Preserving the past: Newspaper clippings keep memories alive

LEELANAU — Plenty of sports memories have been created and documented over time.

They’ve been placed in a variety of storage containers and displayed in many ways. They may have even been plastered over social media. They may have become digitalized. They’re staying alive forever, passing through generations.

But, they have at least one thing in common. They were printed first. And usually in their daily or weekly newspaper sports section.

Newspapers documented sports accomplishments for centuries, allowing readers to learn about relatives they may have never met. They also provide the rest of the story for many readers.

News clips are surviving and thriving in the digital age.

“If it weren’t for print articles, my athletic career wouldn’t even exist to this generation,” said Amy (Boynton) Drake.

Drake, a 1990 Leland graduate, was an all-state volleyball and basketball player. She went on to play basketball at Northern Michigan University.

She recently received a large stack of news clips from her mother Nancy Fisher. Included in the clips were articles on her deceased grandmother Jackie Verdier, her granddaughters Delaney and Darby and her husband, Dallas.

Fisher had collected hundreds of newspaper articles over the years of her three children and twelve grandchildren.

Fisher also collected clippings of her sons David Boynton and Toby Boynton-Fisher and their accomplishments at Leland. Boynton-Fisher passed away suddenly in August 2021.

“Our sons Toby and David both played basketball and soccer at Leland and did well,” Fisher said. “Amy had the most clippings I’m sure because she played more years. I am happy I did it for the kids.”

Fisher tried to clip accomplishments of all her grandchildren but was really able to follow those where she had easy access to newspapers. She was able to follow the accomplishments of Delaney Drake all the way to playing hockey for the University of Wisconsin and Darby’s diving at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.

Delaney and Darby are the daughters of Dallas and Amy, who met in college. Dallas won the national championship in hockey with Northern and later the Stanley Cup with the Detroit Red Wings.

Fisher started clipping Dallas’ write-ups from his college hockey days. She also wound up with media guides and other memorabilia from his Red Wings glory days.

The former Red Wing was delighted to receive Fisher’s clippings. His mother had also passed on clippings from Detroit, Canadian and Upper Peninsula newspapers covering his youth, college and professional career. His collection also includes a scrapbook of news clippings covering his college success provided by a fan at NMU.

“They really are a keepsake,” Drake said. “A lot of things you kind of forget about until you stumble on them again, whether they’re in a photo album or plastered on my wall. People have done a great job of picking up a lot of clips I never saw.”

Dallas Drake prefers days when newspapers were the primary media.

“You can call me old school,” he said. “I’d much rather read a newspaper or magazine than try to find something on social media.”

Digital technology is changing the presentation of news clips. It is also changing the form of clips itself, sometimes printed from an internet edition of a newspaper or other sources.

News clips are being digitalized and placed in electronic photo albums and other means of preservation and display.

Andrea Peters, a mother of two current Traverse City St. Francis student-athletes, has all of her kids’ news articles digitized. Very few of her clips are actual newsprint. Most have come from digital editions of the Record-Eagle.

Peters and her husband Brandon look forward to reading the paper during the school year – whether or not her children appear in the coverage.

“We’re at that phase of life where we know everybody and we know all the athletes and kids,” she said. “We always want to hear about the game. I really do appreciate the articles. It’s not just ours but all the kids we know.”

Peters has articles about her son Aiden’s high school soccer and skiing career. He was featured in a huge front-page photo of his very first high school soccer game. He’ll be starting as a senior in August and his mom is planning to collect many more.

Her daughter, Sydney, is entering her sophomore year. She’ll likely play varsity basketball and soccer. Sydney and Aiden have already been named in the Record-Eagle’s All-Region soccer teams.

The final form of the Peters’ collection is to be determined. Aiden’s will likely be viewable first at his graduation party in a digital scrapbook such as Shutterfly.

“It’s fun for the kids to go back,” the mother of three said. “They may not care now, but when they’re older and they need a confidence builder, they can go back and say, ‘Look what I’ve done.’”

Nolan Peters, a third-grader at Immaculate Conception, is following in his older siblings’ footsteps. He’s been on baseball, soccer and football teams.

News coverage will likely look vastly different by the time Nolan graduates than it did for former Suttons Bay athletic director and current baseball coach Doug Periard. There’s a room in his house lined with framed full-page news clips from the Traverse City Record-Eagle and Leelanau Enterprise. They covered his career, along with the paths taken by his children Hugh and Grace.

They were collected and framed by his wife Ann Periard, whose mother also saved clippings for her and her three siblings. Newsprint articles were digitized for framing.

Anne checked the newspaper every morning after a Suttons Bay contest, win or lose, since the 1980s. She also loved to check for travel ball clips.

“As an AD, I really pushed for all stats to be called into local media sources,” Doug Periard said. “Every parent and maybe player wanted to see their name in ink. It is a way to record your seasons, year and career. I never realized until I was a parent myself that the finishing of the book provides closure as your child is ready to hang up the cleats.”

The clips chronicled state championship appearances and other events of the Periard’s careers, such as moving to eight-player football.

Doug Periard, as a parent, noted he gained a greater appreciation of news clips during MHSAA’s cancellation of the spring season in 2020. It was a senior season lost for his daughter and athletes all over Michigan. It also was a lost opportunity for media.

“Oddly enough, not having that for Grace made me even more aware of the role local sports coverage has in our athletic programs,” Periard said.

Clippings played a role in documenting history for Periard, back to his childhood in Birch Run.

He recently came across clippings by his mother and a member of the cheer squad. Ed Periard, Doug’s older brother, played for the 1970 national champion Nebraska football team. Doug was only 7 at the time.

Ed Periard went to Nebraska as a walk-on but earned three letters and all-conference honors as a nose tackle. He was just 5-foot-9 and 198 pounds, but he led the Cornhuskers defense in the 1970 national championship game win over Louisiana State, 17-12. He died in 1993.

Newspaper clippings are keeping the memories alive for the Periard family.

“The scrapbook put together for him was a great source of history and a way to fill in blanks for his children and me when we lost him back in the 90s,” Doug Periard said. “As a high school player myself, I appreciate all my clippings chronicled.”

Cary Paul of Traverse City also points to history being preserved in news clips. He enjoys newspaper articles about his grandfather’s baseball prowess. His grandfather was born in 1911 and lived outside Lincoln, Nebraska. He was scouted by the Chicago Cubs.

“He was a great baseball player,” Paul said. “We have a few clippings of him in his baseball uniform and it talked about his playing.

“It is a neat tie to the past that survives the ages. It’s the kind of thing that makes stories we heard a little more tangible. Clips are a great link to our past and where our families came from.”

Paul has clipped news stories for his three children. Daughter Abigail went on to sailing at the University of Michigan and daughter Anna is dancing at Michigan State University. Their articles were displayed at their high school graduation.

Asher Paul will be a junior this year at Traverse City Central. He’s played soccer, run track and been on the Trojan ski team.

He’s also kicked for the football team. News clips will be part of packets made for recruiting purposes as he looks to play sports in college.

Had Asher grown up in Leelanau County, his story would likely have been captured by Jerry Morawski. He’s been capturing Record-Eagle and Enterprise articles for decades. As a retired educator, former coach and athletic director, he knows the value of news clips to student-athletes. He started clipping articles for students long before his retirement.

He clips more than sports stories, though, for his community. If you made any kind of news, Morawski was likely to clip it, laminate and get it delivered to you. He may deliver it in person or through members of his church and other community groups.

He’s known as the “Leelanau Laminator,” a name given to him by a family member. His laminating days originated in his school teaching.

Morawski’s son, Mark, and his wife, Terri, created a Leelanau Laminator logo to add to the back of each piece. He also has T-shirts proudly displaying his nickname. The first laminator Jerry owned was given to him by his daughter, Molly, and was better suited for business cards, so Jerry eventually pick up a bigger one.

Both laminators sit on one of his office tables, along with stacks of newspapers awaiting to be clipped. He’s not too excited about the digital world.

“I am not comfortable reading editions newspaper online,” he said as he was preparing to laminate an article on his daughter-in-law Stephanie Wried’s Morawski recently stepping down as the swimming and diving coach at Harvard. “Give me that print copy so I can laminate those positive articles.”

Jason Bradford, a special-education teacher at Glen Lake and longtime girl’s basketball coach, has received countless laminated articles about himself, his teams and his family.

He also received items from the Leelanau Laminator at a church handoff for the sole purpose of distribution to those featured in the clips.

“If it’s in the paper, it’s a little piece of history and Jerry saves that piece of history by laminating it and sharing it with those who are a part of it,” Bradford said. “His laminations are a keepsake and I know my family will always treasure our laminations.

“We always looked forward to seeing Jerry in church with his manila envelope labeled ‘Bradford family’ that was full of his laminations. Every Monday, I would have a handful of laminations to hand out to students that made the paper.”

Bradford just stepped down from coaching girls basketball, but he will continue coaching JV football and track. Over his 15-year basketball career, Bradford amassed a record of 282-72, winning seven conference, six district and five regional championships.

His teams advanced four times to the Final Four and won the state championship this year, the school’s first girls basketball title since 1978.

The Leelanau Laminator captured many of those accomplishments. The clips also featured the accolades of Maddie and Grace Bradford, his daughters. Grace was a freshman last year at Lake Superior State University and was named Freshman of the Year in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Association, and Maddie will join her this fall to play.

Ruby Hogan, Maddie’s teammate at Glen Lake, was named the Division 4 Associated Press Player of the Year.

Hogan received a laminated copy of an article about her team winning the state title at Maddie’s graduation party. It was personally delivered by Morawski, whose wife Debbie passed away just a few months ago.

“It was really nice that he did it all for me,” Hogan said. “It is something I can have forever since it was laminated.”

The personal handoff was the first time Hogan and Morawski met, yet another example of sports memories shared through generations.

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