The most successful football coach in the history of the Ohio Athletic Conference, he built a 154-53-6 record during 23 years as head coach at Baldwin-Wallace College. He reached the zenith of his career in 1978 when he directed the Yellow Jackets to the NCAA Division III National Championship and was named Division III Coach-of-the-Year. He also guided B-W to the national playoffs in 1979 and 1980 before retiring because of illness to which he succumbed in April, 1981. Also served as Director of Athletics at B-W and is a member of the Baldwin-Wallace College Letterman’s Hall of Fame. (He was the nation’s leading scorer as a running back for the Yellow Jackets in 1943.) As a high school coach at Mentor High, he ran of 34 consecutive victories from 1952 to 1956 and extended the streak to 39 at Massillon High where he coached two seasons before coming to Berea. That record earned him a niche in the Ohio High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
A two-time Olympic champion, he won his first gold medal for the United States in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. He repeated as the Olympic bantamweight champion in the 1960 Rome Olympics, lifting 760 pounds to give the U.S. its only weightlifting medal in that competition. His 237-pound snatch at Rome equaled the word record. Although training only briefly between Olympics, he finished second in the 1958 world championships and was the Pan-American Games champion in 1959.
In his first year of driving offshore power boats (1975) he scored enough points in the first ten races of a scheduled 11-race series to win the National Offshore Power Boat Racing Championships of the American Power Boat Association without running the final race. Later became the APBA vice president for offshore racing.
A member of the Cole Furniture team which won the Women’s International Bowling Congress national title in 1952, she also shared the WIBC Doubles crown in 1958. Won Ohio state doubles and all-events championships and played for five Ohio state championship teams. Also played on three City of Cleveland championship teams and won ladies City titles in doubles, singles and all-events, as well as the City Match-Game championship. Twice elected Queen of Bowlers she was inducted into the Cleveland Women’s Bowling Association Hall of Fame in 1959.
Qualified for U.S. Olympic Trials in 1968 and later fenced in Pre-Olympic Tournament in Montreal in 1975. Since beginning her fencing career in 1959 she has won the Northern Ohio Championship, two All-Ohio championships, two Gilman Tournament titles and four Cleveland International Invitational Tournament championships. She won a total of 38 major events and 95 awards in major championships through 1980.
Member of the United States Olympic Fencing Squad in 1964. During a 12-year fencing career, spanning the era from 1954 to 1966, he won 20 championships in three weapons and accumulated 140 awards. Named “Outstanding Fencer of the Year” in the 1964 Cleveland Invitational Fencing Tournament after accumulating 257 point in foil, sabre and epee. Won five All-Ohio titles, two each in epee and sabre and one in foil.
A two-time National Decathlon champion (1938 and 1939) at Western Reserve University, he was a dominate figure in track during the heyday of the old Cleveland collegiate “Big Four.” Averaged approximately 30 points per meet during his college career which came to an end in 1940, scoring in the high and broad jumps, pole vault, sprints, hurdles and discus. An all-around athlete who competed in four other sports at WRU, he was twice named the Cleveland AAU’s Outstanding Athlete.
All all-scholastic football start at Shaw High School, he went on to play his college football at Purdue University where he became an All-American tackle. His feats on the gridiron earned him a niche in the National Football Hall of fame in New York. Later became a prominent high school and college referee in both football and basketball, officiating for over 30 years.
A collegiate champion at Ohio State University, she was ranked the No. 1 ladies player in Cleveland and Northeastern Ohio from 1933 to 1945 and was a representative to the National Parks Tournament from 1933 through 1952. Between 1936 and 1938 she won championships in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin. She was the National Public Parks Doubles champion (with Irene David) in 1936, the U.S. Clay Court champion in 1938 and qualified for national tournaments at Forest Hills in 1937, 1938 and 1939. She was ranked first in Northeastern Ohio Women’s Doubles (with Beverly Ramseyer) as late as 1971.
An All-American fastpitch star of the ’30s, she played first base, third base and the outfield and was considered among the best players in the world. Starred for three world championship teams, the Cleveland Bloomer Girls (1935) and National Screw & Manufacturing Co. (1936 and 1937). Later won five Cleveland City championships from 1940 through 1944. Once hit a 300-foot home run at Elks Park in Lakewood.