.
Among all the deserving men and women who will be nominated for the Fond du Lac High School Athletic Hall of Fame, Stan Gores is likely to be one of a kind. That’s because Gores, who starred in football and basketball in the late 1930s for the Cardinals, later returned to Fond du Lac as sports editor of The Reporter, where he chronicled the accomplishments of other outstanding athletes who stood out on the same hardwood and turf years later. It is no coincidence that when Coach Ed Fruth was inducted in the inaugural Hall of Fame class in 2009, his nomination included a story written by Gores, who earned four varsity letters in basketball and had played for Fruth. It was one of many sports stories Gores wrote over the years that showed understanding and sensitivity that perhaps only someone who had excelled in high school sports could really convey. And excel he did.
When Gores was selected to the Fox River Valley all-conference basketball first team as a sophomore in 1938, the Fond du Lac Commonwealth Reporter described him as “140 pounds of lightning on feet.” He finished second in the league in scoring that year. A year earlier, Gores had become the first basketball player in Fond du Lac ever to win a varsity letter as a freshman. When there were technical fouls, newspaper clippings show, the team handed the ball to the sure-shooting Gores. He was a huge believer in mastering the fundamentals. As a three-year starting halfback for the Cardinal football team, Gores was portrayed in newspaper clips as a dart with a nose for the end zone. After a Cardinal win over Sheboygan North in 1939, The Reporter said Gores was “poison” to North for the second consecutive year. The Reporter wrote: “Gores scored the first two touchdowns. The first came on a double lateral. Rusch to Halfman to Gores, who ran 11 yards for the score. The diminutive back, who started in the Cardinal lineup as a sophomore two years ago, shot off tackle for 15 yards and the second touchdown a minute later.” When Gores passed away in 2005 at age 84, people who came to the visitation talked about what an outstanding athlete he had been in high school. One man said that when elementary school kids got together for pick-up games back then, they would pretend to be Stan Gores. He was elected president of his class four consecutive years – a tribute not only to his high school sports prowess, but, I’m told, how he treated all classmates, athletes and non-athletes alike, with respect.
Unfortunately, a sampling of newspaper clippings from the 1930s doesn’t provide a complete record showing how the teams Gores played on finished in the standings each year. But those clippings make it obvious that whether Gores was on the basketball court or football field, you couldn’t help but notice him. I can provide copies of the clippings I have if the Hall of Fame committee would like to see them. Stan Gores was my father, so I’m biased, of course. But I don’t think this is an exaggeration: If basketball was in the 1930s what it is today, he would have been on the recruiting roster of state colleges looking for a guy with God-given talent and the smarts and self-discipline to know that fundamentals come first. That was his path to success. Gores entered the Army after high school and never played varsity sports in college, although he was a favorite teammate for college intramural teams when he came back from the war and enrolled at Northwestern University. He earned a journalism degree there, and after a short time working for the Appleton newspaper, returned to the place he loved and always wanted to be – Fond du Lac.
He became sports editor for The Reporter, writing about the stars of the day, such as Fondy Hall of Famer Hub King. You probably will see a Stan Gores byline on newspaper clippings from any Hall of Fame candidate who emerged in the mid-1950s. Each evening back then, fans of local sports teams would open their newspaper and read well-crafted articles describing the previous-night’s game or a feature story that took readers behind the scenes. He always understood the drama of sports – a thrilling victory or a bitter defeat – because he had lived it. Shortly after Gores died, Reporter Managing Editor Mike Mentzer wrote a touching column about him. Gores had been his boss at the newspaper, and he recalled him fondly.
In part, Mentzer wrote: In my estimation Fond du Lac native Stan Gores ranks among those remarkable people who quietly spend a lifetime making their hometowns better places to live, safe and comfortable places to raise families, and special places ‘to come home to’ for those who leave to make their homes elsewhere. There aren’t many people left today who remember the late 1930s. Newspaper clippings from that era are yellowed and fragile. But what those clippings show is how Stan Gores shined, as The Reporter put, like “140 pounds of lightning on feet” during his time as a Cardinal. And then, as an adult, he returned to Fond du Lac to write about Cardinals who succeeded him.
Paul Gores Business News Reporter Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
.
.
.
.
.
