Vol. 4 No. 13 Wanna Be a Spartan? Michigan State XC History

Walter C. Mack  Endowment  

Navy photo source: Glendale News Press (retrieved 5 May 2011).

Running photo source: MSU Archives and Historic Collections.
Photos appear on Michigan State Cross Country Study

If you have children or grandchildren looking for a way to college and a bit of financial aid,  here is an opportunity for a MSU undergrad student majoring in  kinesiology and also pursuing a teaching  degree.  If they are willing to attend Michigan State University,  which I hear is a pretty good school, they might want to check out the link below.   Walter C. Mack was an Olympic aspirant in 1940, lost his chance with WWII and a combat injury, but still returned and ran for MSU in cross county and track after the war and was an All-American.  He became a teacher in Southern California and coached at John Muir HS in Pasadena and Cal Tech.  Pete Brown who was one of Walter's students at Eliot Jr High School sent us this announcement.  Pete recalled that Walter Mack used to show cross country films in his history classes at Muir.  He managed to send two southern California runners to Michigan State, but those lads had a really hard time with the harsh conditions brought on by the Midwest temperate climate. 

http://education.msu.edu/development/endowed-funds/endowments/mack.asp

The Glendale Times carried Walter Mack's Obituary in 2010.

Walter C. Mack

February 02, 2011nt fight against Alzheimer’s disease and congestive heart failure on August 1, 2010, at Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Burbank. He was born February, 8, 1920 in Buffalo, N.Y.

Mack was a popular teacher in the Pasadena school system for 36 years before retiring in 1985. During his retirement, Mack and his wife, Patricia, lived in Northwest Glendale.
After graduating from Lafayette High School in Buffalo, Mack attended Michigan State University. He was selected All American in both track and cross country during his sophomore and junior years.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor Day, Mack enlisted in the Navy. He was trained as a pharmacist mate and then volunteered to serve in Marine Corps. During action in the South Pacific, Mack was wounded while rendering medical aid to fellow Marines on New Britain Island and received the Purple Heart medal.

Advertisement

After recovering from his wounds, Mack returned to Michigan State and resumed running track and cross country. He again was selected All American in both sports during his final two years before graduation.

Mack later earned his master’s degree from Columbia University. He continued graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley before beginning his teaching career in Pasadena in 1952.
Mack spent much of his teaching career at John Muir High School where he taught advanced world history. His essay tests became known throughout the school as the “Mack Attack”. To make his course more interesting, Mack presented to his classes photos and stories he collected during three trips around the world.
He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Patricia Harris Mack, a retired teacher at Glendale High School; sister and brother-in-law, Grace and Stan Padd; several nieces and nephews; and hundreds of former students.

AS THE WORLD TURNS:

Distance runner Walter Mack was my teacher at Eliot Jr HS in 1952. According to MSU site he was a Navy Corpsman at New Britain, the same place one of my closest friends in the world, a Marine who was wounded by a Japanese machine gun and nearly killed on Jan 2, 1944.

 

Ed Bearss’ life was saved by a Navy Corpsman and a lieutenant who crawled out under fire and pulled him out of harms way. It might have been Walter Mack for all I know. I’d love to find out. Neither man received any commendation for the heroic act.

 

Ed was in the US Navy Hospital in San Diego for 26 months recovering. I talked to him just this morning, at age 90 he remains a history icon, traveling all over the country giving speeches and leading tours. He has written many books, primarily on American military history. Read his bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Bearss . Ed and I have traveled all over together, from Guadalcanal to the Rhine and back roads of North America, over and over, by van, bus, small ship and riverboat.

 

I cannot remember what Mack taught, but probably history. That was my interest then as now. Cross country was  big at MSU, and he must have been pretty good as he made All American, and he used to show 8mm films of him running in indoor meets back east. He would babble about it and, sad to say, I didn’t have much interest in those grainy films and cross country at age 13.

Pete Brown

 

Michigan State Cross Country Website

 Mark Havitz, professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario has created a great website of Michigan State Track and Cross Country History that has a lot of great archival photos and even some video of 1940's era NCAA Cross Country Championships that were held in East Lansing, MI. 
That site can be found at:

http://www.ahs.uwaterloo.ca/~mhavitz/MSUCrossCountryStudy.htm

Vol. 1 No. 70 November, 1959

NOVEMBER 1959

Al Lawrence

Crawford 'Forddy' Kennedy


The cover has photos of Forddy Kennedy leading the field en route to leading Michigan State to the Big Ten championship and Al Lawrence of Houston crossing the finish line in the NCAA meet. Lawrence also wins the AAU meet three days later.
The NCAA meet is held in East Lansing, a good thing because Michigan State puts on a show for the home folks, scoring 44 points to win easily over Houston with 120. In six previous races Lawrence has tied with teammate John Macy. This time he puts 150 yards between them. Macy edges Kennedy for second. Houston also picks up a sixth in the team scoring as Pat Clohessy finishes 8th. Unfortunately for the Cougars, their next scorers are 52 and 59. The Spartans bunch their runners within 50 seconds in the 3-4-9-12-16 positions. Iowa (134), Notre Dame (141) and Western Michigan (148) take the next three spots. Apparently word of a national cross country meet has not reached the South or West, as, aside from Houston and Air Force, the other scoring teams are from the Midwest or East.
Three days later the AAU meet is held in Louisville. This time the Cougars do better. Buoyed by the addition of Barrie Almond and Jerry Smart, they crush a less than stellar field, scoring 30 points to outdistance the NYAC (64), Idaho University TC (68) and University of Chicago TC (74). The three other scoring teams are the High Point TC, Kentuckiana Cinder Club and Berea College. Once again Macy takes second, this time only five seconds behind Lawrence, but 23 seconds ahead of third place Billy Mills.
`The Big Eight runs only three miles, but it is enough for Miles Eisenman of Okie State to establish his dominance over Billy Mills and Gail Hodgson. Cliff Cushman, the number seven ranked intermediate hurdler in the world, just to fill the time until track season is Kansas’ number two man, finishing 8th as the Jayhawks win their 13th consecutive league title. Michigan State of course wins the Big Ten.
The US Report, a compilation of the top 50 or so times in each event, fills five pages. On the first page is a photo of LSU’s Billy Cannon who has the 11th best 100 time (9.5), the sixth best 220 (20.6 straightaway) and the 33rd best shot put (54-4). He might develop into something. Oddly, though next month’s world issue will include the 400 IH and the HSJ, they are not included in this national list.
The Meet the Coach column features Bill Easton of Kansas who has had a pretty successful run in Lawrence. He ran the quarter at Indiana. His first coaching job was at Hammond, Indiana. He then coached at Drake where his cross country teams won three NCAA titles in the 40’s. Kansas called in 1947 and it has been all sunshine and bright lights ever since. His Jayhawks have won 15 indoor and outdoor Big Eight track championships and the aforementioned 13 consecutive league cross country titles. His 1953 XC team won the NCAA meet as did this year’s track team.
Other tidbits gleaned from various columns include the news that Ira Murchison now weighs 135 pounds. This is significant because he was operated on this summer for complications arising from amoebic dysentery. His weight had dropped to 84 pounds. He is running again and hopes to compete for a spot on next year’s Olympic team……Colorado half miler Mike Peake and North Carolina miler Jim Beatty are now training with the newly formed Santa Clara Valley Youth Village in California…….What are the odds of Bakersfield Junior College having next year’s Olympic 100 meter champion? Pretty good, apparently as there is a notation that Armin Hary has relocated from Germany to the southern region of the Central Valley.
Puma has a quarter page ad. So does the Adidas interloper in Lansing, Michigan. Not to worry, Clifford Severn has them both beat. His ad covers 3/8 of the back page.
Dyslexia rules the day once again. Above the Severn ad is a photo of Gene Venzke edging Glenn Cunningham in a 4:13.4 mile in Princeton, NJ in 1936. It is the third that I can remember the magazine has reversed. The curb is on the right and letters on the shirts are backwards. I wonder whether Cordner yells at Nelson or vice versa.