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Assembling Art

Alum’s blog hosts “neat” art

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IUAM Editor, Mike Wright

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  • IU Bball: GameDay Spirit vs. Michigan

    Hoosier Spirit on Full Display

    GameDay visits, fans and team respond


    The matchup between top-ranked basketball teams IU and Michigan brought ESPN’s College GameDay to Assembly Hall on Feb. 2. The atmosphere was electric, and the IU Alumni Magazine and the IU School of Journalism co-produced a video capturing fans’ IU spirit on a day the Hoosiers prevailed. Go Hoosiers!

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  • Watch an IU Olympic moment

    Milton G. Campbell Sr.

    Milton G. Campbell Sr., ’57, the first African-American Olympic decathlon winner, died on Nov. 2 in Gainesville, Ga. He was 78.

    Campbell was a senior in high school when he won his first Olympic medal, the silver in the decathlon at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki. Originally, he tried to qualify for America’s Olympic team as a high hurdler, but he finished fourth during the tryouts. Campbell tried the decathlon for the first time and qualified for the team.

    “I was stunned,” Campbell explained in David Wallechinsky’s book The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics. “But then God seemed to reach into my heart and tell me he didn’t want me to compete in the hurdles, but in the decathlon.”

    At the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, Campbell earned the gold medal.

    At IU, he was an NCAA champion in the high hurdles and a standout for the football team. In 1957 the NFL’s Cleveland Browns drafted Campbell, and he played there for one season as a running back. He then played for various teams in the Canadian Football League until his football career ended in 1964.

    He returned to his home state of New Jersey, where he started doing humanitarian work, including opening a private school for underprivileged children and co-founding a community center. Campbell also became a motivational speaker.

    He was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, the International Swimming Hall of Fame, and the New Jersey Hall of Fame. In 2000 Campbell was named the New Jersey Sportswriters Association’s New Jersey Athlete of the Century.

    In an interview with The Star-Ledger, Campbell recalled a conversation he had as a teenager with his high school track coach. “He asked me what I wanted to be. I told him, ‘The best athlete in Plainfield.’ Then it became ‘the best in New Jersey’ and ‘the best in America’ and ‘the best in the world.’”

    Video: Courtesy of International Swimming Hall of Fame

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