Leonard Brumm

Leonard Wilson "Oakie" Brumm Jr. (1926 – January 17, 2006) was an ice hockey player and coach. He played college hockey for the University of Michigan from 1947 to 1950 and was a member of the 1947–48 Michigan Wolverines men's ice hockey team that won the 1948 NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Tournament, the first national collegiate hockey championship.

In the early 1950s, Brumm coached college hockey at the University of Wyoming and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. From 1953 to 1957, he was the athletic director of the Marquette Branch Prison in Michigan's Upper Peninsula where he organized an inmate hockey team that played an exhibition game against the Detroit Red Wings in 1954 and compiled a 35–15–8 record. He later served as a player-coach for the Marquette Sentinels, Des Moines Oak Leafs, Waterloo Blackhawks and Marquette Iron Rangers. In 1982, he co-founded the Kuwait National Hockey League, serving as a player-coach for the team that won three playoff titles in the new league.

Early years Brumm was born in Ironwood, Michigan in 1926 and raised in Marquette, Michigan, both cities located in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. His father, Leonard W. Brumm Sr., was a Wisconsin native who was employed as a civil engineer for the county in Marquette and later as a road and bridge contractor. In 1945, Brumm enlisted in the United States Army. Brumm also played freshman football at Michigan in the fall of 1947.

Career as coach and administrator

Wyoming and Alaska After graduating from Michigan, Brumm coached hockey at the University of Wyoming during the 1950–51 season. He next accepted a job as the athletic director at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a position he held from 1951 to 1953. He also served as the school's first basketball coach, compiling an 0–4 record during a four-game 1952–53 season. Brumm later recalled, "During the 1952–53 season I also arranged for the first ever basketball trip for the U of A to take to the 'Lower 48.' We lost all our games but we broke the ice."

Marquette Prison From 1953 to 1957, Brumm was employed at the Marquette Branch Prison, a maximum-security prison in Marquette, Michigan. He was the prison's athletics and recreation director. Among his accomplishments at the prison was arranging an exhibition game in February 1954 between the Detroit Red Wings and a team of inmates at the prison. The prison hockey team organized by Brumm compiled a 35–15–8 record.

Brumm also developed an 18-hole miniature golf course, shuffleboard courts, bocce court, and curling rink at the prison. He later also coached the Waterloo Blackhawks. By the late 1960s, however, the Iron Rangers were "suffering aesthetically and financially" and "couldn't draw flies."

In October 1969, Brumm signed Karen Koch to a contract to play with the team. Billed as "the first professional female hockey player in America," the 18-year-old goalie said "she's not interested in boys, only hockey." Brumm said at the time that Koch had "a regular contract" with the team, though she would not be the team's starting goalie. By late December 1969, Koch had not been scored on and the team was in first place. When the Iron Rangers played in Green Bay, Wisconsin, "they had to call out the auxiliary police to handle the crowd." In 1968, Brumm acquired an ownership interest in the Marquette Mirror. He served as the newspaper's sports director and political columnist from 1968 to 1972. Upon arriving in Kuwait in 1982, Brumm discovered that Kuwait had a $10-million-dollar ice arena and "4,000 comfortably padded seats."

From 1982 to 1987, he served as the publicity director for the Kuwaiti league and was a player-coach for a team that won three playoff titles in the new league. After a game between Brumm's team (made up mostly of Canadians) and a Kuwaiti team turned violent, a member of the Kuwait Sports Committee warned Brumm: "Mr. Brumm, I am here to inform you that any further violence on the part of your team members will leave us no choice but to deport the offending players and you, as their manager, from our country. You must get your gangsters under control immediately."

During the 1990s, Brumm was the hockey coach at Brookfield Central High School and Brookfield East High School in Brookfield, Wisconsin. He was forced to resign in 1998 at age 71 and subsequently filed an age discrimination lawsuit against the Elmbrook Public School District.

In 2000, Brumm acquired The Wisconsin Hockey News, serving as the publication's owner and editor. He also became the rink manager at the Kenosha Ice Arena in 2004. Brumm died in 2006 of pancreatic and liver cancer in Racine, Wisconsin.