Born and raised in Shaker Heights where he attended Shaker Heights High, Roger Penske developed a love of cars and speed which launched a career leading to his emergence as one of the most influential figures in the history of auto racing. During his short span of six years as a driver, for which he is honored by the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame, he won a total of 34 road racing titles, driving Porsche, Fiat, Maserati, Cooper, Ferrari and Chaparral machines, and was named Sports Illustrated’s Driver of the Year in 1962. After tabling his own competitive driving to concentrate on responsibilities in an expanding business empire, he launched Team Penske, the most successful team in the history of championship car racing. Team Penske established records for most victories (99), national championships (9) and Indianapolis 500 victories (10).
Norbert “Nobby” Lewandowski could have served as the poster boy for Cleveland’s lauded amateur baseball program in the mid-20th century. He began competing in the program’s Class F league as an elementary school student in Cleveland’s Slavic Village and worked his way up to the Plain Dealer-sponsored AAA league. Along the way, using the skills he developed on the sandlots, he earned four baseball letters at Benedictine High, which in turn earned him Kent State University’s first baseball scholarship and four more letters there. He pitched in the Pittsburgh Pirates farm system from 1960-1962, then returned to the sandlots in 1963 to start for perennial league champion Wenham Truckers until 1970. During that time he was called “the most dominant pitcher in Ohio amateur baseball during the 1960’s era” by a Plain Dealer sportswriter.
A nationally known sportswriter, Hal Lebovitz entertained and informed Cleveland sports fans for more than 50 years with his incisive reporting talents. A graduate of Glenville High and Western Reserve University, he became a full-time writer for the Cleveland News in 1946, covering high school sports. In 1950 he became the paper’s baseball beat writer, then moved to the Plain Dealer with the same assignment when the News folded in 1960 and began a 20-year reign as the PD sports editor in 1964. His highly popular PD sports columns continued thereafter in a chain of papers serving much of Greater Cleveland. So did his “Ask Hal, The Referee” columns, which appeared nationally in The Sporting News from 1947 to 1993. The column drew on Hal’s vast situational sports knowledge acquired through many years as an umpire and referee.
Deceased 2005
A member of the U.S. National and International Figure Skating Teams from 1986 through 1998, Tonia Kwiatkowski ranks among the very best ice performers ever to come out of the Cleveland area. She earned a berth as an alternate on the 1998 United States Olympic Figure Skating Team to climax a career which included appearances in the World Championships in 1993, 1996 and 1998, two World University Games championships (1991 and 1995), a silver medal in the 1996 Senior U.S. National Championships, and three bronze medals in the U.S. Nationals, one at the Junior Level in 1987 and two at the Senior Level in 1993 and 1995. Considered one of the best liked and most respected competitors of her era in her sport, she is a graduate of Lakewood High School and Baldwin-Wallace College.
In an era when Cleveland was renowned for producing talented young boxing prospects, Jackie Keough ranked among the best. While just 17, the West Tech High School product advanced to the 1943 finals of the city Golden Gloves lightweight championship. The next year he came back to win the Northeastern Ohio Golden Gloves welterweight title. After spending 27 months in the Navy during World War II, he returned home in 1947 to win the national AAU welterweight championship in Chicago’s Tournament of Champions after winning the welterweight crown for the East in the National East-West Confrontation in New York as well as a second Cleveland Golden Gloves title. This prompted the Plain Dealer to hail him as “the best professional prospect to come out of Cleveland since Jimmy Bivins.” After 200 amateur bouts, he turned pro in 1946.
A native Clevelander who starred at John Hay High, John Hicks went on to a stunning college football career at Ohio State and a highly successful professional stint. He started three Rose Bowl games for OSU at offensive tackle, was named All-Big Ten and a Walter Camp All-American as a junior in 1972, then capped an awesome senior year by repeating those honors and adding Kodak All-American laurels, winning college football’s Outland (best interior lineman) and Lombardi (best lineman) Awards. He finished as runner-up for the Heisman Trophy in 1973 and was honored as the Sporting News College Player of the Year. Joining the NFL’s New York Giants in 1974, he was NFC Rookie of the Year that winter and NFL Man of the Year in 1975 as well as being named All-Pro in both of those seasons. John also played for Pittsburgh’s Super Bowl championship teams in 1978 and 1979 before retiring.
Deceased 2016
A seventh round draft choice of the Cleveland Browns while only a junior at the University of Mississippi in 1957, Gene Hickerson joined the team in 1958 to launch a 16-year career which earned him acclaim as one of the finest blocking guards in the history of professional football. Started his pro career as one of Paul Brown’s storied messenger guards, he later switched to right guard where he played for a decade. Gene led the interference for future Hall of Fame running backs Jim Brown (for the last eight seasons of Brown’s nine-year career) and Leroy Kelly. Beginning in 1963, he was named to five consecutive all-NFL and six Pro Bowl teams and was a key member of the Browns 1964 NFL championship team. After retiring in 1973, the native of Trenton, Tennessee remained in Cleveland as a sales representative and restaurateur.
Deceased 2008
It seemed that Sam Rutigliano never met a person he didn’t like. And if he ever did, it’s likely he still found time to talk to them. Unlike too many of the football coaches at this time, Rutigliano was as outgoing and gregarious as any coach the Cleveland Browns have ever had during his tenure as head coach from 1978 to 1984. While his Cleveland coaching ledger might show a 47-50 record, the entire North Coast is forever linked with Rutigliano’s 1980 Kardiac Kids team. The silence was deafening on that bitter Sunday after Red Right 88 wound up as the heartbreaking interception that ended the Cleveland season, but Rutigliano has done more than his share to put the game and life in perspective since then. When the NFL was drifting into society’s infatuation with cocaine in the 1980’s, Rutigliano made his most important off-the-field call by establishing the team’s anonymous support group, the Inner Circle. It remains more important to Sam than any win or loss. The native of Brooklyn N.Y., whose East Coast accent has become familiar in these parts, put together a football resume that included playing college football at Tennessee and Tulsa, high school in New York. college coaching at Connecticut, Maryland and Tennessee, and NFL positions with Denver, New England, the New York Jets and New Orleans before taking the Browns head coaching job. After doing some broadcasting work, he was served as the head coach at Liberty University for 11 seasons until 1999. Now we see and hear him on local radio and television shows as he dissects the home team. It would have been nice to get one more win at the end of that long ago special season, but Rutigliano has shown himself to be a special winner when it comes to the courageous matters in life.
Diana Munz is arguably the greatest swimmer to come out of the Cleveland area. Raised in Moreland Hills and a 2000 graduate of Chagrin Falls High School, she owns three Olympic medals: a gold as a member of the winning 800-meter freestyle relay team at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, a silver for the 400-meter freestyle at Sydney and a bronze for the 800-meter freestyle at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Munz got her start as an age group swimmer for the Lake Erie Silver Dolphins. It did not take long for her to advance to senior competition, where she won 21 national titles. Diana’s swimming career took her all over the world. Some examples: at the World Aquatic Championships in Perth, Australia in 2001, she won silver in the 800-meter freestyle; in 1997 at the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, she won silver in the 1500-meter freestyle, bronze in the 400-meter freestyle and bronze in the 800-meter freestyle; in 2003 at the World Aquatic Championships in Barcelona, Spain, she won silver in the 800-meter freestyle and bronze in the 400-meter freestyle. Munz is a graduate of John Carroll University with a degree in communications. She retired from competitive swimming in 2005. In August 2006, she married Palmer DePetro. The couple have a daughter, Sydney Gabriella DePetro, and live in Lyndhurst.
The Cleveland Skating Club was home to Hayes Jenkins when he began making his move in the world of men’s figure skating. In 1948, he was the U.S. junior national champion. Growing up in Akron, Cleveland saw plenty of Jenkins until he moved to Colorado in 1953 to attend Colorado College. He had been a member of five U.S. World Figure Skating teams up until then, finishing fourth at the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo, Norway. That set in motion a run of four consecutive U.S. and world championships from 1953 to 1956. At the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina, Italy, he put the finishing touch on his remarkable career by winning the gold medal. His younger brother, David, won the bronze medal. Four years later they became bonded gold brothers when David won the 1960 gold medal. Retiring from the ice to attend Harvard Law School, he married 1960 women’s gold medalist Carol Heiss in 1960. Returning to Akron to work in legal affairs for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, he and Carol raised three children and ten grandchildren. Like his wife, he has been honored by numerous organizations throughout the skating world. He retired from Goodyear as Assistant Secretary and Assistant General Counsel in 1998, after which he and Carol moved to Westlake to be closer to his her coaching site. For nearly 50 years, they have been the area’s first family of figure skating.