Central Michigan University

Why did I go to CMU? I didn’t do an official visit to the school. I was on the track team when we ran in a relay meet on the CMU campus my junior year. We drove up to Mt. Pleasant, spent the day on campus, ran some relays and walked around campus a little bit. I liked what I saw and thought it would be a good fit for me. I didn’t go there to play soccer or be on the radio station. I fell into both of those activities by fate and I feel so lucky to have been on the soccer team and WCHP. I have no regrets about going to another college.

People ask me if I joined a fraternity in college. I joke with them and tell them that I was in a fraternity…I Felta Thigh. I was in two groups that were better than a fraternity in my opinion: the Soccer team and WCHP Radio.

*CMU Mens Soccer (4 year starter):  Lead the team in goals Sophomore year (16 goals, 5 assists), Junior year (17 goals, 9 assists in 9 games...injured out for 6 games), Senior year (28 goals, 12 assists).  Team record for four years: 36-18-5. CMU school record for goals in a game: 6 goals and 2 assists vs. Northwood 1973 (scored 5 goals vs. Toledo, 4 goals in four games, 3 goals in three games); CMU Mens Soccer record for goals in season (28), goals in career (70), points in season (28 goals + 12 assists=40 points), points in career (70 goals+30 assists=100 points); UM Dearborn Invitational All Tournament Team '73, '74; Tournament Champions '74; Tournament Outstanding Player '74; CMU Mens Soccer MVP '74.

*WCHP AM 650 Radio (1973-75):  Disc Jockey, Sales Manager, Sports Director, Sports Talk Show Host, Copywriter, mobile DJ

*Thorpe Hall Vice President for one year, president was Cam Davis former BH Andover classmate.

*WINO Radio, Rock 850 (1973): This radio station was literally housed in a custodian closet in Thorpe Hall, started by a guy who couldn’t make the cut on WCHP. The DJ’s were all Thorpe Hall guys and everyone brought in their own records to do their shows. I had a show Wednesday from 9-11 p.m.

*CMU Superstars: This was a take-off of the TV Special, ABC Superstars Competition. The event was a fundraiser for the Special Olympics. 34 CMU athletes competed. I was sponsored by the soccer team, WCHP and Mt. Pleasant Sports Shop. I competed in bowling, the half mile, Run-Dribble-Shoot, bike race, 100 yard dash, Punt ‘n Pass and obstacle course. I finished 12th with 20 points.

*I lived in Thorpe Hall the first two years, Robinson Hall the third year, and in an apartment on Vernon St. my senior year. Roommates I had include Curt (forgot his last name), Bob (the streaker…yes, he would streak the parking lot for money), Dirk VanOosten (West Branch), Tim Hughes (Troy), Les Hunt (Waterford), and John Hux (Clarkston). Jay Bond was roommate junior year, Jay and Dave Brewer my senior year.

*Graduated in May, 1975 with Bachelor of Applied Arts with Broadcast and Cinematic Arts major and Photojournalism minor.

ID card from freshman year.

Soccer team freshman year. Photo taken in my backyard at Franklin. Still have this shirt, shorts and socks.

Doing a DJ show in the main studio of 650 AM WCHP. Yes, I did play records…a lot! My first show was a Wednesday night/Thursday morning from 3-7 a.m. As I gained more experience, I moved to the 10-noon shift on Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings…no sleeping in on weekends! My sports talk show was on Sunday nights.

Calendar on the wall says it’s 1975. As WCHP Sales Manager, my job was to sell airtime to local Mt. Pleasant businesses so I was on the phone a lot. Then I would meet with the manager of the business and convince them that buying commercials on WCHP was a good use of their advertising dollars. The good news was that WCHP was very popular with the 15,000 CMU students so it was not real hard sometimes to sell airtime. I think I made 6% commission on the airtime I sold…root beer money. Then I would have to get info from the client and have the commercials written so a WCHP air talent can record it and get it on the air. I wrote a lot of those commercials myself…even recorded a few myself.

Commencement was held in the football field because we had 5,000 graduates and their families.

Program for Commencement. Our commencement speaker was Rafer Johnson who won two Olympic medals in the decathlon: Silver in 1956 and gold in 1960. He also appeared in several films. Eunice Kennedy Shriver is the sister of JFK, Ted and Bobby Kennedy…her daughter is Maria Shriver. She is the founder of Special Olympics. She received an honorary degree from CMU, a big supporter of Special Olympics.

My group of Applied Arts grads. I met up with both Gary Lico and Ken Kolbe at the CMU Pioneer Awards ceremony…check out my blog about that event. Ken currently lives on the West side and is the General Manager of WGVU Public Media which includes the PBS public TV station, NPR radio stations and Real Oldies radio stations.

Graduated in four years…pretty proud of that…I know some of my friends who were on the five year plan. My major was Broadcast and Cinematic Arts (BCA) and my minor was Photojournalism.

Graduates walking into Perry Shorts Stadium. I wore white pants and white shoes so I might be seen by my family.

All the graduates sat in the end zone, all 5,000 of them. Family sat wherever they wanted.

With my Mom and Dad and diploma in hand!

Photo op with Central logo!

Taking a break on picnic table near Warriner Hall left to right: My brother Jim, Mom, Emerson Brown (my Mom’s cousin), me, my grandfather Frank Bowers and his wife Orpha.

Long hair back then…should have had a haircut before commencement. The clothes are strange…white pants, black belt, shirt with busy pattern, white shoes…what was I thinking?

Article in CM Life Fall of 1974, my senior year.

My Adidas Super Lights…loved them! Scored 70 goals with these shoes…well, minus any goals I headed in.

Article in CM Life my junior year.

Got a promotion for my sports reports in the WCHP music playlist flyer.

Press passes through the years with different News Directors and one from Jere Craig, the Sports Information Director…got me into any game, any sport that year.

Ad in the paper for our coverage of CMU basketball. I did the play-by-play of Junior Varsity games with Brian Jackson on WMHW 91.5 FM, the other student radio station on campus. Even though I was a CHP guy, they let me do basketball on MHW (Moore Hall Wireless). There was competition between WCHP and WMHW…CHP had more listeners but WMHW had that nice FM stereo signal.

Mr. Sports Director getting his sportscast together before airtime.

Senior year team, Super fun season! We won the UM Dearborn Invitational Tournament. I talked Claudia and her roommate Karen into being ballgirls for us…that’s them in front, in the middle. Great parties after every game…some I remember, some I don’t. End of the season party was crazy from what I can remember about it. The only player I’m still in contact with is Duff McAlpine.

So this was Jay Bond, aka Brother Bond, who I went to school with in 8th Grade at East Hills Jr. High and who helped me make an audition tape which got me accepted into the WCHP group of talented radio broadcasters. I roomed with Jay in a double room in Robinson Hall and then with him and Dave Brewer in an apartment our senior year. Stories to tell there as we hosted several WCHP Seabreeze parties. I last saw him in 1978 when I was in New York City for a radio conference. We went to see the Broadway show Beatlemania in the Winter Garden…haven’t heard from him since. Jay…if you see this…contact me!

Brother Bond (Jay Bond) doing his dance to Desmond Dekker's Israelites song in dorm lobby during WCHP's 48 Hour marathon for Special Olympics. We would get tons of students to come down to the lobby to see Jay perform and we raised a lot of money by passing the hat. Jay was the WCHP Station Manager.

This is Dave Brewer, aka Brew, who I roomed with in my senior year along with Jay Bond. Brew was the WCHP Program Director and would come on my sports talk show on Sunday nights to talk sports on occasion. I took this photo of Brew doing his Tricky Dick, Richard Nixon impersonation.

I played point guard for our Thorpe Hall corridor basketball team. We were Dorm Champions in the Thorpe Corridor Basketball Tournament…woo woo! My Andover buddy Ken (aka Cam) Davis Jr. was Thorpe Hall President and I was Vice President.

We played the IM basketball games in Finch Fieldhouse.

I wore number 44 which was my idol Pistol Pete Maravich’s number in college.

President Nixon made a campaign stop at Tri-City Airport April of 1974 and I decided to use my Press Pass to attend the event. Never saw a president before so it was pretty cool! Air Force One landed, he came out of plane and waved the Dick Nixon wave, then went to a podium to give a speech. We had to stay behind the fence so we didn’t get too close to him. I wrote a news report about the visit and aired it on WCHP. Note that George Bush (senior) was the RNC Chairman…interesting!

Photo I took of President Nixon at campaign stop at Tri-City Airport.

CMU Superstars: This was a take-off of the TV Special, ABC Superstars Competition. The event was a fundraiser for the Special Olympics. 34 CMU athletes competed. I was sponsored by the soccer team, WCHP and Mt. Pleasant Sports Shop. I competed in bowling, the half mile, Run-Dribble-Shoot, bike race, 100 yard dash, Punt ‘n Pass and obstacle course. I finished 12th with 20 points.

At least I finished ahead of two guys who were CMU basketball superstars who played in the NBA: Dan Roundfield (Pacers, Hawks, Pistons and Bullets) and Jim McElroy (Jazz, Pistons and Hawks).

Extremely rare photo. The Vietnam War seemed like it would never end and I didn’t know if I might be drafted even though I was in college. So I thought that if I was going to be drafted into the military, I’d rather go in as an officer so I enrolled in ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) in my freshman year. When it looked like I wouldn’t be drafted, I left ROTC after one year. Closest I’ve ever been to being in the military.

The guy who took the photo of me in my Army dress uniform was one of my roommates my Freshman year in 405 Thorpe Hall. His name was Curt and he lived in the Detroit area and became a teacher.

In CMU dorm room…being goofy as usual.

Vintage photo of Claudia in her CMU dorm room.

Article that appeared in the Central Michigan University Alumni Magazine Centralight, in summer 2016.

The best thing that happened to me at CMU was not a piece of paper…it was meeting Claudia Bogard from Allen Park Michigan. There is a story how we met on my BFF blog. I thank my lucky stars every day that Claudia decided to come back to Central for her junior year, my senior year. Power of prayer.

Those four years at CMU…Those were the best days of my life (line from Summer of ‘69 by Bryan Adams)