Finding Coach Lemieux

There have been so many wonderful books and stories written on the deep history of the Michigan football program, from the OG book Fielding Yost’s Legacy to the University of Michigan by John Behee published in 1970, up through more recent deep dives like John Kryk’s masterpiece Stagg vs. Yost, and everything in between—including right here on these pages. Without these books and stories, there’s no 12-lecture online course covering The History of Michigan Football Vol 1 [dropping soon!].

While we have plenty of stories covering coaches, teams, and players on and off the field in other sports, it’s surprising that, to my knowledge, no one has taken a hard crack at chronicling the early days of Michigan basketball. At least, nowhere close to what the program is worthy of, especially given our success since the 1960s and our recent run to another national title.

Thankfully, Michigan ice hockey hasn’t suffered the same fate. And that’s thanks solely to John U. Bacon’s wonderful Blue Ice: The Story of Michigan Hockey, published in 2001 by the University of Michigan Press. Across its 456 pages, Blue Ice weaves together the story of how the game played out in Ann Arbor from its club roots to varsity status, to our role in creating the men’s hockey tournament and the many banners that followed. The story was bolstered by the fantastic 2011 one-hour documentary that brought the story to film.

But in both the book and the documentary, Bacon points out a nagging, at least to me, little mystery regarding one of the key figures in the origins of the club program, just before the sport earned varsity status at U-M. Here is the passage from Chapter 2 of the Blue Ice:

In 1920, the squad appeared for the first time in the yearbook, listed as the “Informal Varsity Hockey Team.” Although their photo was no bigger than that of the “Senior Engineer Hockey Team, All-Campus Class Champions,” which had to beat over a dozen other intramural teams for the title, it was a start. Michigan’s “Informal Varsity Hockey Team” was led by a man the papers referred to only as Coach Lemieux—though he apparently taught in the School of Engineering, his first name is lost to history—who started writing letters “to most of the schools within a reasonable radius,” for a game the Michigan Daily reported, “and is every day expecting word from them.”

That footnote to this important man with no first name is backed up by multiple references to simply a ‘Coach LeMieux’ in the Michigan Daily archives, now digitized:

In the back of my mind, I’ve always held out hope that as more records were digitized and archived since Bacon’s publishing over 25 years back, we’d eventually uncover Coach Lemieux’s first name. And tip of the cap to Bacon for unearthing that crucial clue about the Engineering department.

Well, poking around this weekend—insert “Hey Dooley, get a life” here—I think I found it. Thanks to the HathiTrust, a massive digital library collaboration of academic and research institutions, I started combing through the old meeting minutes of the U-M Board of Regents from that exact period. Because the Regents technically have to approve all instructor appointments, everything goes into the official proceedings. Boom:

At first glance, this was a breakthrough, but seeing a Charles J. Lemieux appointed as a French instructor seems to contradict Bacon’s mention of his place within the Engineering department. But guess what? It actually confirms it perfectly.

It turns out that back in the day, U-M’s College of Engineering maintained an independent Department of Romance Languages, teaching technical French, Spanish, and German. Michigan’s Engineering leadership—particularly Dean Mortimer Cooley—strongly believed that engineers shouldn’t just be narrow technical experts, but cultured, well-rounded professionals. The goal wasn’t just to teach classical literature, but to give engineers practical language skills to prepare them for international manufacturing, commerce, or civil projects abroad. And following WWI, there was a move by many students to drop German in favor of French and Spanish, adding context as to why U-M might want to hire a new French instructor. Lemieux’s position within Engineering is confirmed by another note in the records:

Further digging in the historical faculty directories delivered more on the man, including this piece of the puzzle:

“LEMIEUX, A.M., Instructor in Modern Languages, 1919–1920. St. Paul, Minn.”

Charles Lemieux only served a single year on campus, and the record confirms he hailed from St. Paul, Minnesota. Since we’re talking about the early days of hockey, a coach with roots from the hockey hotbed of St. Paul more than checks out. The “A.M.” stands for Artium Magister—latin indicating our man Charles held a Master of Arts rather than a Ph.D.

So, a club coach here, an Engineering department there, all lining up to 1920, and Bob’s your uncle. It is almost a certainty that our mysterious, history-making “Coach Lemieux” from Blue Ice was indeed Charles J. Lemieux. Go Blue!