Alex Jamieson
Alex Jamieson '37 '81 Track, Basketball
Alex Jamieson stood a bit apart from the crowd from the beginning.
He came to Fenn College in 1934 with a reputation as a fine track athlete, the holder of the John Adams High School pole vault record. The school had no track team so he helped organize one. That task completed, he proceeded to become one of the team's stars.
He had not played basketball in high school, but since Fenn DID have a team in this sport he joined it and started every game save one in his three-year career.
At a time when most Fenn students were working towards a degree in engineering or business administration through a co-operative education program which kept them in school for some five years, he went straight through school in just over three to earn a degree as a liberal arts student with a major in English.
Then in an era when most youngsters' educations ended with their undergraduate degree, he went on to Butler University to secure an M.S. in Education.
Jamieson's subsequent career was no less unusual, but the reasons for his election to the CSU Athletic Hall of Fame were formulated between the years 1934 and 1937.
Described in the Fenn yearbook as "the smallest, fastest and quietest man on the (basketball) team, "he was considered one of the city's finest collegiate players during three years which culminated in his co-captaining the 1936-37 squad. That team's 8-9 record would not be surpassed by a Fenn basketball quintet for over a decade.
In track he did a little bit of everything that the two other Fenn athletic giants of his era - Al Jones and Jack Kroecker - couldn't do. He pole vaulted, of course, ran the low and high hurdles, broad jumped and high jumped.
Although the team had no facilities of its own and practiced only sporadically, he finished as high as second in the pole vault and 3rd in the broad jump in the All-City meet in an era when Western Reserve and Baldwin-Wallace in particular were recognized track powers.
In all he won six letters, three in each sport. He also won an intramural wrestling championship, was the quarterback on his fraternity football team and the pitcher on the softball team, handled gym classes at the YMCA, refereed church and other league basketball games and drove the team bus on occasion.
Laziness was not one of his traits.
The owner of a master's degree at the age of 21, Jamieson worked for two years, then enlisted in 1940 in the U.S. Aviation Cadet Program, becoming a pilot and officer in the Air Force after nine months.
He spent the next 21 years in the service, seeing action in World War II as an F-39 squadron commander in North Africa and also serving in Germany. He later spent eight years as a professor of Air Science in ROTC programs at Nebraska, Iowa and Butler, before retiring in 1960 to embark on a new career - at Fenn College.
For the ensuing 20 years, he was once again a familiar part of the Fenn/ Cleveland State scene, filling various assignments with the admissions, the law college and primarily with the co-operative education department.
He officially retired for a second time in the Spring of 1980, and now divides his year between a condominium in Rocky River and a winter in Largo, Florida with his wife of 37 years, the former Doris Callihan.
A son, Alex Jr., who was state cross country champion and an outstanding wrestler at Lakewood High School now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, while their daughter Judy teaches in North Ridgeville, Ohio. Another daughter, Barbara, died in 1972.
