Awards & Recognition
Maryland Athletic Hall of Fame

State Hall of Fame Admits Bill McMillan, Jack Scarbath, Mrs. Glick, Jake Flowers

By J. SUTER KETTS
Sunday Times Sports Editor

Football, baseball and golf have received added recognition but for the first time in its history, the Maryland Athletic Hall of Fame has honored a pistol shooter.

As has been the custom since its inception in 1956, the shrine honoring the state's all-time greats is admitting three living members and one deceased.

Scheduled for enshrinement next month are Jack Scarbath, Mrs. Maurice Glick, Bill McMillan and the late D'Archy Raymond (Jake) Flowers.

Scarbath was a consensus All-American quarterback at the University of Maryland in 1952 when he was runnerup to Billy Vessells of Oklahoma in the Heisman Trophy voting.

Regarded as the leading split-T quarterback of his era, the six-foot-one, 195-pound product of Baltimore Poly later played in Canada and with the Washington Redskins adn Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football League.

Scarbeth was at the Terrapin controls in Maryland's greatest post-season victory, a 28 to 13 upset over national champion Tennessee in the 1952 Sugar Bowl. The Terps compiled a 22-game streak without a defeat during his tenure in the quarterback's seat.

For 30 years (1939 through 1968), the name of Evelyn Glick, like Scarbath, a native of Baltimore was synonymous with golf in Maryland.

Eleven times Mrs. Glick won both the Maryland State and Baltimore City championships. She won the Middle Atlantic women's title on four occasions, the Cuban championship in 1953 and 1954, was southern runnerup in 1956 and semi-finalist in the 1955 Western and '56 Canadian.

Mrs. Glick was a school teacher for eight years and has been a medical secretary in Baltimore since 1970. She plays golf only occasionally now, having given up the sport on a competitive basis in 1969.

McMillan, a retired lieutenant-colonel in the Marine Corps, won the gold medal in pistol rapid-fire shooting at the 1960 Olympics in Rome. Last summer in Montreal he participated in his sixth Olympic Games, becoming only the third American to achieve that distinction.

Col. McMillan, now weapons training coordinator for the the San Diego County Sheriff's Department in California, also competed in three Pan-American Games and five world shooting championships. He has won 11 gold, five silver and four bronze medals.

A native of Borden Shaft (near Frostburg) in Allegany County, Col. McMillan, who will be 48 on January 29, was the oldest American in the 1976 Olympics. After his first competition as corporal in 1949, he went on to take five All-Marine rifle and pistol championships as well as the national pistol title in 1957.

A veteran of 27 years in the Marines, having risen from the rank of private, Col. McMillan saw action in two wars - Korea and Vietnam. He holds the Legion of Merit and Bronze Star with combat V.

Flowers who played in the majors for ten years (with the St. Louis Cardinals, Brooklyn Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds), was in two World Series (1926 and 1931). Primarily a utility infielder and considered one of the best of his time. Jake has a lifetime batting average of .256 in the big leagues.

Flowers began his professional baseball career with Cambridge (his native city) of the Eastern Shore League in 1922, the year he graduated from Washington College at Chestertown where he was a standout in baseball, football and basketball. After his playing days, he served as coach with the PIttsburgh Pirates, Boston Braves and Cleveland Indians. He later scouted for the New York Yankees, Philadelphia Athletics and Baltimore Orioles. He died Dember 27, 1962 at the age of 60.0

Flowers also was a minor-league manager and is remembered for one of the greatest comeback feats in the histroy of baseball. While piloting Salisbury of the Eastern Shore League in 1937, he was required to forfeit 21 games for use of an ineligible player after compiling a 21-5 record.

That knocked his team from first place to last wtih an 0-26 mark. Nevertheless, his team went on to win the pennant by taking 48 of the next 58 games. The Sporting News honored him as the Minor League Manager of the Year.

The four new members of the Hall of Fame will be inducted at a luncheon Monday, February 21, in the Baltimore Civic Center. Their plaques will adorn the walls of the Civic Center's Hall of Fame Room, opened last year. Their enshrinement brings the Hall of Fame membership total to 88.

The February luncheon is open to the public.

Cumberland Sunday Times, Cumberland, Maryland, Sunday, January 16, 1977, Page 33

Tapping the Keg

By J. SUTER KEGG

AFTER BLAZING HIS WAY to fame and glory in all parts of the globe for the past 25 years, including an American record of participation in six Olympics, Bill McMillan, it seems, would be ready to call it quits. But that's the farthest thing from the mind of this great marksman who is looking forward with almost as much fervor to the 1980 Games as he was 25 years ago when he shot in the Olympics for the first time. That was Helsinki, Finland.

"If I can qualify, I'll be there," the retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel said last week in Baltimore when he was inducted into the Maryland Sports Hall of Fame. If he can't make it as a shooter because of the passing years dulling his trigger aptitude, he hopes to make it to Moscow as a coach.

Returning to Russia would enable Col. McMillan to turn back the clock to one of his most cherished experiences - the World Shooting Championships in Moscow. It was the third of four consecutive such titles for the native Allegany Countain whose bulls-eye feats have become legion.

Winner of 11 gold medals in the Big Three (Olympics, Pan-Am Games and World Shooting) of international competition, Col. McMillan is doing his best to give Father Time the brush-off. Even his appearance connotes this. As stated by Vince Bagli, the Baltimore sportscaster who emceed the Hall of Fame luncheon, "Bill McMillan is the most youthful 48-year-old man I've ever seen."

When he stepped out of his Marine uniform after 27 years which included service in two wars (Korea and Vietnam), he didn't retire to the rocking chair. Instead, he tried on a couple of new hats for size and they both fit.

One of the hats is for the position of weapons coordinator in the San Diego (Cal.) County Sheriff's Department. The other is for instructor at Miramar Junior College where he teaches weaponry in a course of criminal justice.

Shooting isn't just a case of aiming at a target and squeezing the trigger. Reflexes are vitally important and "Busy Bill" keeps them honed through a physical-fitness program which includes he demanding sports of tennis and squash.

IT WASN'T UNTIL he took seriously one of those old posters showing Uncle Sam pointing a demanding finger and saying, "I want you," that Col. McMillan became interested in firearms. Even when his dad bought him his first gun - an air rifle - he didn't build any shooting castles for himself.

As a boy, he did pepper some windows with his bee-bee gun but the building in which the windows were located looked like anything but a castle. It was abandoned factory near his home in Turtle Creek, Pa. where the family moved after leaving Borden Shaft [Frostburg].

Col. McMillan's proficiency in firearms was apparent almost from the time he got his first test in a Marine shooting range. His rise was rapid and it was evident when he won his first hunk of gold in the 1952 World Shoot at Oslo, Norway that he was headed for the same glory road traveled by folklore heroes from America's past.

Daniel Boone, Buffalo Bill, Davy Crockett, Wild Bill Hickok and Annie Oakley are names recognized by just about every American schoolchild. But none of these legendary "free spirits" of early U.S. history ever dug as much gold with rifles and pistol as has Bill McMillan.

Most of his gold has been garnered in the World Shooting Championships. He has won seven gold medals, five silver and one bronze in that prestigious event. He has also won three gold and one silver in the Pan-Am Games as well as one piece of Olympic gold.

Crack shot McMillan's greatest hour came in the 1960 Olympics at Rome where he beat his Russian and Finnish foes in a shoot-off. That was his first Olympic appearance since 1952 at Helsinki where he finished seventh. But he has played a role in every Olympiad since then - 1964 at Tokyo, 1968 at Mexico City, 1972 at Munich, Germany and last summer at Montreal where he finished 20th among more than 50 shooters.

Col. McMillan retained his World title by winning two years later at Caracas, Venezuela. He won again in 1958 at Moscow and in 1962 at Cairo, Egypt. His last piece of World gold was picked up in 1970 at Phoenix, Ariz.

Col. McMillan, in addition, has copped a dozen national rapid-fire championships, three other national crowns, three Marine Corps pistol crowns and three Marine rifle titles.

Father of two sons (Bill, 21, and Matthew, 13) and a 17-year-old daughter, Karen, the straight shooting colonel will make a bid for more national honors in Phoenix. That's where he will have to qualify to earn a 1980 airplane ticket to Moscow as a competitor.

The newly-inducted Maryland Hall of Famer is living proof that old Marine shooters never die, they just shoot away.

Cumberland Sunday Times, February 27, 1977