Born: March 9, 1904
Died: October 1, 1983
Ohio connection: Birth
Springfield
Marion Renick was born Marion Lewis, the daughter of Bertram Charles and Anna (Washway) Lewis, in 1904 in Springfield, Ohio. From early childhood, she was an avid sports enthusiast and played various games on the sports fields at nearby Wittenberg University (WU) as well as on undeveloped fields behind the university. Renick attended WU and received an A.B. degree in 1926 with the goal of becoming a sportswriter. Renick’s first job was as a reporter from 1924 to 1927 for The News, a Springfield, Ohio, newspaper.
She married sportswriter James L. Renick in 1930 and spent a good part of the next fifteen years helping him cover sports around the United States. They met athletes, trainers, coaches, and other sportswriters, listening to them share their athletic experiences. In response to these experiences, she is quoted as saying, “How I wished I could share that with my long-ago neighborhood pals! I decided that the next best thing was to share it with new generations of young sports enthusiasts. I began writing books combining sports fundamentals with a story.” The result was the writing of more than thirty books on sports over the next thirty-seven years.
Although Renick was the lone writer of her first three books, Tommy Carries the Ball (1940), David Cheers the Team (1941), and Steady (1942), they were published with her husband’s name as lead co-author because she was advised that no one would buy a sports book written by a woman. The rest of her books were published under her name alone! Renick translated the valuable lessons she learned while playing sports as a girl into the theme of some of her books. In a statement from her biography published in Something About the Author (Volume 1, 1971), she stated, “At the same time, without realizing it, I discovered that sports teach us other things; to work with our teammates in helpfulness and good will; to not make excuses or blame somebody else when we lose; to control our tempers; to be fair; to be honest; to do our best and to keep on trying even when we feel like giving up.”
Some of her books, which covered many different sports, are Champion Caddy (1943), Skating Today (1945), Swimming Fever (1947), Pete’s Home Run (1952), Jimmy’s Own Basketball (1952), and Todd`s Snow Patrol (1955). In 1959, twenty of Renick’s books were adapted as a series for National Educational Television under the title Sport Studio.
Marion Renick died October 1, 1983, in Columbus, Ohio.
Selected Awards
Boys’ Clubs of America Medal (1957) for Shining Shooter; The Association of Women in Communications’ Headliner Award (1956); Ohioana Library Medal for Nonfiction Juvenile Literature (1917) for Ohio; honorary doctor of letters bestowed by Wittenberg University in 1972.