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A NEW TRADITION honoring outstanding Seattle Pacific University athletes begins this year. The Falcon Legends Hall of Fame will induct its first six members — one coach and five athletes — during Homecoming 2003.

Chosen for their athletic success as well as their character, these individuals are legendary in Falcon sports history.

Athletic Director Tom Box says the new Hall of Fame serves the Athletic Department’s goal of developing leadership as well as sports ability by recognizing people who embody that goal. The Hall of Fame also stands as a tribute to Jack MacDonald ’50, the longtime Falcon Club president who lobbied for years to establish it. Before his death on November 28, 2002, MacDonald co-chaired the committee that chose the following inaugural group of inductees:

Ken Foreman is one of the most influential figures in the history of Falcon athletics. A champion gymnast at the University of Southern California, he arrived at Seattle Pacific in 1950 and remained there for nearly 50 years. During that time, he served as athletic director; coached basketball, track and cross country; and helped build Royal Brougham Pavilion. Individually, his track athletes earned 20 collegiate championships and 159 All-America finishes. Eight were Olympians. In the days before Title IX, Foreman worked tirelessly to promote opportunities for women in college sports. Thirteen of his women’s track teams finished in the top 10 nationally.

Foreman himself was selected to coach for the 1980 Summer Olympics, the 1983 World Championships and the 1986 Goodwill Games. Now retired from SPU, he coaches high school track and cross country in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.

The late Ben Moring ’54 was the first Falcon to win a national championship, capturing consecutive NAIA crowns in the 880-yard dash in 1953 and 1954. The 1953 championships were held in Texas — where college athletics were racially segregated — and Moring, an African-American, prevailed even though he wasn’t sure the officials would certify the results if he won.

Loren Anderson ’59 is the first and so far the only Falcon athlete to have his jersey (No. 5) retired. He still holds the Seattle Pacific single-game scoring (54) and career scoring (1,948) records for basketball, and also hit .433 as a baseball player. As a coach, he racked up eight consecutive state basketball championships with Anacortes High School in Washington state. Anderson finished his teaching and coaching career in Ferndale, Washington.

One of the most celebrated female athletes in Seattle sports history, Doris Brown Heritage ’64 joined Foreman’s Falcon Track Club in 1960, before Seattle Pacific even had a women’s track team. A two-time Olympian, she won a record five consecutive IAAF World Cross Country titles, earned silver medals in the 800 meters at the 1967 and 1971 Pan American Games, and set national and world records from 440 yards to a mile. She recently completed her 25th season as SPU’s head cross country coach.

Howard Heppner ’66, an All-American basketball player, led the Falcons to the 1965 Elite Eight. He was the team’s high scorer for two seasons, holds the Falcon career mark for rebounds, and is No. 4 in career scoring. After graduation, Heppner served two years as a ssistant to Seattle Pacific coach Les Habegger, then coached and taught at the high school level until the mid-’70s, when he was named superintendent of the school district in his hometown of Lynden, Washington. Recently retired, Heppner and his wife, Lois Gordon Heppner ’67, enjoy traveling.

Steve Gough ’70 was the NCAA Division II champion in the 1968 triple jump and the 1970 decathlon, and holds SPU records in those events as well as the long jump. He also earned All-America honors in long jump and javelin, and placed fourth at the 1972 U.S. Olympic trials. A resident of Renton, Washington, he operates a business-forms printing company. He and his wife, Paula Evans Gough ’70, have four sons, all of whom attended SPU. Gough and his son, Kyle, also a Falcon track standout, hold the American combined father-son decathlon record.

The Falcon Legends Hall of Fame induction ceremony will take place Friday, January 31, at noon on the Third Floor of Gwinn Commons. Inductees will also be honored before the men’s Homecoming basketball game.

— BY MARTIN STILLION

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Homecoming 2003!
On Homecoming weekend, SPU’s campus lights up with music, theatre, high-flying hoops, the Talent Show and much-anticipated class reunions. [Campus]

An SPU Icon
Danna Wilder Davis completed what few others ever did at Seattle Pacific: Between 1924 and 1939, she went from first grade to college graduation in consecutive years. [Alumni]

Vocation, Vocation, Vocation
Three faculty-led initiatives received SPU’s 2002-2003 Faculty Grants for Theology and Vocation. The grants support projects that weave vocational themes into the curriculum. [Faculty]

My Response
“I’m the father of an AIDS orphan,” says Tim Dearborn, dean of the chapel at SPU, as he recounts his teenage daughter’s trip to Uganda. There she visited an AIDS orphan sponsored by the Dearborn family. [My Response]