English

Sports Award Named for Kalamazoo College Alumnus Charles “Mickey Charles” Tucker

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Charles Tucker holding a basketball
Charles “Mickey Charles” Tucker ’56

Charles Tucker ’56 has been responsible for handing out a lot of athletic awards through the years. Now, one of those awards bears his name. Charles, known professionally as “Mickey Charles,” is founder, CEO, and president of The Sports Network, a Hatboro, Pa.-based wire-service providing sports information in real time.

Nearly 30 years ago, Tucker and The Sports Network (TSN) established the FCS awards by presenting the Walter Payton Award, given to the most outstanding player in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), known formerly as Division I-A and I-AA. The “Payton” is generally acknowledged to be the second most prestigious award in college football, following only The Heisman Trophy which is given to the most outstanding player in all of college football.

Through the years, TSN added the Eddie Robinson Award, given annually for FCS coach of the year, the Buck Buchanan Award for FCS defensive player of the year, and the Jerry Rice Award for FSC freshman of the year. All afforded smaller colleges and universities opportunities to expose their talented football players and coaches to a larger network. Past winners of these awards include National Football League standouts such as Tony Romo, Brian Westbrook, Jared Allen, Dexter Coakley, and many others.

On Dec. 15 in a nationally televised awards banquet in Philadelphia, South Dakota State University football running back Zach Zenner received the inaugural Mickey Charles Award for the most outstanding FCS student/athlete.

K Professor of Physical Education, Emeritus, Rolla Anderson, Charles "Mickey Charles" Tucker '56, the late Kalamazoo Gazette Sports Editor Bob Wagner and Herb Lipschultz '56 during a 2010 gathering on the K campus
K Professor of Physical Education, Emeritus, Rolla Anderson, Charles “Mickey Charles” Tucker ’56, the late Kalamazoo Gazette Sports Editor Bob Wagner and Herb Lipschultz ’56 during a 2010 gathering on the K campus.

Created in secret by Tucker’s TSN colleagues, the award created a stir when they announced it several weeks prior to the awards ceremony, resulting in a “deluge of congratulatory and complimentary messages from New York to London, Philadelphia to Paris, Detroit to Macau, Las Vegas to Rome,” said TSN Director of Operations Phil Sokol.

“All were indicative and reflective of Mickey’s standing in so many areas, not just sports.”

Kalamazoo College Provost Michael A. McDonald said “the FCS Mickey Charles Award for outstanding academic achievement is aptly named for a great student athlete—Kalamazoo College’s Charles Tucker (a.k.a. Mickey Charles), class of 1956. On the basketball court and in the classroom, his hard work and achievements did credit to higher education, the liberal arts, and Kalamazoo College. We at K are rightly proud of one of our ‘favorite sons.’”

K Professor of Physical Education, Emeritus, and retired Athletic Director Rolla Anderson said “My sincerest congratulations go out to “Charlie,” as he was affectionately called by his basketball coach and mentor (and my former colleague), the late Ray Steffen. I have so many fond memories of Charlie’s time at Kalamazoo College and his visits over the years. Congratulations, my friend.”

Born and reared in Bronx, N.Y., Tucker, a.k.a. Mickey Charles, launched The Sports Network from his kitchen table nearly 30 years ago. Since then, TSN has become the world’s largest independently owned supplier of sports scores and information, with more than 2,000 outlets globally. Today TSN is expanding geographically (into China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Algeria, among others) and technologically (complementing its saturation of websites by expanding to mobile devices). It provides news, weather, injury reports, instant scores, Gamecasts, photography, fantasy coverage data, and much more.

Charles "Mickey Charles" Tucker '56 at The Sports Network's 26th Annual FCS Awards Presentation
Charles “Mickey Charles” Tucker ’56 at The Sports Network’s 26th Annual FCS Awards Presentation on Dec. 15, 2014. (Photo by Drew Hallowell/Getty Images)

Tucker transferred to Kalamazoo College from Columbia University and played for two seasons on the Hornet basketball team. He was named team captain his senior season of 1956, leading that squad to a 14-9 record and a second-place finish in the MIAA conference. He earned his law degree (Brooklyn Law School) and began a career as a sports columnist for several newspapers and magazines (including the Philadelphia Inquirer), as a television sports talk-show host (for CBS and later ESPN), as a college English professor (St. Joseph College in Philadelphia) and then, in 1983, as the founder of a sports scores telephone service that evolved into TSN. He is a popular public speaker who was once offered a contract as an opening-act stand-up comedian.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell said “Mickey Charles is one of our sports-crazed nation’s most astute experts. But he is much, much more than that. He is an incredibly caring person who has done so much to help so many.”

National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman congratulated Mickey on the creation of the award that will bear his name “and will honor an FCS student’s successful combination of athletic achievement and academic excellence. A disruptor long before that term became trendy, Mickey is a scholar when it comes to sports business and a life-long friend of innovation. Mickey has a personality as big as the sports world and a heart that’s even bigger; it is a delight to see him recognized for decades of entrepreneurship, his devotion to education and his relentlessly positive approach to life.”

Dense, Disconcerting Bite

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Faded portrait of Diane SeussThat I could have written it shorter had I only more time has been attributed to great writers from Montaigne to Mark Twain. Those multiple attributions may be the best testament to the statement’s truth. It is hard to write “good short.” Unless you’re Writer-in-Residence Diane Seuss ’78, winner of Indiana Review’s 2013 1/2K Prize for her prose poem “Wal-Mart Parking Lot,” which was published in IR’s Summer 2014 issue.

More good news: IR editor Peter Kispert interviewed Di about various prize-related matters, including which actual Wal-Mart inspired her, how she approached making her poem, and the challenges and triumphs of the compressed form. You can read that interview online. In the 1/2K, word count cannot exceed 500 and all genres are open–albeit constrained. Di is spending part of the summer at Hedgebrook on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound. Hedgebrook is a retreat for women writers. “If you receive the residency you get your own little cottage (overlooking Mt. Rainier and the Sound), solitude, and meals out of their organic garden,” wrote Di. “I’m not sure how to receive such a gift, but I’m working on it.”

In other news, The Missouri Review published Di’s poem “Still-Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (after Rembrandt),” one of a series that arose from Di’s interest in still life painting. “What I discovered about still lives is that they are not still,” Di said, “or their stillness draws out our projections like a poultice lures poison.”

Time is of the Essence

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baseball with seems missingProfessor Emerita of English Gail Griffin has been particularly prolific recently, publishing a number of essays in a variety of journals. A short list and description of those essays will appear in the Fall issue of LuxEsto, but we couldn’t wait that long to share one that will let you know that Gail is now a published baseball writer! Her essay “Night, Briggs Stadium, 1960” describes her 10th birthday present–a Tiger’s night game! It appears in the new book A DETROIT ANTHOLOGY, a collection of some 60 stories about what it was (and is) like to live in the city of Detroit. Gail gave an interview about the piece on WMUK radio station. Consider the following short excerpt a first-inning triple topped by a steal of home:

“A rectangle of night sky opens ahead. Brilliant banks of lights against the black. The low crowd hum, rising, like a sea sound. Then acres of green seats and then, below it all, the blazing diamond, emerald they should call it, nothing has ever been so green.

Left field, Maxwell. Right, Colavito, the outrageous Cleveland trade, who points his bat at pitchers like a gun.

Humidity haloes the lights. Men yelp HOTdogs, HOTdogs, PROgram. I am transfixed…”

So are we.

Get a Taste of Andy Mozina’s “Quality Snacks” in MLive Book Review and May 14 Reading

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Book cover of 'Quality Snacks'Kalamazoo Gazette/MLive Book Reviewer Yvonne Zipp reviewed “Quality Snacks,” a new collection of short stories by Kalamazoo College Professor of English Andy Mozina. “Mozina’s characters come to wry, melancholy insights that don’t help them improve their lives, but endear them to readers,” she says.

Mozina will read from his new book and sign copies on May 14 at the Hicks Center Banquet Room at K from 6 to 8 p.m.

He’ll be part of “More in an Evening,” a celebration of four Kalamazoo College faculty authors, hosted by the K Bookstore. Mozina will be joined by Professor of English Bruce Mills, who will read from his 2014 memoir about his family’s journey with autism, “An Archaeology of Yearning”; Professor of English, Emerita Gail Griffin, who will read from her book, “The Events of October: Murder-Suicide on a Small Campus”; and Professor of Physical Education and Head Coach of Volleyball Jeanne Hess, who will read from her 2013 book, “Sportuality: Finding Joy in the Games.”

The event is free and open to the public.

Four in an Evening

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Three covers of books writte by K-connected authorsThe Kalamazoo College Bookstore will host an author event featuring readings by four writers with strong K connections. Gail Griffin (professor emerita of English) joins fellow English department faculty members Bruce Mills and Andy Mozina and Professor of Physical Education (and women’s volleyball coach) Jeanne Hess on Wednesday, May 14, from 6 PM to 8 PM in the Hicks Center Banquet Room. The four will read from current works that include Gail’s The Events of October, a compelling account of the murder-suicide on K’s campus in 1999; Bruce’s memoir An Archaeology of Yearning, a chronicle of family relationships (particularly with his son, Jacob) and the role of art (particularly storytelling) as a way to fulfill human yearning for contact between people whose ways of knowing may differ; Andy’s new collection of short stories, Quality Snacks, which will be fresh off the presses for the May event; and Jeanne’s Sportuality, an examination of the intersection of sports and spirituality. The event will allow ample time for Q&A. Books will be available for purchase; the authors will gladly sign them; and refreshments will be served. All are invited; let’s move the number four more toward four hundred.

Kalamazoo College Pioneer Lucinda Hinsdale Stone Now in the Congressional Record

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Kalamazoo College pioneer Lucinda Hinsdale Stone
Lucinda Hinsdale Stone

Kalamazoo College has long honored Lucinda Hinsdale Stone for her leadership at the College during its formative years in the mid-1800s. Now she has been honored by the United States Congress.

Congressman Fred Upton, who represents Southwest Michigan, read a tribute to Stone into the Congressional record recently on the occasion of Women’s History Month and Stone’s bicentennial year of birth.

“Mr. Speaker, Women’s History Month is a time for all Americans to pay tribute to the generations of women who have made our world a better place in which to live,” said Upton on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on March 27, 2014. “Today, it is my great honor to recognize Kalamazoo, Michigan’s Lucinda Hinsdale Stone for her efforts to advance education reform and women’s rights.”

“Upon moving to Michigan in 1843 with her husband, Dr. James Stone, Lucinda became the first principal of the Ladies Department at the Kalamazoo Branch of the University of Michigan, which would soon become Kalamazoo College. Together, Lucinda and James Stone helped shape the school’s direction, in part by introducing coeducation and promoting abolitionism and women’s rights.”

Lucinda Hinsdale Stone invited noted abolitionists and educators Frederick Douglass and Henry James Thoreau into her home and classroom. She also was a charter member of the Ladies Library Association in Kalamazoo (the third-oldest such club in the U.S.), and she organized the People’s Church of Kalamazoo, the Michigan Federation of Women’s Clubs, and the Women’s Press Association. Susan B. Anthony dubbed her the “Mother of Women’s Clubs in Michigan.”

Read a brief historical note about Stone by Kalamazoo College Professor Emerita of English Gail Griffin.

Like Lit? Come to K …

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Dean of Kalamazoo area poets Con Hilberry
Con Hilberry, dean of Kalamazoo area poets, during a recent reading and celebration of his latest collection of poetry in the College’s Olmsted Room. Photo by Ly Nguyen ’14.

… would be the advice of an article by Anna Clark titled “Kalamazoo quietly emerging as a literary hot spot” that appeared in the Detroit Free Press and Lansing State Journal. Of course, K stands for Kalamazoo (the city) but certainly includes Kalamazoo College. The article quotes Bonnie Jo Campbell (author of American Salvage and Once Upon a River, among others) extensively, and Campbell has taught creative writing at K, and she has served as the College’s 2012 Summer Common Reading author. Literary prizes abound for Kalamazoo-area-related authors (Campbell has been a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award; David Small is a National Book Award finalist for his graphic memoir Stitches (and a former faculty member in K’s art department); and Western Michigan University’s Jaimy Gordon is the 2010 National Book Award Winner (Lord of Misrule). Kalamazoo College connections abound, as well. Campbell was a frequent member of  a Monday night poetry class taught by Professor Emeritus of English and poet Con Hilberry (11 books, including, most recently, the highly acclaimed Until the Full Moon Has its Say). Campbell’s poems have appeared in Encore Magazine. Other former students of Con include published poets (and Kalamazoo residents and alumnae) Susan (Blackwell) Ramsey ’72 (A Mind Like This) and Gail (McMurray) Martin ’74 (Begin Empty Handed and The Hourglass Heart). Kalamazoo College Writer in Residence (and Kalamazoo resident and alumna) Diane Seuss ’78 will soon publish Four Legged Girl, which follows her two previous volumes of poetry (It Blows You Hollow and Wolf Lake White Gown Blown Open). Fiction writer and Professor of English Andy Mozina has published The Women Were Leaving the Men, and his new collection of short stories, Quality Snacks, is forthcoming. Professor of English Bruce Mills is currently on sabbatical promoting his new memoir An Archeology of Yearning. Mozina and Mills both reside in Kalamazoo. Professor Emeritus of English Gail Griffin (another Kalamazoo resident) is using her retirement to work on her next work. She is the author of the breathtaking “The Events of October”: Murder-Suicide on a Small Campus. Gail is also a published poet, and she has written a number of essay collections, including Calling: Essays on Teaching in the Mother Tongue and Season of the Witch: Border Lines, Marginal Notes. Yes, Kalamazoo College is the right place for literature. There may be no other place where it’s likely to go better.

Classmates’ Creativity

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Two junior writers are getting their creative work published widely. Kate Belew ’15 published three poems (“Marrow,” “Leaning Tower of Lady Liberty,” and “God Tree”) in the Fall 2013 issue of Minetta Review. Journey was the theme of that issue. Jane Huffman ’15 is an English and theatre arts major who also is publishing in quite a few places–including a recent interview in NewerYork.

FREE BEER Among the BEST

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Kalamazoo College Writer in Residence Di SeussWriter in Residence Di Seuss’s poem “Free Beer,” originally published in the Missouri Review, was selected by Terrance Hayes for the Best American Poetry anthology, which is due out in September of this year. When the poem appeared in Missouri Review, Di included an author’s note. “As I child,” she wrote, “I lured adults to my puppet show by offering free beer.  We didn’t have the money for beer or puppets.  I wasn’t lying; I was imagining, which is a form of hope.” Di’s second book of poems, Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open, received the Juniper Prize for Poetry. Her third book, Four-Legged Girl, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press.

K Writers Publish Essays and Poems

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Writer in Residence Diane Seuss has new work published, and so also has her good friend and former colleague, Professor Emerita of English Gail Griffin.

DianeDi’s “Gyre,” an essay/prose poem, appears in Brevity, a great magazine of brief nonfiction. Several poems from a series she wrote on still life paintings were accepted by Missouri Review, which will publish them this spring. Those poems were finalists for that magazine’s poetry prize. Her poem “Wal-Mart Parking Lot” won the Indiana Review’s 1/2K Prize. In other news, Di received a residency at Hedgebrook, a writing retreat for women writers located on Whidbey Island, near Seattle. Di will spend some time there this summer.

Gail’s essay, “The Messenger,” appears in the the new issue of the Chattahoochie Review, in its special issue on animals. The piece “centers on the night my cat brought a live owl into the house,” says Gail. “And then it gets stranger.” Another of her essays, “Out of the Woods,” is published in a collection called Southern Sin, published by the magazine Creative Nonfiction. That essay is subtitled “Women Behaving Badly” and provides an account of Gail’s time in graduate school at the University of Virginia. “I think my piece isn’t nearly as racy or eyebrow-raising as some of the others,” she says. “It’s more a reflection on the intersections of race and gender in me and in the south.” Southern Sin isn’t out yet, but may be pre-ordered at Amazon or the Creative Nonfiction website.