BROTHER CHARLES BURNHAM “BUD” WILKINSON Mu ‘37, University of Minnesota

By Chrisopher Lawrance Tang ESQ, Gamma Tau ‘01 (GeorgiaTech)

Brother Charles Burnham “Bud” Wilkinson, Mu ‘37, (Minnesota) was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on 23 April, 1916. He was known throughout his academic career as an outstanding student and athlete. Brother Wilkinson attended Shattuck Military Academy as a teen, where he was the only four-sport letterman in his graduating class. He graduated cum laude and was awarded for his commitment to academics, as well as for being the school’s best all-around athlete.

Brother Wilkinson went on to play more sports at University of Minnesota starting in 1933, and played in three national football championships during his varsity years. He won the Big Ten Medal at graduation for his performance in academics, football, golf, and ice hockey. He also quarterbacked the 1937 College All-Star team in Chicago to its first victory.

After college graduation, Bud began his illustrious sports coaching career at Syracuse University, where he coached football, golf and ice hockey while obtaining his master’s degree in English. In 1943, Bud enlisted in the U.S. Navy’s pre-flight program at the University of Iowa, where he assistant-coached the Seahawk’s service team. By 1944, he had received his assignment to serve as a hangar-deck officer on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, where he was lieutenant commander and saw intense action in the battles of Iwo Jima, Kyushu and Okinawa.

In 1946, Brother Wilkinson took a job as chief assistant to the head coach of University of Oklahoma’s Sooners football team. Within a year, he had taken over as head coach and athletic director himself at University of Oklahoma. This was the beginning of his most successful coaching endeavor. He first led the Sooners on a 31-game winning streak, including two undefeated seasons, two bowl victories, 14 conference titles and the 1950 national championship. In 1957, he coached a 47-game winning streak, a college football record that still has never been broken to this day. Bud was also responsible for racially integrating his football team during this time, when he played an African American running back named Prentice Gautt. Wilkinson won Coach of the Year in 1949 and remained in his station as head coach of the Sooners for 17 years, until 1963. His overall University of Oklahoma football record was 145-29-4.

In the year 1960, Wilkinson was appointed as head of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness by President John F. Kennedy. This is around when he started spending a lot of time in Washington, D.C. and developed an interest in the political process. In 1964, Charles legally changed his first name to Bud and ran for one of Oklahoma’s senate seats as a Republican candidate. However, he was defeated by Democrat Fred R. Harris, with a margin of 49% - 51%, a loss by about 20,000 votes. Following his defeat, brother Bud Wilkinson left Oklahoma, rarely to return.

In 1965, Brother Wilkinson began the next chapter of his career as a college football television analyst and color commentator for both NBC and ABC networks. He settled in Saint Louis, Missouri and in 1978, after a fifteen-year hiatus from coaching, was appointed head coach of the Saint Louis Cardinals for a short year-and-a-half stint. To quote Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Dan Dierdorf, “Everyone on the Cardinals’ team is enriched by the fact that for the rest of our lives we can say, ‘I played for Bud Wilkinson.’”

Wilkinson was later appointed as a special consultant to the president during the Nixon administration, after being a close friend of the Nixons for many years. In this role he examined the functions of more than 1,500 special Presidential Commissions, and recommended consolidations, eliminations, and other necessary changes. He went on to work with The Presidential Classroom for Young Americans, alongside a variety of congressmen, senators, cabinet members, newsmen, experts, and judges. When a young student from this program asked him to describe the new generation in one sentence, Brother Wilkinson replied “Your generation is the most idealistic we’ve ever had, least concerned about material gain, and the strongest motivated towards a more just society.” He also founded and was president of the non-profit organization “Lifetime Sports Federation” in Washington, D.C.

Brother Wilkinson was named one of the nation’s Ten Outstanding Young Men by the United States Chamber of Commerce. He was president of the American Football Coaches

Association in 1958. In 1959 he received the B’nai B’rith award for his advancement of Americanism and citizenship responsibility. He received the National Brotherhood Citation from the National Conference of Christians and Jews, also in 1959, for his contributions to the nation’s youth through school and church work. He has been chairman of the Oklahoma State Heart and Cancer Funds, and a recipient of the University of Oklahoma Distinguished Service Citation. In 1962, Sports Illustrated awarded him their Silver Anniversary All-American award. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1969. He received the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement in 1975, and returned to broadcasting at ESPN in 1980. By 1986, his health had begun to decline and after a long battle with strokes and heart disease, brother Bud Wilkinson died in his home in Saint Louis, Missouri in 1994.

All-American end and later a great coach at the University of Washington, Jim Owens, said the following of Brother Wilkinson: “Bud was a man who knew what his job was, knew how to do it surpassingly well, and went about it quietly. He was no shouter, no bully, but you knew where you stood. He was honest, he was fair. He said he expected more from us than football. Above all, he said he expected us to work as diligently at our studies as at football.”

Sources:

• https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacstranscripts-and-maps/wilkinson-charles-burnham-bud

• https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKWHP/1961/Month%2003/Day%2023/JFKWHP1961-03-23-A

• https://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/11/obituaries/bud-wilkinson-77-who-guided-oklahomachampionship-teams.html?searchResultPosition=2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud_Wilkinson

While at Oklahoma, Wilkinson served on the President’s Council on Physical Fitness from 1961 to 1964. He designed 11 floor exercises for schoolchildren that were incorporated into the song “Chicken Fat”, the theme song for President John F. Kennedy’s youth fitness program, which was widely used in school gymnasiums across the country in the 1960s and 1970s.