him an intellectual's intellectual, a scholar's scholar, but leaves unanswered the question of his qualifications as a scholar athlete. Before Plato, the Academy had been an athletic training ground, and so, when Plato began his teaching there, he literally founded western philosophy in the shadow of the gymnasium, not vice versa. Furthermore, a seemingly reliable but too often discounted ancient tradition tells us that in his youth Plato himself had been a wrestler at the Isthmian Games, an international athletic competition second in prestige only to the Olympics. Finally, as a mature thinker, he argued that physical training should complement philosophical education for the best men and women, too, and this makes him not just a scholar athlete in his own right, but also the first theorist of the scholar-athlete ideal.
Val Ackerman (2003)
Val Ackerman is not only a pioneer, but also one of the most powerful women in sports. As president of the WNBA, Ackerman is responsible for all aspects of the league’s operation, and largely responsible for the league’s survival and ongoing success. Simply stated, without Ackerman, the WNBA may not have survived. Under her stewardship, the WNBA has expanded and secured a number of television contracts with entities such as ESPN, ABC, NBC, Fox Sports, and the Oxygen Network. In 2002, she guided the WNBA into a transition from single entity to local ownership. Her low-key style and leadership have made her both popular and effective. Athletics were always in the cards for Ackerman. The daughter and granddaughter of an athletic director and coach, Ackerman starred in field hockey, basketball, swimming, and track in Pennington, N.J. where she lived. She matriculated to the University of Virginia where she was a four-year starter, a three-year captain, and a two-time Academic All-America. She graduated with high honors and received the Jettie Hill Award for attaining the highest grade point average among UVA female athletes. In short, Ackerman was a star on the court as well as in the classroom. After graduation in 1981, she played professional basketball for one year in France before entering law school at UCLA. After earning her degree in 1985, she spent two years with a New York law firm before joining the NBA as a staff attorney in 1988. She later served as special assistant to the Commissioner from 1990-92, and vice-president of business affairs from 1994-96. In 1996, she was named President of the WNBA. Her appointment signaled the commitment of the NBA to the WNBA’s success. She is a member of many boards including the USA Basketball Executive Committee and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. She has been honored many times for her personal accomplishments, including induction into the Academic All-America Hall of Fame.
Athlete, lawyer, coach, referee and administrator, Dr. Rubén Acosta Hernández rose from volleyball player to the presidency of the International Volleyball Federation.
While a practicing lawyer in his native Mexico, Rubén Acosta was named president of the Mexican Volleyball Federation in 1965 and held the post until 1984. During that period he also was secretary general of the Mexican All Sports Confederation, an executive member of the Mexican Olympic Committee and general vice director the Organizing Committee of the 1968 Summer Olympics which were held in Mexico In 1984, during the 19th World Congress in Long Beach, California, Dr. Acosta was elected president of the International Volleyball Federation. The organization's headquarters then were moved from Paris to Lausanne, Switzerland where Dr. Acosta guided the building of modern structures while traveling throughout the world to expand the sport on a global basis.
A zealous apostle supporter of volleyball on the international scene, Dr. Acosta largely was responsible for propelling the sport and its extension, beach volleyball, onto a new level of sporting prestige. He also was instrumental in working out a 150 million dollar contract agreement with five television networks. In addition, he took an extremely firm stand on doping, particularly in the Olympics, while espousing the professionalization of world soccer. "My goal, " he said in the 1980s, is to have a sound sport, extremely well-trained athletes, and to see professionalism and a rational marketing approach grow in more than one hundred countries."
Known for his unyielding stance on compromises, Dr. Acosta became one of the most outspoken figures in the Olympic movement. Though a close friend of the longtime IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, Dr. Acosta warned him often of the danger of granting the organization's administrative bodies too much power. "From a technical standpoint," he said, "the IOC must listen to the international federations and not the other way around. The Olympic Games must leave a legacy to future generations."
In addition to writing extensively on sports law and administration, Dr. Acosta served as an advisor to the National Sports Institute in Mexico and was a founder of the Volleyball World League, the Women's Volleyball Grand Prix and the Beach Volleyball World Series.
Tenley E. Albright, M.D. (2004)
Dr. Tenley E. Albright started skating as a child in hometown rinks and ponds. After a bout with pre-paralytic polio at age 11, she worked on strengthening her muscles, concentrating determinedly on skating. By age 19, she had won every major figure skating title possible. Dr. Albright was the U.S. Open champion five times, the first American woman to win a world figure-skating championship in 1953 (and again in 1955), and at age 16, was a gold medal winner in women’s figure skating at the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina, Italy. She also won a silver medal at the 1952 Winter Olympic Games in Oslo, which was only the second silver medal ever won by a U.S. female skater.
But it was medicine that Dr. Albright really wanted to pursue. Rather than return to finish a fourth year at Radcliffe College, Dr. Albright applied to Harvard Medical School, from which she graduated in 1961. After 23 years in private practice as a surgeon, she has tapered her surgical practice in the past few years and has become more involved in board activities and clinical research.
She has served as Chairman of the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health and Chairman of Western Resources, Inc., a holding company of varied assets with plans for a research and development park and a senior care facility. She also serves as Director of the State Street Bank and Trust Company, is a member of the Harvard Medical School Information Technology Strategy Committee, and is on the Board of Visitors of the Harvard Medical Institute for Research and Education.
Dr. Albright, who has received eight honorary degrees, attended the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan as a member of the U.S. Delegation and recently received the Research! America AdvocacyAward.
Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr. (posthumously) (1999)
As a tennis player, Arthur Ashe was one of the most prominent players of his time, capturing the NCAA Championship at UCLA, winning three Grand Slam events, including Wimbledon in 1975, and earning election into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1985. His legacy, however, will be the positive changes he helped forge and the causes he championed, both within tennis, and in society as a whole. As the first and only African-American to be ranked No. 1 in the world, and the first black male to win the U.S. Open and Wimbledon, Mr. Ashe not only left his mark on the game viscerally, through his pioneering success, but also financially and philosophically, through his actions as a leader in the formation of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). As a youngster, Mr. Ashe was barred from playing on most public courts and in most local tournaments involving whites, yet he still managed to earn a tennis scholarship to UCLA, where he then earned a business degree in 1966.
In 1963, as a 20 year old, he was asked to become the first African-American on the U.S. Davis Cup team. Over the next 15 years, he won 28 of 34 Cup matches. In 1968, Mr. Ashe lifted his tennis game to a new level, leading the U.S. to its first Davis Cup win in five years, winning the national amateur title and becoming the first U.S. Open Champion in the open era. Mr. Ashe turned pro in 1970, won the Australian Open, and then, two years later, became the first American tennis player to exceed $100,000 in annual earnings. Mr. Ashe complemented his playing career with successes in journalism, mediand philanthropic endeavors, and was named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year in 1992. He was the author of the three-volume, critically-acclaimed, A Hard Road to Glory: A History of the African-American Athlete, which was later adapted for television. He also established the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS and received the first Leadership Award from the Harvard AIDS Institute
Sir Roger Bannister (1999)
On May 6, 1954, Sir Roger Bannister stepped onto the track at Oxford University in England and accomplished one of the greatest feats in sports history when he became the first person to run a sub-four-minute mile. It was a cold and windy day, but that would not stop him from reaching his goal, as the 25-year-old Oxford medical student looked forward to his chance to round the cinder oval and conquer the barrier that had gained control of the world's elite. In the track community, there was an overwhelming doubt that anyone would be able to run a mile in less than four minutes. The ease with which runners now break the four-minute-mile "barrier" obscures the impact of Roger Bannister's run in 1954 - the run of all time. No single run ever counted more. Certainly none has ever been as hypnotic, as captivating or as dreamlike as Dr. Bannister's world-record time of 3:59.4. From the standpoint of the mile, legitimately the essential event in running, his run remains timeless. In recognition of the 3:59.4, Runner's World, in their 30th anniversary edition in 1996, selected Sir Roger Bannister's sub-four-minute mile as the single greatest running moment of the past century. He was also a finalist in the 1,500 meters
at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki and captured the European 1,500-meter title in 1954 before retiring from athletic competition in December of the same year to practice neurological medicine. Born in 1929 in Harrow, Middlesex, England, Sir Roger Bannister was educated at the University of Oxford and at Saint Mary's Hospital Medical School. He wrote an autobiography, First Four Minutes, published in 1955 (now republished as Four Minute Mile), and was knighted in 1975. Dr. Bannister, a recipient of 13 honorary degrees, served as chairman of the Sports Council of Great Britain from 1971-74 and President of the International Council for Sport and Physical Recreation from 1976-83. He is still active as director of the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London and a trustee-delegate of St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in Paddington. Dr. Bannister has served as the Chairman of the Editorial Board of Clinical Autonomic Research since 1990 and is the editor of Autonomic Failure, a textbook on clinical disorders of the autonomic nervous system.
Sen. Birch Bayh (2004)
Former Indiana Senator Birch Bayh grew up in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he attended public schools before serving a term in the Army from 1946-48. After graduating from the Purdue University School of Agriculture at Lafayette in 1951, he went on to receive his J.D. degree from the Indiana School of Law at Bloomington in 1960.
Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1962, Senator Bayh represented the State of Indiana for 18 years as Senator, until 1980. During his Senate career, he served on the Judiciary Committee, the Appropriations Committee, and the Environment and Public Works Committee. Senator Bayh also served as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, and the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution. Additionally, he chaired the National Alcohol Fuels Commission and the Office of Technology Assessment Study on the Patent System.
Senator Bayh authored two Amendments to the Constitution – the Twenty-fifth Amendment on Presidential and Vice Presidential succession, and the Twenty-sixth Amendment lowering the voting age to 18 years of age – and was the chief architect of the Juvenile Justice Act.
In 1972, Senator Bayh sponsored and co-authored the landmark Title IX legislation pertaining to equal opportunity for girls and women in all federally funded programs and activities, including sports. Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity. The impact of the legislation on the participation of women and girls in sports has been monumental and highly acclaimed.
Over the years Senator Bayh has also served as chairman of the AMTRAK Labor/Management Productivity Council, the Mental Health Association’s National Commission on the Insanity Defense, the University of Virginia Commission on Presidential Disability & the Twenty-fifth Amendment, and the National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence. In addition, he has been a member of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
From 1998-2001, Senator Bayh was a partner in the law firm of Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly LLP, and since 2001, has been a partner in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Venable, Baetjer, Howard & Civiletti, LLP.
Clair Bee is the most published, and perhaps the most recognized man who ever coached a college team. Certainly people like John Wooden, Adolph Rupp and Dean Smith are more well known as college basketball coaches, but how many of them can claim 24 published books in a genre enjoyed by millions and millions of people worldwide? Bee was born right at the turn of the century in Grafton, W.Va. After serving in World War I, he attended Waynesburg (Penn.) College where he played baseball, basketball and football. In 1928, he became basketball and football coach at Rider College where he compiled records of 55-7 on the hardwood and 17-7-1 on the gridiron. In 1931, Bee was named head coach at Long Island University, where he turned the program into one of the nation’s best. He twice won the NIT (1939 and 1941) and had undefeated seasons in 1935-36 and 1938-39. He had a remarkable 43-game winning streak broken by Stanford and its one-hand shooting Hank Luisetti. Bee, who also served in World War II, later coached the Baltimore Bullets of the NBA for three seasons. He had an outstanding record of 357-79 at LIU and an overall mark of 412-86 (.827), which is still the best in the history of college basketball. He was also a pioneer in the game. He is considered the architect of the 1-3 -1 defense, was an advocate of the three-second rule, and was a prime mover in the acceptance of the 24-second shot clock in the professional game. He has been inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, which honors the college coach of the year with the Clair Bee Award. Despite all of his coaching accomplishments, he is more universally recognized for writing nearly 50 books, most notably the Chip Hilton series. In fact, the Basketball Hall of Fame selects a college player of the year and awards him the Chip Hilton Award, thus memorializing both Bee and his star player.
Known as the "mother of women's basketball," Senda Berenson introduced women to the game at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1892, a year after it was invented by Dr. James Naismith. A native of Lithuania, Berenson was the director of physical education at Smith College when she read an article about the new game, which Naismith had devised in nearby Springfield, Massachusetts. After talking with Naismith, Berenson devised a special set of rules for women which, among other things, divided the basketball court into three sections, with two of the six players restricted to each section.
At first Berenson's adaption of Naismith's game of "basket ball" was used solely as a recreational activity for her physical education classes. But in 1893 she organized what is believed to have been the first women's game ever played, which was held at Smith College and involved teams from the school's freshman and sophomore classes. Using the rules devised by Berenson, other schools throughout the country soon adopted the game for their women's physical education classes. Since vigorous exercise by women was frowned upon at the time, Berenson developed an orderly and somewhat refined game that stressed socialization and cooperation more than competition. To avoid roughness, for example, she eliminated snatching or batting a ball from another player's hand and allowed only three bounces on a dribble.
Besides establishing the first official set of rules for girls, Berenson also authored the first Basketball Guide for Women and edited the women's rulebook for 15 years. She also organized the Basketball Committee for Women in 1905 and served as its chairperson until 1917.
After leaving Smith College in 1911, Berenson chaired the physical education department at the Mary A. Burnham School in Northampton until 1921. There, she introduced fencing and folk dancing and also created a program in remedial gymnastics to students with special physical needs. Berenson, who married Smith College English professor Hebert Vaughn Abbott in 1911, retired in 1921 and then traveled extensively in Europe studying art and music. She died in California, where she had moved in 1929, in 1954. Thirty years later, Berenson was one of the first three women inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. And later in 1999, she was inducted to the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Throughout her career as an educator, Berenson believed that the standards for behavior in sports should uphold moral values, which she regarded as important in everyday life. She also felt that sport should never overemphasize winning but instead stress spirit, vigor and cooperation.
Moe Berg (2003)
Moe Berg has been called the smartest player to ever wear a professional baseball uniform and not just because he was an honors student at Princeton. Born in New York City at the turn of the century to Russian immigrant parents, Berg excelled in baseball and schoolwork in high school. He went on to Princeton University, where he was the star shortstop on the baseball team. Academically, he majored in foreign languages, studying seven at one time (one of them being Sanskrit of all things). After graduation from Princeton, he played for the Brooklyn Robins (the predecessor to the Brooklyn Dodgers) as a substitute catcher. During the off-season, he studied linguistics at the Sorbonne, and later earned a law degree from Columbia. He played in the big leagues a total of 17 years for a number of teams, including the Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, Washington Senators, the Boston Red Sox, and, of course, the Dodgers. He was moderately successful, hitting .243 for his career, but he was recognized most as a defensive stalwart behind the plate. From his time with the White Sox on, he worked in law firms as an attorney. His incredible education and far-reaching knowledge on any number of subjects made him the darling of the baseball media and a cult figure in the game. The Atlantic Monthly asked him to author an article on baseball, which was titled “Pitchers and Catchers.” To this day, it is considered a classic. Berg’s greater calling was to serve the United States as an OSS operative. In fact, in 1934, he was inexplicably named to a touring all-star team that visited Japan. While the other players were taking in the sights, Berg was secretly filming Japanese military installations for the United States. His later missions took him all over the world, most often using his incredible command of languages to pose as everything from graduate students to journalists to international businessmen. Among his contributions to U.S. intelligence was his careful tracking of the German’s progress toward nuclear bomb capabilities. Maybe not a hero on the baseball field, but certainly one off the field.
Sen. Bill Bradley (1999)
As a basketball player, a Senator and a speaker, Bill Bradley has been a leading figure in American public life for more than 30 years. Born in Crystal City, Missouri, Mr. Bradley became a two-time, high school All-American basketball player at Crystal City High before choosing Princeton University over Duke at the last moment. At Princeton, Mr. Bradley became a three-time collegiate All-American and was named the 1965 Collegiate Player of the Year. In addition, he captained the United States' gold medal-winning basketball team at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo. After graduating from Princeton with a degree in American History, Mr. Bradley won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University where he earned a master's degree in politics, philosophy and economics. In 1967, he returned
to basketball, joining the New York Knicks where he captured two NBA championships in 1970 and 1973. Mr. Bradley capped his 10-year professional basketball career (1967-77) by being inducted into the Professional Basketball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 1982. Mr. Bradley's political career began immediately when he was elected U.S. Senator from New Jersey in 1978, serving three terms (18 years) before retiring in 1997. Since leaving the Senate, he has been active in a number of activities, including: serving as chair of the National Civic League; lecturing as the Distinguished Leadership Scholar at the University of Maryland, the Payne Distinguished Professor at the Institute of International Studies at Stanford University and as a Visiting Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. Mr. Bradley, who has authored four books -- Life on the Run, a chronicle of his experiences in the NBA, Fair Tax, a precursor to the Tax Reform act of 1986, Time Present, Time Past: A Memoir, and most recently, Values of the Game, essays on basketball and life -- is currently seeking the Democratic nomination to run for the U.S. presidency in the year 2000.
Rev. John E. Brooks, S.J. (2003)
Father John Brooks has given his life to service in one way or another – to his country, to his faith, to his alma mater, his fellow man, and to the student-athlete ideal. Brooks was graduated from the Boston Latin School in 1942 before enrolling at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. A few months later, he volunteered for service in the United States Army and was assigned to Fort Monmouth, N.J. for training in the Signal Corps. In June of 1944, he was sent first to England and then, after the invasion of Normandy, to France where he served until January 1946, four years after his service began. He returned to Holy Cross a few months later to complete his studies. In June of 1949, he received his diploma. A few months later, he enrolled in the graduate program in geophysics at Penn State University. However in 1950, he answered his calling and entered the Jesuit novitiate in Lenox, Mass. While still a scholastic teaching mathematics and physics at Holy Cross, he earned a Master of Arts in philosophy from Boston College in 1954 and a Master of Science in geophysics from B.C. in 1959. In 1959, he completed his theological studies and he was ordained a Jesuit priest. He later earned a doctorate in systematic theology. In 1963, Father Brooks joined the faculty at Holy Cross. In 1968, he was appointed Vice-President and Dean of the College. Just two years later, he was named President of the College. During his tenure as president, Father Brooks oversaw the College’s transition to coeducation, an increase in the endowment to $140 million, 23 years of balanced budgets, and the development of Holy Cross into a nationally recognized liberal arts institution of the highest reputation. He also was a leader in a movement towards non-grant-in-aid intercollegiate competition at the Division I AA level. Over the years, Father Brooks served, and continues to serve, on a wide range boards and committees. He currently serves Holy Cross as president emeritus, working in the development office.
George H.W. Bush (1999)
As the first sitting Vice President to ascend to the presidency in more than 150 years, George Bush was elected the 41st President of the United States in November of 1988. During his four years in office from 1989-93, President Bush signed into law, among other things, the American with Disabilities Act and the Clean Air Act, as well as landmark civil rights and environmental legislation. He also successfully fought for and negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was later signed into law. Prior to his term as President, Bush served as Ronald Reagan's Vice President from 1981-89. Born in 1924 in Milton, Massachusetts, George Bush joined the Navy at age 18 and became the youngest U.S. Naval pilot (from 1942-45), flying 58 combat missions in World War II. In 1948, Mr. Bush graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in economics from Yale University, where he captained the varsity baseball team that twice finished as runner-up of the NCAA Tournament, and spent one season playing varsity soccer.
Following graduation, Mr. Bush returned to Texas and began making his way in the oil business before beginning his career in politics and public service in 1963, when he was elected Chairman of the Harris County (Texas) Republican Party. After losing his first campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1964, Mr. Bush was elected in 1966 to the U.S. House of Representatives where he served two terms. He then accepted a series of senior level appointments following a second unsuccessful try for the Senate in 1970: U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (1971); Chairman of the Republican National Committee (1973); Chief of the U.S. Liaison Office in China (1974); and Director of Central Intelligence (1976). Since leaving public office in 1993, President Bush has visited more than 55 foreign countries, most of the 50 states and has helped to raise millions of dollars for a variety of charitable organizations. In addition, Mr. Bush has authored two books: Looking Forward, an autobiography, and A World Transformed, co-authored with General Brent Scowcroft.
Dr. Robert L. Carothers (2004)
Since Robert L. Carothers moved to Rhode Island from Minnesota in 1991 to become the 10th president of the University of Rhode Island, the University has increased enrollment of the best and brightest students in the state and region, shed its moniker as a “party” school, improved its physical campus environment, increased the diversity among students and faculty, and enhanced its levels of alumni, corporate, and state support. Today, the University is a $360 million enterprise that has undergone a massive overhaul and operates under a master planning process.
President Carothers initiated a Centennial Scholarship program, which rewards students strictly on academic accomplishments. The program now disburses more than $6 million annually. As a result, the average SAT score for incoming freshman has risen nearly 160 points since 1991.
Dr. Carothers has been a pioneer among public universities in providing talented students with the tools to win prestigious awards, opening an Honors Scholarship Office in 1996. During 2001, URI students won nine national scholarships including the Truman, the Udall, two Goldwaters, two National Security Education Fellowships, a Madison, and a Fulbright. A recent alumna became the University’s first Rhodes Scholar, the first woman at a four-year public institution in New England to earn the coveted honor.
During the past decade, President Carothers has led the effort to restore and rebuild a long neglected infrastructure.
Rhode Island citizens responded to President Carothers’ leadership by approving more than $112 million for capital projects in four separate voter referenda, all passing by a two-to-one margin. The General Assembly authorized another $92 million in revenue bonds, and the state has consistently increased its support to the University’s operating budget well above the rate of inflation for each of the past five years. Currently, more than $250 million is invested in ongoing capital projects.
The residence halls are undergoing a $64 million renovation program; five historic academic buildings are being transformed and rehabilitated; and a $35 million renovation of the Shepard’s Department Store made way for the University’s Providence Campus, also home of the Alan Shawn Feinstein College of Continuing Education.
A new $54 million Convocation Center and $12 million ice arena, an enhanced engineering complex, and two Coastal Institutes have also been established. Likewise, a Multicultural Center symbolizes the centrality of diversity to University life. In 1999, the University opened a new wing at the renowned Cancer Prevention Research Center, which since its founding has received more than $60 million in research funding.
He also established a campus task force to develop policy that would address campus alcohol use and abuse. The result was a series of decisions that reduced alcohol abuse on campus, and made URI a national research model for testing strategies aimed at reducing the abuse of alcohol and other substances, bringing in millions of federal research dollars to faculty and staff.
Dr. Carothers has completed three years of service on the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s Committee on Campus Drinking, which culminated with the publication of a research agenda for the nation. He was one of only six university presidents to serve on the High Education Center for Alcohol and Drug Prevention Presidential Leadership Group.
President Carothers has always been an ardent supporter of the Institute for International Sport and its worldwide and state programs, contributing the use of URI facilities and staff for the operations of the Scholar-Athlete Games, and encouraging the construction of the International Scholar-Athlete Hall of Fame
Generally acknowledged as the greatest Asian women's athlete of the 20th Century, Chi Cheng set eight world records and 23 Asian marks in one year alone during 1970 in events ranging from the 50-yard dash to the 200-meter hurdles.
An all-round star in track and field from Hsin-Chu, Taiwan, Chi established a long string of Asian and world records between 1964 and 1973 when she was forced to retire at the age of 29 because of a succession of leg injuries. During one stretch, from 1969 through 1970, Chi -- whose main claim to fame was as a sprinter and hurdler -- won an astounding 153 of 154 events that included sprints, hurdles, long jump and relays. Chi represented the Republic of China as an Olympian at the 1960 Rome, 1964 Tokyo, and 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games. Chi Cheng was nicknamed worldwide by the press as the "Flying Antelope", "Gazelle of the Orient", "Yellow Blitz". During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, a song "Welcome to Chi Cheng", was specially composed and dedicated before the opening of the Games.
After establishing her credentials as a versatile track and field star in her native Taiwan, Chi moved to California in the 1960s to attend California State Polytechnic University where she was a member of the women's track team. After graduating with a degree in physical education, Chi became the first Asian woman to win a medal in the post-war Olympics when she captured the bronze in the 80-meter hurdles at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City in 1968. That same year Chi Cheng, set a record in the Asian pentathlon.
Returning to Taiwan in 1980, Chi was elected Congresswoman for three terms (9 years), served as secretary-general of Taiwan's Track and Field Association, the head of Taiwan's national athletics federation and a member of her homeland's Olympic committee. Previously, Chi had served as athletic director, at the University of Redlands in California, and in 1971 was named World Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press and Track and Field News (all sports, Pele of Brazil was second). Presently, Chi serves as Chairman of the Board, Shuang-Chi Foundation for Mentally Retarded Children, and the Taipei City Children's Physical Education Association. She also serves as President, for the Republic of China National Sports Association for the Deaf, and the Hope Cultural and Educational Foundation Chinese Community Healthful Life and Sports Association.
Secretary William Cohen (2003)
William Cohen has led a life deeply rooted in politics. He served his country, from the local school committee to being selected as President Clinton’s Secretary of Defense. Along the way, he has been an unwavering advocate for more stringent ethics laws and bipartisan cooperation. Born on August 28, 1940 in Bangor, Maine, Cohen excelled in school, as well on the basketball court. The epitome of the student-athlete, he was graduated from Bowdoin cum laude in Latin, and went on to earn a law degree from Boston University, where he was also graduated with honors. On the court, Cohen was All-State in high school. As a collegian, he was inducted into the New England All-Star Hall of Fame for his outstanding play. His professional life began as an Assistant County Attorney for Penobscot County (1968-70), where Cohen developed a thirst for justice that was seemingly unquenchable. He moved into public life as Mayor of Bangor. Inspired by homespun values and a love of the people of Maine, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served from 1973- 79. Along the way, Cohen proved that he was a politician for the people by walking over 600 miles across the district “to find out what’s on people’s minds.” His political star rose further, and he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1979, where he served until President Clinton appointed him Secretary of Defense in 1997. During his political years in Washington D.C., Cohen was known as a moderate Republican who voted for what was right for his country, not just his party. As Secretary of Defense, Cohen worked to improve bipartisan unity on national security issues. He never compromised his values in the face of political pressure, and was always known as one of the ‘good guys’ on Capitol Hill. Today, Cohen is the co-director for Empower America, an organization that ensures that government’s actions foster growth, economic well-being, freedom, and individual responsibility. He also continues to work on one of his true passions - writing. He has written nine books.
Jody Conradt (2003)
On January 22, 2003, Jody Conradt led the University of Texas to an 89-86 defeat of Texas Tech to become just the third active college basketball coach to earn 800 victories. Being at the top of her game has always been part of the Conradt resume. Even as a high school athlete at Goldthwaite (Tex.) High School, she was ahead of her time, averaging 40 points per game over her four-year career. She went on to Baylor University where she was a member of the University’s first-ever basketball team and was a four-year letter winner. However, it was in coaching that she found both her passion and her greatest success. She was head coach at Sam Houston State (74-23) from 1969-72 and at Texas-Arlington (43-39) from 1973-76. It was at Texas that she truly made her mark in the game and became not only one of the all-time coaching greats, but is also regarded as one of the classiest people on the sidelines. She has led the Longhorns to 20, 20-win seasons, nine 30-win seasons, and the 1986 NCAA Championship after a perfect 34-0 season. She has coached the Longhorns to a 183-game winning streak against Southwest Conference teams, 10 regular-season SWC titles and nine SWC Tournament Championships. She was also a five-time winner of the Southwestern Conference Coach of the Year Trophy. During her incredible career, she has coached four Olympians, 20 All-Americans, six Conference Players of the Year, two Wade Trophy winners, two National Players of the Year, one Broderick Award winner, and over 20 players who have gone on to professional basketball careers. Conradt, who also served as Director of Women’s Athletics at Texas has received dozens of regional and national honors, including the Carol Eckman Award (the highest honor given by the Women’s Basketball Association), the National Association for Girls and Women in Sports Award, as well as induction into the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame, the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame, the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. Despite all of her awards and accomplishments, she is most highly regarded for a lifetime commitment to the student-athlete ideal, and for a reputation as one of the great people in the game.
James E. Counsilman (1999)
As one of the best known names in the swimming world, Dr. James E. "Doc" Counsilman is defined not only by his unparalleled success as a coach, but as a man who is a creative and insightful scholar and scientist. Dr. Counsilman, who was born in Birmingham, Alabama and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, had his own personal swimming career cut off at its apex by World War II, just two weeks before the 1943 Intercollegiate Championships. He became a B-24 bomber pilot and flew 32 missions, winning a distinguished Flying Cross, all before graduating from Ohio State University in 1947 with a B.S. in Education. Dr. Counsilman later earned his master's degree from the University of Illinois and his Ph. D. from the State University of Iowa. He served as the varsity swim coach at Indiana University from 1957-1990, where he guided the Hoosiers to 23 Big Ten Conference Championships, including 20 in a row from 1961-80, and six straight NCAA titles from 1968-73. Dr. Counsilman also coached the U.S.
Olympic Men's Swimming team in 1964 and 1976, capturing all but two gold medals in 1964 and all but one in 1976. Counsilman-trained swimmers, including Mark Spitz, who electrified the world at the 1972 Munich Games by winning seven gold medals, appeared in every Olympics from 1948 to 1988. He was named the National Swimming Coach of the Year in 1969 and 1970, and was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1976. In 1979, at age 58, Dr. Counsilman became the oldest person to ever swim the English Channel. He has written five books, including The Science of Swimming, which is the text by which all other swim books are judged and has been printed in more than 20 languages. Dr. Counsilman's biomechanic research led to six inventions of swimming aparatus that are considered staples in the sport today, including pacer clocks, the isokinetic swim bench and anti-wave lane markers.
A classic "late bloomer" in sports, Adhemar Ferreira da Silva did not get involved in track and field until he was 19 years old. Yet, amazingly, a year later, he broke the Brazilian and South American records for the triple jump, one of the most difficult records in one afternoon while winning his first of two Olympic gold medals in the triple jump at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland.
Those feats were a portent of things to come for Adhemar, a onetime amateur soccer player and aspiring singer who grew up in a slum tenement in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Besides winning a slew of gold medals in his native Brazil and in the Pan American Games and South American Championships in the 1950s, Adhemar repeated as the gold medal winner in the triple-jump at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia when he again broke an Olympic and world record.
By then Adhemar had become the most dominant athlete in South America, idolized by millions for his athletic accomplishments, his demeanor and his scholarly brilliance. A true renaissance man, Adhemar was an accomplished singer and guitarist, a law school graduate, a sculptor, an actor and, later, a diplomat for his country, serving as a cultural attaché at the Brazilian Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria. Besides appearing in a number of theatrical productions, Adhemar also was an actor in the movie Black Orpheus, which received an American "Oscar" as the best foreign language film of 1959.
In a paean to Adhemar, Carl Lewis, the great American track and field athlete who won nine Olympic gold medals, once said, "Longevity? Adhemar Ferreira da Silva was a dominant triple jump champion throughout the entire decade of the 1950s, claiming world records and a string of gold medals in both the Pan American Games and the Olympics.What a record! And we have to remember that this was an era during which athletes usually competed in only one Olympics and then moved on with their lives away from athletics. And passion and the impact of his passion? All we have to do is look at the long list of Brazilian triple jumpers who followed da Silva to the victory stand in the years that followed. What a tribute to the man who came before them!"
Though primarily remembered as the founder of the international tennis competition that bears his name, Dwight Davis was also one of the best tennis players in the world during the Turn of the Century and a public servant who served his country as secretary of war and as governor-general of the Philippines. A 6-foot, 190-pound power-hitting lefthander, Dwight won the intercollegiate singles championship in 1899, the year after he had lost in the finals of the U.S. championships. Ranked in the U.S. top-10 four straight years from 1898 through 1901--and as high as second in 1899 and fourth in 1898 and 1902--Dwight also was an outstanding doubles player who won the national doubles title three times from 1899-1901 and was the runner-up at Wimbledon in 1901.
But it was as the organizer of the Davis Cup in 1900, the year that he graduated from Harvard, that
Dwight made his most enduring contribution to tennis. He paid a Boston jewelry firm $750 to make a 13-inch high and 19-inch diameter sterling silver bowl, which he donated to the U.S. National Lawn Tennis Association for an international competition. The Association in turn invited England, the dominant country in tennis since the game's founding, to compete against an American team at the Longwood Cricket Club in Brookline, Massachusetts during the summer of 1900.
With Dwight as the captain, the U.S. team vanquished the favored British team, with Dwight winning the second singles match as well as the doubles. Then, as now, the format conceived by Dwight was for two singles matches on the first and third days with a doubles match on the second day, with one point awarded for each victory.
Dwight retired from international competition after the 1902 Davis Cup, obtaining a law degree the following year from Washington University in his native St. Louis, where he became the city's parks commissioner and was instrumental in the construction of some of the first municipal tennis courts in the United States.
Over the years, though, he stayed close to the game he loved. The "Father of the Davis Cup" served as president of the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association in 1923. Thirteen years later, at the age of 57, he won the U.S. national veterans (over 45) doubles championship, his last title. Later, he was the board chairman of the Brookings Institute.
Shortly before his death in 1945, Dwight, who was posthumously inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1956, said of the Davis Cup, "If I had known of its coming significance, I would have had it cast in gold rather than silver."
Pierre de Coubertin (posthumously) (1999)
Tabbed as the father of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin devoted a large part of his work to Olympism. His studies led him to the conclusion -- even before the age of 25 -- that athletic exercise was of great value in the intellectual development and upbringing of young people. In 1894, at age 31, he called for a restoration of the ancient Olympic Games to promote education through sports and to foster world peace. His proposal was received with unanimous approval by an international congress in Paris and the first modern Olympics were held two years later in 1896 in Athens.
The heart of it is found in "The Olympic Review", the official organ of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of which Mr. de Coubertin was founder and President for 29 years. His references to the Olympic Spirit are innumerable, the essential of which is found in "The Philosophic Bases of Modern Olympism." Mr. de Coubertin considered sport and history essential means for the formation of man and his character. But to know Mr. de Coubertin is to know that he was truly a humanist -- historian, artist, sociologist, politician and pedagog. He conducted historical and political studies, practiced drawing, played the piano and refreshed himself in the Normandy countryside, appreciating the peasant common sense. The bibliography of Mr. de Coubertin is vast, with more than 1,200 published titles in wide-ranging areas from social sciences to the arts.
Anita L. DeFrantz (1999)
A member of the 1976 and 1980 U.S. Olympic Rowing teams, an attorney and Vice President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Anita L. DeFrantz is currently the President of the Amateur Athletic Association of Los Angeles, which is managing Southern California's endowment from the 1984 Olympic Games. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, Ms. DeFrantz began her formal involvement with sports at age 18 when she was introduced to rowing at Connecticut College. After graduating from Connecticut College with honors in 1974, she continued her training at the prestigious Vesper Boat Club while attending law school at the University of Pennsylvania, which she completed in 1977. From 1975-80, Ms. DeFrantz not only competed on every national rowing team, but also served as the Director of the Vesper Boat Club and was a member of the Board of Directors of the U.S. Rowing Association. In addition to her bronze medal performance in the 1976 Olympic Games, she won a silver medal in the 1978 World Championships in rowing, was a finalist in the World Championships five times and won six National Championships. Ms. DeFrantz was elected to the IOC in 1986, and in September of 1997 became the first woman in the 103-year history of the IOC to be elected Vice President.
Also in 1997, she became the 16th recipient of the Olympic Torch Award, the highest recognition the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) bestows for service to the USOC, and in 1991, Ms. Defrantz was honored with the IOC's "Woman of the Year" Award. She was presented the World Scholar-Athlete Games Humanitarian Award by the Institute for International Sport (IIS) in 1993 and currently serves on the IIS's Board of Directors. Ms. DeFrantz has been named one of the "100 Most Powerful People in Sports" by The Sporting News eight times (1991-98), one of "The 100 Most Powerful Women in the World" by The Australian Magazine and one of the "Top 20 Female Sports Executives" based on a 1998 Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal subscriber survey.
The son of immigrants, and the first in his family to attend college. John DiBiaggio went on to earn three degrees and receive a dozen honorary degrees and become president of the University of Connecticut, Michigan State University and Tufts University.
After earning a Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from the University of Detroit School of Dentistry, he became dean of the School of Dentistry at Virginia Commonwealth University and also held faculty and administrative posts at the University of Detroit and the University of Kentucky. Later he was vice president for health affairs and executive director of the University of Connecticut Medical Center before becoming president of the university in 1979. He left UConn in 1985 to assume the presidency at Michigan State, where he remained until 1992 when he became the eleventh president of Tufts.
At Tufts John led a "Tufts Tomorrow" fundraising drive whose target was $400 million when it began in 1994. When that goal was achieved in less than five years, the campaign goal was expanded to $600 million. While at Tufts, John also established the University College of Citizenship and Public Service, which integrates the theory and application of active citizenship throughout the university's curriculum. That was in keeping with his deep commitment to the idea that public service is critical to educational leadership.
Convinced that athletics play a vital role at colleges and universities but distressed over abuses in some varsity sports programs, John was a longtime activist on committees within the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). He also was a member of the Knight Foundation's blue ribbon Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, best known as the Knight Commission, whose goal was to end abuses in big-time college sports. Chagrined over multimillion-dollar coaching contracts, lucrative endorsement deals, drawn-out sports seasons and lengthy practice sessions, Dr. DiBiaggio said in the late 1990s, "It is a sad day in higher education when an institution's trustees care more about their season tickets on the 50-yard line than their students' graduation rates, and when legislators' top priority is getting a ticket to the Final Four rather than sponsoring more funding for financial aid."
Known for his legendary capacity for work, John served as chairman of the board of the American Council on Education and the National Campus Contract and was a board member of he NCAA Foundation, the American Film Institute, the Commission on the International Exchange of Scholars and the American Cancer Society Foundation.
Ken Dryden (1999)
In just seven full NHL (National Hockey League) seasons, Ken Dryden backstopped the Montreal Canadiens to six Stanley Cup championships, claimed five Vezina Trophies as the league's best goaltender, earned five First-Team NHL All-Star selections and was awarded the 1971-72 Calder Trophy as the NHL Rookie of the Year. After being promoted from the minors and playing in just six regular-season games late in the 1971 season, Mr. Dryden played in all 20 playoff games sparking the Canadiens to the Stanley Cup championship and earning the Conn Smythe Trophy as the Most Valuable Player in the playoffs. He retired in 1979 at the age of 31 at the peak of his career and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983. He is also a member of the Canadien Sports Hall of Fame and was named to the NHL 100th Anniversary All-Time All-Star Team. A graduate of Cornell University where he was a three-time All-American, Mr. Dryden went on to complete his law degree from McGill University while playing for the Canadiens, including missing the 1973-74 season to fulfill his law school requirements. Since leaving the game as a player, Mr. Dryden has written several highly-acclaimed, best-selling books: The Game, acknowledged by many as one of the finest hockey publications ever written; Home Game, which was developed into an award-winning documentary series for television; and In School, his most recent book that is a masterful examination of Canada's education system. Mr. Dryden has also worked as a television commentator and host, as well as a youth commissioner and consultant on youth unemployment and education. Most recently, Mr. Dryden was appointed President and General Manager of the Toronto Maple Leaf Hockey Club and Executive Vice President of Maple Leaf Gardens, where he has helped Toronto secure the 50th NHL All-Star Game in the year 2000.
Despite being blind since the age of five and then battling cancer for years, Cara Dunne-Yates became a champion skier and Olympic medallist in tandem cycling, along with graduating honors from Harvard and then earning a law degree at U.C.L.A. At the recommendation of her step-father, Rich Zabelski, who introduced her to skiing and often acted as her guide, she also became the first known blind skier to follow instructions called out from in front rather than from behind as had been the custom. Ever since, most blind skiers have followed this routine, both in competition and recreationally.
Though she had lost her left eye to retinoblastoma, a rare childhood cancer when she was only one and the other eye four years later, Cara's parents had her attend regular public schools in the Chicago area, where she earned good grades. At Harvard, where she and her guide dog, Brittany, became familiar figures on campus, Cara majored in East Asian studies and mastered Japanese after already having become fluent in Spanish.
After graduating from Harvard, Cara moved to Park City, Utah to teach skiing to the visually impaired. While in Park City, she was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a serious form of bone cancer. Moving to Boston, she underwent a long siege that involved chemotherapy, blood transfusions and surgeries that removed part of her throat and cheekbone.
In and out of hospitals, Cara was unable to compete or even practice for almost six months. Eventually, she read an article about a tandem bicycle racing clinic for the visually impaired and flew to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado to train as a "stoker," who sits in the rear with the sighted partner in front. After nearly two years of training and attending law school in Los Angeles, Cara asked Scott Evans, a member of the UCLA cycling team, if he would team with her, and he agreed. Six months later, they beat the top-ranked American disabled tandem team and qualified for the 1996 Summer Paralympics in Atlanta, where they won silver and bronze medals. A year later she received her law degree from U.C.L.A.
Cara always insisted that she was never trying to prove anything as a blind athlete or as a scholar. "That's just too hard if that's the only reason you're doing it," she said in an interview in 1998. "It's not worth it when you're risking your life throwing yourself down a mountain or sprinting on a velodrome (a cycling track) at 40 miles an hour. You've got to have a knack for what you're doing, and you've got to love it."
In November 1998, Cara married Spencer Yates, and on January 13, 2000 Elise Mary Dunne-Yates was born. Nine months later, Cara qualified for and competed at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics in Australia.
Undeterred by those obstacles and possessed of an indomitable spirit, Dunne-Yates, who did not take up skiing until she was nine, spent eight years on the U.S. Disabled Alpine Ski Team and became the first disabled skier to perform at an able-bodied event in Vail, Colorado. Only two years after taking up the sport, Dunne-Yates won the national giant slalom championship at the World Winter Games for the Disabled and repeated as the champion for the next even years.
Gerald R. Ford (1999)
On August 9, 1974, Gerald R. Ford became the first vice president in American history to succeed to the nation's highest office because of the resignation of a president. Mr. Ford's rise to become the 38th president followed a long career in the U.S. House of Representatives where he was both liked and respected by his colleagues. He was elected to the House in 1948 and remained there until 1973, spending eight years as House Minority Leader from 1965-73. Born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1913, Mr. Ford showed both athletic and scholastic excellence at a young age, being named to the Honor Society and the "All-City" and "All-State" football teams in high school. He continued to excel at the University of Michigan where he earned a degree in economics and political science in 1935. While at Michigan, Mr. Ford played center on two national championship football teams in 1932 and 1933, and was named the team's Most Valuable Player in 1934. Mr. Ford was also chosen for the East team in the annual East-West Shrine All Star Game and played in the College All-Star football game against the Chicago Bears. Mr. Ford turned down offers from both the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers to play professional football, instead choosing to coach boxing and football at Yale University while pursuing a law degree, which he earned in 1941, graduating in the top 25 percent of his class. His law career was put on hold from 1942-46, however, when Mr. Ford served in the Navy during World War II as an aviation operations officer. He was discharged as a lieutenant commander. Since leaving the White House in 1977, President Ford has lectured at 179 colleges and universities and has remained active on behalf of the Republican Party and numerous charitable causes. His memoirs, A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford, were published in 1979.
Much like Jackie Robinson before her, Althea Gibson had to overcome an array of obstacles to become a dominant figure in her sport--tennis. But once she did, she reached the pinnacle of the game, becoming the first African-American to play in and win both the United States women's singles championship and Wimbledon in 1957 and 1958.
Born on a cotton farm in South Carolina to parents who were sharecroppers, Althea learned how to play tennis as a girl growing up in Harlem. A big hitter with a powerful serve, and at 5-foot, 11-inches, Althea first attracted international attention when she won both the French and Italian championships, both on clay, in 1956. Six years earlier, she became the first African-American, male or female, to play in the U.S. Nationals, as the American championships were then known, at Forest Hills, New York. A year after winning the French and Italian titles, Althea, at the age of 30, made a major breakthrough, winning at Wimbledon and Forest Hills. After winning both tournaments again the following year, 1958, and achieving a No. 1 world ranking for the second year in a row, she turned professional. Since there was no pro circuit for either men or women at the time, Althea did what other top pros of the era did, going on a barnstorming tour with another women's pro, Karol Fageros. Althea, who by then had won 11 major singles and doubles titles, won 114 of their 118 matches, most of which were played before Harlem Globetrotter games.
Though Althea said she earned more than $100,000 on that tour, she saw little in the way of a future for herself as a professional tennis player and decided to try her hand at professional golf. Even though she had limited experience in the game, she became the first African-American to qualify for the LPGA Tour in 1963 but, mainly because of her late start, enjoyed little success.
After the Open era in tennis began in 1968, Althea, then 41, played in a few professional events before becoming a teaching pro. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1971. In addition to her success as a tennis player, Gibson was an outstanding scholar-athlete at Florida A&M University. A high school dropout who returned to get her diploma at the age of 21, she found that she was still not welcome at many clubs where major tournaments were played in the 1950s. But Althea, twice a widow, never complained. "It has been a bewildering, challenging, exhausting experience, often more painful than pleasurable," she once said in a PBS interview, "but I wouldn't have missed it for the world."
Bud Greenspan (2003)
It is fitting that Bud Greenspan is so closely associated with the Olympic Games. Fitting, it seems, because the Greenspan ethos and the Games are rooted in antiquity. In ancient times, it was both the athlete and the chronicler of deeds who held the highest place in the athletic hierarchy; Greenspan has that place in the modern era. He began his career as a sports broadcaster, and at the age of 21 was sports director of WMGM in New York City, the largest sports station in the country. He later became a successful magazine writer of both fiction and non-fiction pieces. But it was film that lured Greenspan. In 1967, after a number of years creating television commercials, he formed his own company. There is little doubt that his talent would have made him successful in the field, but it was a first hand view of the greatest tragedy in the history of sport that propelled Greenspan to his greatness. In 1972, he was working as a radio reporter for NBC at the Olympic Games in Munich. The events and tragedy of those games would change the world forever, and leave an indelible mark on Greenspan. It was from his witness to that terrorism that his humanistic approach to the stories of athletic accomplishment brought to the world a unique view of our heroes as people. Some 30 years later, Greenspan is now recognized as one of the foremost writers and producers of sports on film in history. He has published a number of books that were considered instant classics. His post-Olympic films are as eagerly anticipated and as critically acclaimed as the Games themselves. His list of credits is exhausting. He has written and produced live television events such as the Heisman Trophy presentation. He has written and produced prime time television events as varied as ‘Movies of the Week’, sports specials on individual sports heroes and eras, television series, and, of course, incredible documentaries and docudramas on the greatest athletic accomplishments in the history of mankind. He has been honored by the industry with the George Foster Peabody Award for lifetime achievement. He has also earned the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Director’s Guild, the coveted ‘Olympic Order’ for his contribution to furthering the Olympic movement, and numerous Emmy and ACE Awards.
Calvin Hill (2001)
Not many Ivy League football players go on to play in the National Football League. Not only did Calvin Hill, yet he did so as the number one draft pick of the Dallas Cowboys in 1969 when he graduated from Yale.
An outstanding running back, Calvin, a native of Baltimore, became the NFL's Rookie of the Year and was an All-Pro selection during his first year with the Cowboys. During his six years with Dallas, when the Cowboys were a perennial powerhouse, he became the team's first runner to amass more than 1,000 yards in a season, played in two Super Bowls and was selected to play in four NFL Pro Bowl games.
A swift, slashing-type runner, Calvin later played for Hawaii in the World Football League and the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Browns of the NFL before retiring after the 1981 season with a rushing average of 4.2 yards per game.
An activist in academic and community affairs since his days at Yale, where he majored in history, Calvin was instrumental in the establishment of the Calvin Hill Day Care Center at his alma mater and served as national sports chairman of the National Association for Retarded Citizens. A member of the President's Council on Physical Fitness from 1993 to 2000, he also served as a special assistant to former Ohio Senator John Glenn and to the director of the Peace Corps. He also was an executive and consultant for a number of major international corporations, banks and national organizations, including the NCAA Foundation, the Duke University Divinity School, the International Special Olympics, the San Diego Padres major league baseball club and the Dallas Cowboys.
Among his myriad honors was his selection to the Dallas Cowboys all-time team and to the Maryland and Connecticut sports halls of fame. Calvin and his wife, Janet, have one son, Grant, an All-America basketball player at Duke University and, later, an all-star in the National Basketball Association. An articulate advocate of diversity in youth sports, Calvin once said, "I think it's important early on to maximize the fun of playing the sport before you start to specialize. I also believe kids should be a little more physically mature before they start playing contact sports. I myself didn't start to play football until I was in the ninth grade."
Equally vocal on the values of good sportsmanship, the former Yale and NFL star running back said, "I always thought it was important to be civil and not to embarrass your opponent." If Calvin "embarrassed" an opponent, it was by eluding him as he ran for one of the scores of touchdowns he scored during a glorious football career.
Nancy Hogshead-Makar (2001)
At the age of 14, Nancy Hogshead-Makar already had reached a swimming pinnacle when she was ranked first in the world in the 200-meter butterfly. Seven years later, she was to reach even greater heights when she won three gold medals and one silver in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Only one other American athlete, gymnast Mary Lou Retton, was to win more. Unbeatable in high school and college, where she set numerous U.S. records, Nancy was an extraordinarily versatile swimmer, excelling in the free-style, butterfly and in the medleys, At Episcopal High School in Jacksonville, Florida, she set a string of state and national high school records and established national records in the butterfly. She was nominated for the Sullivan Award, given to the nation's top amateur athlete, in 1977.
As the first female scholarship swimmer at Duke University, Nancy captured four Atlantic Coast Conference championships and set school records in all eight categories she swam during her only year of competition. In 1978, at the age of 15, she won the silver medal in the 200-meter individual butterfly in the World Championships. Then in 1980 she qualified for the U.S. Olympic swim team for the Summer Olympics in Moscow, but did not compete because of the U.S.-led boycott. In 1983, two years after she had retired from competitive swimming, Nancy was a member of a team that set a world record in the 400-meter freestyle relay and was named U.S. Swimming's Comeback Swimmer of the Year.
An honors graduate of Duke University, Nancy also earned a law degree at Georgetown University. Previously inducted into six halls of fame, including the International Swimming Hall of Fame, she is a former president of the Women's Sports Foundation and was named to the Florida Sports Foundation Board of Directors in 2001. A former litigation attorney, she is currently a professor at the Florida Coastal School of Law and the author of the book "Asthma and Exercise.”
Robert T. Jones, Jr. (posthumously) (1999)
As one of the world's greatest golfers during the 1920's Golden Age of Sport, Robert T. Jones, Jr. took his place alongside such giants as Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Red Grange and Bill Tilden. From 1923 to 1929, while earning his B.A. from Georgia School (now Institute) of Technology, another B.A. from Harvard and his law degree from Emory, the Georgia gentleman dominated golf winning nine major championships. He won the U.S. Open four times, the U.S. Amateur five times and the British Open three times. Then in 1930, he became the only player ever to win a recognized Grand Slam in golf (four major championships in a single year) when he won the U.S. and British Opens, and the U.S. and British Amateurs. While Mr. Jones' driver and putter may have been his two best clubs, his best weapon was his will to win. He performed at his best when the pressure was at its peak. Mr. Jones retired from competitive golf less than two months after completing the Slam, having won 13 majors in eight years. After retiring, Mr. Jones set up his law practice in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, and continued his involvement in golf by making instructional films and contributing articles to golf magazines. He also designed the course at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia in 1934 and helped create what later became The Masters. His career was short yet hugely successful. No one ever achieved so much in such a short career. On that basis, Mr. Jones can be considered the greatest golfer ever. In addition, he competed only as an amateur and therefore demonstrated an unadulterated love for the game. Even today, he sets the standard by which the greats are judged.
Dick Kazmaier (2001)
As a 155-pound fifth team tailback on the 1948 Princeton University freshman football team, Dick Kazmaier was lightly regarded by the Tigers' head varsity coach, Charlie Caldwell, who felt he was "too small for varsity athletics."
At the time, Caldwell, a legendary Princeton coach, had not yet been able to discern Dick's determination, competitiveness or burgeoning talent as a football player. But Caldwell soon came to appreciate those qualities as Dick developed into one of Princeton's greatest players, who, as a senior in 1951, would lead the nation in total offense, be selected to the All-America team, named the Associated Press male athlete of the year and awarded the Heisman Trophy as the best college football player in the country. One of the last of the outstanding triple-threat backs, skilled at
running, passing and punting, he is perhaps remembered best for his elusiveness as a runner. But as a senior he also led the nation in passing efficiency while completing 123 passes for 960 yards and 13 touchdowns as he led Princeton to its second straight undefeated season and the Lambert Trophy, emblematic of the best college football team in the East.
Drafted by the Chicago Bears of the National Football League, Dick bypassed professional football, electing instead to get a Master's Degree in business at Harvard. Following three years in the U.S. Navy as an officer, he began a long business career, which included the presidency of Kazmaier Associates, a marketing and financial services company based in Boston. In addition, he served as trustee at Princeton, as chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports under presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, as a director of the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame, and as a member of the executive committee of the American Red Cross and the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
A native of Maumee, Ohio, Dick was named Princeton's Football Player of the Century and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1966. As to the Heisman Trophy, he once said, "I don't think of it as something I did. I think of it as something we did as a group. I have two requests that I make when I say my prayers, which I do daily. One is to accomplish, and one is to contribute." Dick Kazmaier has done both in extraordinary fashion.
Kip Keino (2001)
Africa's greatest athlete, Kip Keino went from being a Kenyan policeman to the world's best distance runner and, later, as a father to the homeless in his native land.
The first of Kenya's legion of outstanding distance runners, Keino won the gold medal in the 1,500-meter run and the silver in the 5,000 meters at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico at the age of 28. Four years later, he captured gold and silver medals again in the 3,000 and 1,500-meter runs, respectively, at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Earlier, in 1965, Keino set world records in the 5,000 and 3,000 meters and, the same year, was named Africa's best athlete.
Keino's victory in the 1,500-meter race in Mexico City was the stuff of legends. Suffering from a severe case of gallstones, he had to run two miles to the Olympic stadium after missing his bus became stuck in traffic but still managed to beat world record-holder Jim Ryun who had not lost a race in three years. In his first event in Mexico City, Keino, then a police officer in Kenya of little renown outside of Africa, was in the lead pack in the 10,000 meter race when he collapsed in pain with two laps to go but still managed to struggle to his feet and finish the race. Four days later he won the silver medal in the 5,000 meters and, in his final race, beat Ryun.
Keino later joined the short-lived professional track circuit but earned only $20,000, just enough to buy a farm and 50 acres in Kenya's Nandi Hills where he grew up. Asked years later why Kenyans came to dominate distance running, Keino said, "There is no secret -- the secret is hard work. There is no special people from one place, with special genes, terrorizing the world in running. I'm not against research, but there is always somebody saying here must be some reason for the Kenyans to be winning distance races so often. To me, though, it's the mental attitude, not genes." Keino was alluding to popular opinion and some controversial studies that indicated Kenyans were genetically predisposed to perform well in long distance running.
After retiring as a runner, Keino became an ever more beloved figure in his homeland when he and his wife, Phyllis, who had seven children of their own, began to run an orphanage for orphaned and abandoned children on their farm in Kenya where the children were required to do chores at a 20-room compound. Six of the Keinos' children earned degrees in the United States and two of them, Martin and Patrick, were All-America distance runners at the University of Arizona. Keino himself, who is credited with leading the way for other Kenyans who became world-renown distance runners, became head of the Kenyan Olympic Committee and worked hard to diversify his country's sports system by generating more interest in team sports and competition for women.
"Kip Keino is not only the father of Kenya distance running who put this country on the map," said Mike Boit, himself a silver medallist in the 1972 Olympics. "He's our national treasure."
Johann Olav Koss (2001)
Norwegian speed skater Johann Olav Koss established himself as the most dominant long-distance skater of the 1990s and one of the greatest Winter Olympians of all-time at the 1994 Lillehammer Games when he captured gold medals in the 1500, 5000 and 10,000 meters. Koss, who had won gold and silver medals in the 1500 and 10,000 respectively at the 1992 Albertville Games, set three world records at the Hamar, Norway ice track in 1994, dazzling a hometown crowd that dubbed him "Big Boss."
Koss' 1992 performance is even more impressive considering he spent two days hospitalized with pancreas problem just one week prior to the Albertville Games. But Koss was used to adversity, and he wouldn't let anything stand in the way of his Olympic dream. Koss showed little promise as a young speed skater, but he was dedicated to his sport and passionate about training. His hard work paid off in 1990 when he won the first of two consecutive All-Around World Champion titles.
Koss proved he was one of the strongest skaters in the world during the Lillehammer Games, recording one of the greatest feats in speed skating history, shaving nearly 13-seconds off the world record in the grueling 10,000 meters. That same year he won his third All-Around World Champion title.
Koss has actively supported Olympic Aid, a humanitarian organization established to provide relief to children in war-torn countries, since 1993 when he visited Eritrea. Moved by the plight of the children he saw on his trip to Africa, Koss donated the bonus money he received for his first Olympic Gold at the 1994 Games to the Olympic Aid fund. Koss challenged his fellow athletes to do the same, and after the Games he organized a collection of used sporting equipment for the children of Eritrea.
As a result of his efforts in support of the children of Eritrea, Koss was appointed Honorary Sports Ambassador to the Eritrean Government and a special representative of sport for UNICEF. Koss retired from competitive skating after the 1994 Games to pursue a career in medicine and to commit more time to his efforts with Olympic Aid and other charities.
In 1997 Koss was appointed Chairman of the Norwegian Government Forum against Drugs and Doping. He also became chairman of an athlete-based Norwegian organization that fights drugs and doping. Koss is a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Medical Commission that is handling reforms, and he was voted a member of the IOC in 1999. In addition to his anti-drug and doping work, Koss formed his own charitable organization, Sport Humanitarian Group, in 1997.
Voted by the people of Norway as the "Best Norwegian Olympian Ever" in 1994, Koss received the Norwegian Olympic Committee's highest honor, the Fearnleys Honorary Award and was declared the "Man of the Year" that same year by members of the Norwegian media. Sports Illustrated's Co-Athlete of the Year in 1994, with fellow speed skater Bonnie Blair, Koss was declared by Time Magazine as one of "100 Future Leaders of Tomorrow," and by the World Economic Forum as "One of 1000 Global Leaders." Koss and his wife, Belinda Stronach, reside in Aurora, Ontario, Canada.
John Landy (2001)
World record-holding miler, naturalist, agricultural scientist, photographer, author, environmentalist and governor of the state of Victoria in his native Australia, John Landy epitomized the multi-dimensional sportsman.
The second man to run the mile in under four minutes, John did so 46 days after it was first done by Sir Roger Bannister on May 6, 1954. And in doing so, he broke Bannister's world record by 1.4 seconds. Two months later, in August of 1954, in what was billed as the Mile of the Century, Sir Roger won their showdown race in the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, British Columbia in 3 minutes 58 and 8/10ths of a second.
In all, John ran the mile in less than four minutes six times and held the record for the distance from 1954 until 1957. For a time he also held the world record for 1,500 meters. Ironically, though, as he has said, he is probably best remembered for two races he lost--the one to Sir Roger in 1954 and for one to Ireland's Ron Delany in the 1,500 meters during the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne when John finished third for the bronze medal.
But perhaps John's most memorable race, also in Melbourne, was at the Australian National Championships in 1954. Running in the mile race at Olympic Park, he was on a record-setting pace after half a mile when another great miler, Ron Clarke, fell after another runner's spikes clipped his heel. John, after vaulting over Clarke, stopped and helped Clarke to his feet and then, although 60 yards behind the rest of the field when he resumed running, caught up with and overtook the leaders to win the race in 4 minutes and 4 seconds. Almost a half century later, John's gesture of stopping and helping Clarke to his feet was voted the Australian Sporting Moment of the Century. One of Australia's greatest sports legends, John later taught grammar school science before becoming chairman of the Australian Wool Research Council and then chairman of the Australian Meat Research Corporation. He also wrote extensively, including two books on natural history. Then, in February of 1998, he was appointed head of the Australian Sports Drug Agency, a watchdog organization designed to prevent the use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Two years later, in 2000, he was named the new governor of Victoria.
Neil Leifer (2004)
Neil Leifer is an internationally renowned photographer and film director.
Leifer has more than 200 Sports Illustrated, Time and People magazine covers to his credit. The September 1982 black and white photo essay and cover on Prisons in America, along with the Olympic Preview essay and cover in July 1984, are the two largest photo essays ever published in Time. In February 1987, an essay on the Animals of Africa ran 10 pages without text – a first for Time Magazine.
Leifer has done special photography on a number of feature films, including: The Longest Yard, Staying Alive, Semi-Tough, One From The Heart, Rocky II, Rocky III, Chariots of Fire, The Hunt For Red October, White Men Can’t Jump, Rising Sun, and Quiz Show. Leifer also played a psychoanalyst in a cameo (speaking) role in Quiz Show.
Leifer has published 11 books – among them his best selling 1978 Abrams coffee table book, Sports, a collection of sports photographs. In 1985, Doubleday published Neil Leifer’s Sports Stars. The year of 1992 saw the publication of three new coffee table books: Muhammad Ali – Memories, published by Rizzoli; Safari, a collection of Africa animal pictures published by Reader’s Digest; and a new collection of sports pictures, Sports, published by Collins. In September 2001, The Best of Leifer was published by Abbeville Press. The book is a retrospective of Leifer’s 40 years as a photojournalist and showcases the best of his sports and non-sports photographs. Leifer’s eleventh book, Neil Leifer: Portraits, with an introduction by Tom Brokaw, was published by St. Ann’s Press in November 2003.
Leifer also has a long resume in filmmaking. He took a year off from photography in 1979 to direct his first feature film, Yesterday’s Hero. He directed his second feature film in April of 1987, Trading Hearts. Leifer has also produced and directed a series of short films: Rosebud, 1991; The Great White Hype, 1992 – The Great White Hype was purchased by 20th Century Fox in 1994 and Leifer co-produced the feature length version in 1995; Scout’s Honor in 1999; Steamed Dumplings, 2003 – Steamed Dumplings was selected to be shown at the Bermuda International Film Festival. In 2002 Leifer himself was the subject of a two-hour ESPN documentary, The Best of Leifer, which aired on the network in March 2002. The film was nominated for a 2002 Emmy in the category “Outstanding Sports Documentary.”
Leifer is in great demand as a photographer, photojournalist and guest lecturer. Over the years he has exhibited his photographs in galleries and museums around the world. Most recently, his work was on display in November 2003 at the Pop International Gallery in New York City, and at the Proud Galleries in London, England this past March 2004.
When Neil Leifer isn’t traveling, he resides in New York City.
Donna Lopiano (1999)
Donna Lopiano's career has mirrored the progress of women in sports. In 1972, the same year Congress passed Title IX of the Educational Amendments ensuring women's equality in sports, Ms. Lopiano became a coach and administrator at Brooklyn College. As equal rights legislation battled its way through legislatures and the courts in the 1970s and 1980s, she oversaw the women's athletics department at the University of Texas (1975-92), where her women's programs won 18 national championships in six sports and produced 314 All-Americans. And just as women's sports entered the limelight during the 1990s, Ms. Lopiano became Director of the Women's Sports Foundation, where she has become one of the most visible and prominent promoters of women's sports on all levels. Ms. Lopiano was named one of "The 100 Most Influential People in Sport" by The Sporting News in 1995, and was tabbed as one of "The 50 Most Influential People in College Sports" by College
Sports Magazine in 1997. A native of Stamford, Connecticut, Donna Lopiano earned a B.A. in physical education from Southern Connecticut State University in 1968 and then earned a Doctor of Philosophy in physical education from University of Southern California in 1974. Her extraordinary athletic career included participation in 26 national championships in four sports -- softball, basketball, volleyball and field hockey -- but it was in softball, in particular, that Ms. Lopiano stood out. She was a nine-time All-American at four different positions and a member of six national championship teams. She was also voted Most Valuable Player in three national tournaments, and as a pitcher, posted a 183-18 record. In 1983, Ms. Lopiano was inducted into the National Softball Hall of Fame and has since been inducted into both the Texas and Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame and the National Sports Hall of Fame. A prolific writer and speaker, Ms. Lopiano holds five honorary doctorates and is currently a member of the National Honors Committee of the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Chief Oren R. Lyons (2003)
Oren Lyons is a traditional Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan, and a Member of the Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs of the Haudenosaunee (“People of the Long House”) also known as the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy. Born in 1930, he was raised in the traditional lifeways of the Iroquois of the Seneca and on the reservations in northern New York State. He served the United States in the Army before attending Syracuse University where he studied fine arts and played lacrosse. As a senior, he helped lead Syracuse to an undefeated season on his way to All-American honors. It was a wonderfully sweet irony that Lyons was among the nation’s very best lacrosse players because it was the Haudenosaunee who invented the game of lacrosse a century earlier. He has been faithful to the sport throughout his life serving as Chairman of the Iroquois National Lacrosse Team, which competed in Perth, Australia against the national teams of the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Australia. As an artist, he enjoyed a career in commercial art in New York City, rising to an administrative role at Norcross Greeting Cards with over 200 artists under his supervision. He has exhibited his own work all over the country. For nearly 25 years, Chief Lyons has been a widely respected advocate for American Indian causes. He is called on for hundreds of lectures, forums, and seminars on topics as far-reaching as American Indian traditions, Indian law, history, human rights, environmental issues and the like. He has served at the highest level on committees and councils such as the Human Rights Commission, the Working Group of Indigenous Populations, and the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival, among others. He has also represented American Indians in a meeting with President George Bush. Today he is a Professor of American Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo where he directs the Native American Studies Program. He is also the author of a number of books. He has received numerous honors and awards, including the Honorary Doctor of Law from his alma mater, Syracuse University, the Ellis Island Congressional Medal of Honor, and the Lacrosse Man of the Year from the NCAA.
Max Manning (2001)
An outstanding pitcher in the old Negro Leagues who later spent almost three decades as a public school teacher in New Jersey, Max Manning was a formidable figure in both walks of life, both literally and figuratively.
At six-foot, four-inches tall, Max, with his sidearm delivery, was an intimidating force as a pitcher with the great Newark Eagles' teams of the late 1930's and 1940's and with predominantly black teams in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. Indeed, only two things stood between Max and a major league career - one, because he was black and, two, because of a separated shoulder above his right pitching arm in 1948.
By then, Max was almost 30 years old. At the urging of his wife, he took advantage of the GI Bill of Rights and enrolled at Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) in Glassboro, New Jersey. After graduating, Max became a middle school teacher in his hometown of Pleasantville in southern New Jersey. "I mainly taught sixth grade, which is a difficult but interesting grade," he once said. "Having four kids of my own, I