Most would surely deem this strange: / Reggie Bradford lost a shoe / At the final stick exchange. / It raised a helluva hullabaloo– / But with his customary flair, / He won the race with one foot bare!
Reggie Bradford dashed that wild, one-shoe quarter-mile on a sharp cinder track running on Pershing High School’s great one-mile relay team in the relay race at the 1966 Detroit Public School League’s East Side Championship Track Meet. Reggie was running then for Pershing on the relay team I coached that year to the state championship trophy with an all-time state-record clocking, and to a city record as well in the Detroit Public School League championships a week later. He also finished a close second that year to teammate Andre Broadnax in the open quarter-mile in the city meet. In the fall of 1967, I drove Reggie up to Ann Arbor, sat him down in Head Track Coach Don Canham’s office, and talked Canham into giving him a full-ride scholarship to run track for the University of Michigan. In Reggie’s first start as a Michigan Wolverine, he won the 440-yard dash (quarter-mile) against Wisconsin in a meet record 48.6. He later ran on Big Ten one-mile relay teams that won indoor and outdoor Big Ten titles and finished third in the NCAA mile relay final to attain All-America status. He broke 47 seconds on his NCAA relay carry, as I had promised Canham he would, and the teams’s 3:06.9 clocking stood as a U-M record for many years. .
Reggie–the second Pershing High School runner on my left in the 1966 photo accompanying this column–is being honored on Friday, June 22, at a 6:00 reception and 6:30 dinner at Barth Hall in Detroit’s Cathedral Church of St. Paul at 4800 Woodward. Tickets are $25 for one dinner and $45 for two–and there is ample free parking behind the church. Mail checks to Detroit Track & Field Old-Timers, 4221 Leslie, Detroit, Michigan 48238, or pay at the door. Get your check in early, because this event always sells out.(Incidentally, June 22 will be the 80th anniversary of Detroit boxer Joe Louis’ crushing revenge-KO of the German Max Schmeling.)
Stan Vinson is another outstanding quarter-miler being honored at the dinner. Stan won the city and state titles for old Chadsey High in 1971 and went on to make All-American at Eastern Michigan University. Representing the United States on the national team, he won against the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and West Germany, ultimately attaining the number-five ranking in the world at 400 meters. He anchored the U.S. to a world 1,600-meter relay record, and he also set world indoor marks at 500 yards and 500 meters. Other honorees include Clarence Chapman, a football and track star at old Redford High and EMU, Bert Kruse, a Michigan Interscholastic Track Coaches Association Hall-of-Fame coach at Chelsea High; Doug Kurtis, an All-Stater at Livonia Stevenson High and a cross-country star at MSU who later won forty marathon races; and Bertha Smiley, who led Cass Tech’s girls track team to four state titles. Local high school stars will also be honored, and a special citation will be accorded a former DTOT honoree–2018 Boston Marathon champion Desiree Linden. .
Two other past DTOT honorees–Denby High’s Ron Phillips, a former Cody High School principal, and world-record Detroit Track Club relayist Jim Bibbs, a former MSU track coach–will incidentally be joining previous inductees Spencer Haywood, Jerome Bettis, Will Robinson, and Yours Truly in the Detroit Public Schools Sports Zone Hall of Fame this coming September.at Bert’s Warehouse Restaurant in Eastern Market. I’ll be giving you more information on this latter venue as the date approaches. Come to Barth Hall on June 22, laud our track stars, and enjoy a delicious dinner.
Poet and author John Telford was ranked fourth in the world at 400 meters as a WSU senior in 1957–the year he outran the Olympic champion in the NCAA and NAAU and went undefeated at the distance in Europe on the U.S. track team. Hear him Saturday mornings at 9:30 and Monday evenings at 6:30 on WCHB340 AM. Get his Detroit-oriented books at Barnes & Noble or on amazon.com. Contact him at (313) 460-8272 or DrJohnTelfordEdD@aol.com. His website is www.AlifeontheRUN.com.
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