35|35 #22: Graduates With Honor
A Closer Look at the Dr. Charles Bertram Alumni Award of Distinction
Jeff Smith, Assistant Commissioner
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35|35 Anniversary Website
This is the 22nd installment of a series of 35 moments, milestones, and facts that will be featured throughout the 2013-14 academic year to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of the Great Lakes Valley Conference.
On June 29, 1999, Mary Alice Bertram lost her husband of 38 years just days after he suffered a stroke. That same day, the Great Lakes Valley Conference lost one of its pioneers. To ensure the legacy of the former University of Southern Indiana faculty athletic representative and two-term GLVC president lived on, the conference established shortly after his death the Dr. Charles Bertram Alumni Award of Distinction.
Over the past 15 years, a number of former student-athletes have been honored with the award, including two of the league’s most inspiring individuals in Bellarmine University’s Lois Taurman and Jim Vargo.
The award was implemented with unique criteria, but they were guidelines of sorts that the man whom many referred to as “Charlie” followed his whole life. Devote yourself to your institution both on and off the field, and both on and off campus.
The official criteria states that the award is based upon academic excellence, athletic ability and achievement, character, and leadership of former GLVC student-athletes who have served their institution with personal distinction since their graduation. Postgraduate public or community service, and/or contributions to athletics at any level are considered during the voting process, and all recipients must have graduated at least 10 years prior to receiving the award.
Bertram, who began teaching mathematics at USI in 1969, was “very much an athletics person” as his widow recalled. As the faculty athletic representative for USI, he also served as GLVC president and helped the league get off the ground with men’s basketball as its primary sport in 1978. The formation of the league was something in which Bertram took great pride.
“The GLVC was extremely important to Charlie,” Bertram’s widow said. “It was a very happy moment for him when he helped formed the league because he felt the GLVC was the top basketball conference in the country. Over the years he developed interest in other sports, particularly in cross country, soccer, baseball, and women’s athletics. He was there to help usher in women’s basketball too.”
Bertram, a 2003 GLVC Hall of Fame inductee, was often known as a soft-spoken leader that ruled with an iron fist, according to his wife.
“He was very low key,” she said. “He was quiet and reserved, but got an awful lot of things done.”
Having survived nearly three days after what would be his fatal stroke, the Bertram family had time to come to terms with his passing and focus on the legacy he would leave behind. Not knowing that the GLVC would create an award in his honor, the family created the Charles J. Bertram Memorial Scholarship – a fully-endowed scholarship awarded annually to USI student-athletes who maintain a grade-point average of 3.4 or higher.
When the GLVC decided to honor one of its great leaders, the criteria established was important to his wife.
“I think the big thing about the award is that you don’t have to be a star athlete,” she said. “You simply have to compete and later commit to your institution and your community.”
The award was first handed out in 2001 to Lewis University men’s basketball star Larry Tucker and Taurman, who was a multi-sport standout at Bellarmine.
Tucker was recently recognized at the 2014 NCAA Convention as the GLVC’s male representative on the NCAA Division II 40th Anniversary Tribute Team. The league’s female representative was Missouri S&T’s Sandra Magnus – a former NASA astronaut and 2009 recipient of the Dr. Charles Bertram Alumni Award of Distinction.
But it was Taurman who perhaps personified the award more than any other honoree that has received the accolade.
“I don’t know anyone that would have been a better choice to be the first recipient of this award,” Bertram said. “Lois is certainly a woman to be admired for all that she has been through.”
Taurman’s story is one of both disbelief and, well, belief.
Sports, as it turns out, made Taurman’s life and also saved it.
While at Bellarmine, she excelled in basketball, volleyball and softball to become the only student-athlete in school history to compete in three sports for four straight years. She averaged 13.9 points and 7.4 rebounds per game and was the school’s all-time scoring leader with 1,414 career points, while also leading the volleyball squad to a pair of Kentucky state championships prior to the GLVC and NCAA recognizing women’s athletics. She guided the softball team to a state championship as a senior.
The 1983 Bellarmine Female Athlete of the Year had been planning to pursue a degree in nursing and enter the Navy as a nurse when her world suddenly came to a halt on Oct. 12, 1984. While using a hose to clean out gutters at the residence of then Bellarmine President Dr. Eugene Petrik, Taurman slipped and fell off the ladder, hit her neck on a railing, and fell down an 18-foot basement stairwell. Unable to move, Taurman was quickly covered with water as the hose she had been using was still on and her limp body was covering the drain.
At that moment, she knew she was paralyzed. At that moment, she knew she was drowning.
When help arrived, she was submerged in water. At that moment, one life was saved, but a new life seemed to begin.
Taurman was spared any brain damage, but she was
sentenced to life in a wheelchair as a quadriplegic. The word “sentenced” stresses the permanence of the situation. The word “confined” was not used because that leads one to believe there would be limitations and restrictions.
Sure, it was a whole new life for Taurman, but once and athlete, always an athlete. She was moving forward with her sports career.
During her multiple stints in physical therapy, she was introduced to wheelchair sports, specifically wheelchair racing.
When later honored by the NCAA with the Association's 2006 Inspiration Award, Taurman explained why she did not pursue wheelchair basketball.
“There was wheelchair basketball available, but I didn't want to choose that because I was very good at basketball,” she said. “It came very natural, and I did not want to diminish how well I had played (before being hurt).”
Taurman went on to collect four gold and three silver medals as a member of the U.S. National Team at the 1988 Paralympic Games in Seoul, Korea and the 1987 World Stoke-Mandeville Games in England. She also was a 16-time gold medalist in the National Wheelchair Games, earning world records in the 60-, 100-, 200-, 400-, 800- and 1,500-meter events along the way.
She later took up wheelchair fencing, representing the United States in domestic and international competitions.
“I just wanted to take my athletic abilities and seek out different ways to participate,” Taurman said recently from her Louisville, Ky., home where she lives with her 82-year-old mother and caretaker, Bonna, who affectionately refers to the pair as one.
“We truly make one person; my hands and her brain,” her mother said.
Perhaps what is most remarkable about Taurman’s story is not the number of medals she earned in Paralympic competition, but the number of degrees she earned in the classroom.
Her accident did not prevent her from obtaining her nursing degree from Bellarmine. In fact, Taurman credits the Bellarmine faculty and the overarching philosophy of the university with helping her complete her education.
“At Bellarmine, it is always student first, then athlete,” she said. “They make sure you are able to excel both in and out of the classroom and they provided me all the opportunities and resources to reach my goals. It’s like what my mother says, ‘If you start something, you have to finish it.’”
With the assistance of her professors, who came to rehab and helped her with the “book portion” and then picked her up and took her to the hospital for clinic, Taurman completed her degree in nursing in 1985.
But when none of the hospitals Taurman applied to for employment responded, she set another goal.
“I did not want to sit in my wheelchair and do nothing, so I told myself education can never hurt anyone, so I sought out for my master’s in education counseling,” she said.
In 1987, she earned her advanced degree from the University of Louisville. Ten years later in 1997, she earned her juris doctorate from the same school.
“Law was never my idea,” Taurman said. “Dr. Petrik encouraged me to study law and he is still to this day one of the greatest men I have ever met. I remain very close with both his family and the entire Bellarmine family as a whole.”
Upon learning that she was to be the inaugural recipient of the Dr. Charles Bertram Alumni Award of Distinction in 2001, Taurman was humbled.
“That was a tremendous honor,” she said. “Of all the deserving GLVC female student-athletes out there, and the conference thought I had the qualities that emulated Dr. Bertram, that was an overwhelming experience.”
The following year, Taurman was inducted as part of the inaugural class of the GLVC Hall of Fame. In 2003, Taurman would be joined by another former Bellarmine student-athlete with Paralympic ties as a Bertram Award honoree.
Vargo, a 1983 Bellarmine graduate who returned to his alma mater in 2000 to serve as the director of cross country and track and field, was recognized as the 2003 male recipient of the Bertram Award.
After a collegiate career where he led the Knights to the 1980 and 1982 NCAA Cross Country Championships and was awarded the Archbishop’s Medal for having the highest GPA (3.95 majoring in mathematics) in his graduating class, Vargo embarked on a career in coaching.
Upon earning his master’s degree at the University of Tennessee in 1985, Vargo returned home to Louisville to begin his professional career at the University of Louisville where he was a mathematics instructor, assistant cross country/track coach and lead tutor for academic services for the athletics office.
In 1988, he joined the faculty of Georgia Southern University as full-time mathematics instructor and a year later became head coach of both the cross country and track and field programs, that latter of which was to set to begin its inaugural season as a varsity sport.
It was at Georgia Southern where Vargo met – and mentored – Tim Willis, a blind runner who came out for the cross country team. Willis, the only blind athlete to compete in cross country at an NCAA Division I school, quickly became one of the world’s elite blind runners. An invitation to the USA Paralympic Team was extended to not only Willis, but Vargo as well. He joined the team as an assistant coach and guide runner for the 1992 Barcelona Games, 1996 Atlanta Games, and 2000 Sydney Games.
“I had no experience or knowledge of the Paralympics or exactly what support Tim would need to run cross country as a blind runner, but he assured me that we would figure it out together as we went along,” Vargo said.
Lucky for him, Willis entrusted Vargo with his training even through the bumps and bruises they would endure along the way. Like the first time Vargo ran alongside Willis.
“To show you how good of a guide runner I was at the beginning, I literally ran Tim into a stop sign the first time I ran with him,” Vargo recalled. “I saw the sign and stopped, but failed to tell him to stop and he kept running into the sign. I was shocked that Tim did not request a new guide. He laughed about it, but I was horrified.”
That moment of mixed emotions was a lasting memory for Vargo because it actually taught him just how powerful the Paralympic movement is. No matter what stands in the way of those athletes, they find a way to persevere.
Willis captured one silver and three bronze medals in his hometown of Atlanta at the 1996 Olympic Games. Having guided Willis through three Olympics and seen him reach elite status as one of the top five blind distance runners in the world, Vargo was asked by the United States Association of Blind Athletes to serve as one of their national coaches and guide runners. In 2002, he was named as the head track and field coach for the United States Paralympic Team for the World Championships in France.
In addition to Willis’ successes, the efforts of Vargo were soon recognized on an international level – and this all came
after he was recognized by the GLVC with the Bertram Award. He was contacted by the Kenya Paralympic Federation to see if he would serve as their head track and field coach for the 2004 Athens Paralympics, 2006 World Championships, and the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. Just this past summer, he was invited by the International Paralympic Committee to lead a 10-day track and field clinic in Kenya for coaches from 10 East African nations to develop and support Paralympic track and field teams in their respective nations.
“Coaching the blind and physically challenged has been a life changing experience for me,” said Vargo. “I never imagined my passion for coaching would one day lead me around the world teaching and mentoring the world’s greatest athletes. Although the Paralympic athlete may not be able to run as fast or jump or throw as far as their Olympic counterparts, they are in my opinion the superior athlete. The Paralympic athlete has had to overcome obstacles and barriers that all of us in the able-bodied community will never fully appreciate or understand. To simply perform everyday life necessities without sight or legs is unimaginable to most of us.”
And not once do they complain.
“In all my years working with athletes with a disability from across the world and all spectrums of life, I have never once heard a single athlete complain about their disability,” he said. “They embrace it.”
Today, in addition to overseeing the Knights’ cross country and track and field programs, Vargo also serves as the school’s assistant athletic director for student-athlete welfare. It is a fitting position for someone who has been a student-athlete, coach, administrator, mathematics professor, and an admissions intern. He is a guide runner once again, providing Bellarmine student-athletes a wide range of support as they race through their time on campus.
“Our mission at Bellarmine is to provide the support and care that all of our student-athletes need to realize their potential as a total person,” said Vargo, eerily echoing the sentiments of Taurman nearly 30 years ago. “Our athletic director Scott Wiegandt, vice president Fred Rhodes and school president Joseph McGowan recognize the value of having an administrator in athletics serve as a point person to interact with all areas of campus, including academic, social, spiritual, and admissions, on behalf of our student-athletes, coaches, and department.”
When one steps back and looks at the stories of Taurman and Vargo, they are remarkably similar. Both are former student-athletes at Bellarmine who continued their education while chasing dreams in the Paralympics. The connection, however, extends much deeper.
Both Louisville natives grew up in the same neighborhood, just three streets away. Their time at Bellarmine overlapped in the early 1980s, while Taurman’s brother, George, served as the head men’s soccer coach of the Knights from 1981-90.
In fact, Vargo’s mother was a leading sales representative for Avon, and one of her top clients was none other than Bonna, Taurman’s mother.
While never truly close growing up, the mutual respect Taurman and Vargo have for one another has grown over the years, especially with the Paralympics connection.
“Jim is a great guy, who believes in his core values and has helped others reach their dreams,” Taurman said.
When asked about Taurman, Vargo likened her life to the very principle on which the Paralympics were founded.
“Triumph of the human spirit,” he said. “To take something like a near-death experience and to go beyond that, to earn numerous degrees while becoming a world-class athlete, it’s a true testament to what the Paralympic movement is all about and who Lois Taurman is.”
As the Sochi Winter Olympics come to an end this week, Vargo can’t help but think back to his Olympic experiences, which included roles in both the Oslo Winter Games in 1994 and the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta.
“When the torch is brought into the stadium for the opening ceremonies, I get chills and goose bumps,” he said. “For Tim and I to be selected to run the torch into the Olympic Stadium in Atlanta in 1996 with the entire world watching is beyond description.”
Yet there he was. Describing one of life’s most visually moving moments to someone who could not see.
“Being around Paralympic athletes taught me more about life and the human condition than all of my other life experiences combined.”
It is that commitment and understanding that made Vargo a fitting candidate to celebrate Dr. Bertram’s legacy.
In the coming weeks, the GLVC will name its 2014 recipient of the Dr. Charles Bertram Alumni Award of Distinction. That person will join a unique family of individuals that found value in providing a service to others.
“For me personally, the recognition of the work and achievements of one’s life holds special meaning,” Vargo said. “It is not based on a singular event or just one aspect of a person.”
Thirty-five years ago, Dr. Charles Bertram provided the leadership to grow the Great Lakes Valley Conference into one of the premier NCAA Division II conferences that is today.
And now 15 years since his passing, his legacy lives on in an annual award bestowed upon those who in the eyes of their alma mater, continue to be graduates with honor.