The membership register of the Utah Sports Hall of Fame will have five names added on Nov. 15 at the official 1989 induction ceremonies at the TriArc Hotel in Salt Lake City.
According to Marv Hess, president of the Utah Chapter of the Old Time Athletes Association, the Hall of Fame's new members will include sports journalist Harold (Hack) Miller, tennis coach Harry James, skier Jim Gaddis, baseball player Jim Cleverly and trackman Hugh Cannon.They will be honored at the TriArc, beginning with a reception at 6:30 p.m. and dinner at 7 p.m. The general public is invited and dinner tickets can be obtained from any of the officers of the Old Time Athletes, or by calling Larry Palmer, the association's secretary, at 484-0666.
Hack Miller joins the sports writer's wing of the Hall of Fame after a recently concluded career that included 40 years as sports editor of the Deseret News. He began writing sports for the News in the '30s while still playing basketball for the University of Utah.
He covered sports around the world, including six Olympic Games and dozens of major golf tournaments, World Series, auto races and championship fights. In 1962 he was elected president of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association and served in that position for a year.
Harry James compiled an enviable record of 12 conference tennis championships during his 26-year career as the University of Utah's men's tennis coach. He was named WAC Coach of the Year eight times and coached seven bona fide first team All-America players, including the 1983 NCAA singles champion, Greg Holmes.
A tennis player at East High in Salt Lake and at the University of Utah, James contracted polio as a young man and did his coaching restricted to - but not restricted by - a wheel chair. He has already been inducted into the Tennis Coaches Association College Hall of Fame and the University of Utah Crimson Club Hall of Fame.
Jim Gaddis grew up in Salt Lake (he also went to East High) and excelled as a skier on first the local, then the collegiate, and then the international level. He won NCAA alpine championships in both 1960 and 1962, and was also the national giant slalom champion in 1962. He won the prestigious Alta Snow Cup three times. As a ski booster, he founded the Utah Jr. Ski program. He was inducted into the University of Utah Crimson Club Hall of Fame last year.
Jim Cleverly was a standout all-around athlete at Davis High School in Kaysville and at the University of Utah before settling on baseball as a professional, playing for eight seasons in the Cleveland Indians organization after his graduation from the U.
He was all-state in football and basketball at Davis, and was a little All-American in basketball at the University of Utah. He was first team All-American as a baseball player for the Utes in 1951, as a second baseman.
Hugh Cannon also excelled in sports at Davis High School, after which he matriculated to BYU, where he played basketball for four years and participated on the track team.
It was as a discus thrower that he made his mark. First as the Rocky Mountain Conference champion in 1935, when he set a record that would stand for 20 years, and, after college, as the national AAU champion in 1943, when he set a world record that lasted for one year.
He repeated as national AAU champion in 1944, and also won the Penn Relays for the second straight time.