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Organization marks 50th anniversary

Butler County Hall of Fame president Dan Cunningham looks over a collection of photographs that will soon be displayed at the Butler County Courthouse. The hall hasn't had a home the past few years.
Top athletes here honored

BUTLER TWP — Question: What started as a going away present, but never left?

Answer: The Butler County Sports Hall of Fame.

The organization is having its 50th annual induction banquet Saturday (April 25th) night at the Butler Days Inn. Its first induction banquet wasn’t even supposed to be one.

“Ed Vargo was going away to become a major league umpire, and we, as a sports community, were proud of him,” longtime Butler sportscaster Jim Lokhaiser said. “We arranged a dinner for him and gave him a set of luggage.

“That started the whole thing. Ed wound up being our charter inductee.”

The dinner’s organizers, including Merril Moses, Lokhaiser, longtime Butler Eagle sports editor Mike Surkalo and others, decided to form a Butler Area Sports Hall of Fame based on the success of that Vargo dinner.

“We decided there were a lot of sports people in this community we should recognize,” Lokhaiser said.

The hall has been recognizing them ever since. There are 356 people in it with another seven going in this weekend.

Among those enshrined are NFL players Bill, Rich and Ron Saul and Terry Hanratty, major league pitchers Ron Kline, John Stuper and Matt Clement, Olympic swimmer Eric Namesnik and diver David Pichler, legendary coaches Paul “Red” Uram, John “Pump” McLaughlin, Beverly Fry, George Mihalik and Martha Altmire.

Some of the inductees go as far back as the 1930s.

“A lot of fellows didn’t have the opportunity to play college ball because of World War II,” said Art Bernardi, a hall board member for more than 20 years. “A lot of them went straight into the service.”

More than 15 sports are represented in the hall. For example, the first female inductee, Jordie Ritz in 1979, was a national judo champion.

“It’s the people on the board who make it work,” said 20-year hall board member Bob Cowoski. “Everybody is very community-oriented. The process of deciding upon inductees is challenging to us.

“There are a lot of folks out there with very high qualifications.”

Hall President Dan Cunningham considers the organization a “work in progress” even after 50 years. He’s upgraded the website and has actively sought the gathering of more resumes to consider for induction.

Pictures and artifacts of hall members soon will be displayed in the Butler County Courthouse. The hall had been without a “home” for the past few years.

The renaming of the organization itself to the Butler County Sports Hall of Fame has helped its growth, Cunningham said.

“I’m always looking for more resumes. Some people don’t understand how to get them to us,” he said. “The website (bcshof.com) has helped in that regard. In the past, a lot of people thought this hall of fame was just about Butler.

“Though we always have, now it’s clear that we’re including the entire county.”

Kathy Lisman Wood, a 1991 inductee, has been on the board for 10 years. Leatha Dudek Baker, also a hall of famer, and Wood are the female members on the board.

“We’ve got good representation throughout the county,” Wood said. “Any resume that comes up for consideration, somebody on the committee knows about that person.

“We’ll consider 18 or so resumes in a year, so a lot of time goes into it.”

Once the top 10 resumes are determined through discussion and vote over several meetings, a re-vote is taken by the committee to determine the inductees for that year.

Typically, seven people are inducted annually, along with a recently created Lifetime Achievement Award. In the past five years, a particularly outstanding team may be recognized as well.

“The guys in the hall who I really admire aren’t necessarily the All-Ameri cans or professional athletes,” Lokhaiser said. “It’s the great sandlot players from the 1930s and 40s who didn’t have the chance to play in college, who didn’t have the fancy facilities athletes have today.

“These baseball facilities around the county today ... They weren’t even conceivable when I was a kid.”

Lokhaiser will be master of ceremonies at Saturday’s banquet for the 49th — and final — time in 50 years.

“Fantastic is the word to describe that guy,” Cowoski said of Lokhaiser. “He’s been the constant, a true backbone.”

Cunningham is most proud of the diversity of sports and accomplishments inside the Hall of Fame.

“It’s amazing,” he said. “You want to see how people succeed in life, hear how they got there. We recognize them in a first-class fashion and their stories inspire others. That’s what this hall of fame is all about.”

Lokhaiser agreed.

“When we first started, we used to bring sports celebrities in to speak,” Lokhaiser said. “We had eight or nine Pirates and Steelers there at times. Then we feared that might be taking the limelight off of our inductees, so we stopped.

“It’s a night for some of our own to shine. That’s how it should be, and that’s how it is.”

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