SPORTS I
The Michigan Jewish Sports Hall of Fame honors the
spirit of youth with its 1988 inductees
MIKE ROSENBAUM
adult children, Katie and Harold, and
an 86-year-old father, Max. Brose was
moved by the honor last Sunday. "Of
all those other things in tennis that
I've done, this is far and away the big-
gest honor of all. I'm just totally flat-
tered."
Burns was a multi-sport athlete
who began playing table tennis at age
10. He also played baseball, basket-
ball and boxed. Although he was the
Detroit YMCA table tennis champion
at age 11, baseball was his number
one sport.
Burns, who graduated from
Detroit Eastern High School before he
was 15, injured his knee at 19, play-
ing baseball. At that point he became
serious about table tennis in order to
Sports Writer
I t was a fitting announce-
ment just one day before this
year's Academy Awards pre-
sentation.
•At Monday's Oscar
ceremonies, a Michigan-made film
titled "Young at Heart," which shows
that love is not limited to the young,
was a winner as best documentary
short subject.
In an open meeting Sunday,
Michigan Jewish Sports Hall of Fame
officials announced as this year's in-
ductees three men who prove that
athletics also are not only for the
young, but for the young at heart.
The three Hall of Fame honorees
were outstanding young athletes who
continued to succeed as players or
coaches well past 'their athletic
primes.
The two living inductees, tennis
great Leonard Brose, 61, and table
tennis champion Chuck Burns, 71,
still play senior events in their sports.
The third inductee, the late, Sam
Bishop, was a standout football player
at Western State Teachers College —
now Western Michigan University —
prior to a 44-year career as a coach,
and later athletic director, at Detroit
Northwestern High School. Although
Bishop was not an athlete in later life,
he served as Northwestern's athletic
director until age 70. In his final
working year, 1969, he was coor-
dinator of sports for the City of
Detroit.
Brose and Burns attended the an-
nouncement ceremony, held at the
Maple/Drake Jewish Community
Center. Bishop was represented by his
daughter, Madelyn, and her husband
Richard Liss.
Brose took up tennis relatively
late, just shy of his 15th birthday. He
learned quickly and was runnerup in
the Detroit city championships as a
high school senior.
Brose played one year of tennis at
Wayne State University before
transferring to Michigan State
University, where he played for two
years. He was the Central Collegiate
Conference singles champion in 1950,
his first year at MSU, then took the
Big 10 singles and doubles titles the
following year. Brose also led the
Spartans to their first Big 10 team ti-
tle in any sport in that second season.
Brose went to the quarterfinals in
50
FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 1988
Leonard Brose, today.
that year's NCAA championships.
When Brose graduated from col-
lege, there was no professional tennis
tour, so he went into the business
world. He currently works as a sales
representative for a group of furniture
factories. But he remained an athlete.
"I never stopped competing" he ex-
plains. "I love to compete. I played
anywhere from four to five tour-
naments, every year, even though f
was working. In recent years I've got-
ten very active in senior tennis!'
Brose is a five-time Detroit cham-
pion and a three-time Michigan titlist
in both tennis and squash. He took up
the latter sport at age 30, looking for
an indoor winter game. The Birm-
ingham resident has won two U.S.
senior doubles tennis championships.
"One of my great goals is to win a na-
tional singles championship," he says.
Brose, once ranked fifth in the
U.S. in the 50-and-over age group, is
currently ranked 17th in the 60-and-
over group. "I really think I should've
been ranked higher," he says, "but un-
fortunately I didn't play in very many
tournaments last year."
Brose won silver medals in singles
and doubles in senior tennis competi-
tion at the 1985 International Mac-
cabiah Games in Israel. He pulled a
groin muscle after reaching the finals
in those events and had to withdraw.
While the results frustrated him,
Brose termed his first Maccabiah
competition "wonderful, a very ex-
citing trip."
Brose and wife Marilyn have two
Burns was seeded 20th at the
1942 Open, but he upset the number
eight, four and two seeds before mak-
ing the finals against top-ranked Jim
Pagliaro. "I went against Pagliaro
feeling fairly confident," he retails,
"because I just beat him two straight
in Chicago three months" before the
Open. Burns lost the second game
after leading 20-18, then dropped the
third and final game after being tied
18-18.
Today, says Burns, "I'm playing as
well as I can, based on the fact that
the game is so much faster than it
was in the '40s an '50s, when sponge
(racquets) came in. It became like a
cannon playing a rifle."
Burns says his last big win oc-
cured in 1967, at age 50, when he
beat the second-ranked player in the
country. He made a comeback in
1973, after U.S.-China "ping-pong
diplomacy" increased the sport's
popularity. He made the finals of four
national events that year.
Burns and wife Shirley, married
48 years, have four children, Ronald,
Douglass, Paul and Elizabeth. He is
a member of the U.S. Table Tennis
Hall of Fame and the Michigan
Amateur Sports Hall of Fame. Of his
latest honor he says, "It's a great hap-
pening for me, based on the fact that
Al Foon was an old friend of mine and
he was a founder (of the hall). We us-
ed to play together all the time . . . It's
a thrill, it's a great thrill."
Bishop, a member of the Michigan
Sports Hall of Fame, was born Sam
Chuck Burns, 1940.
satisfy his competitive urge. His knee,
he says, has popped out several times
since his 1936 injury, usually during
occasional forays into sports other
than table tennis. "I'm very happy
just to be walking," says Burns, who
still competes in senior table tennis
events.
Burns was ranked among the na-
tion's top 10 table tennis players from
1939 to 1962. He won the Michigan
championship 18 times in a span of
25 years. He has won 27 national and
17 international titles in a variety of
age groups. Burns finished second in
the 1942 U.S. Open, held in Detroit at
the General Motors Ballroom. Losses
in important events, such as the
Open, stand out in Burns' mind.
Sam Bishop, 1926.