Boys Basketball - Four Year Starter, Led the 1959 Team to a State Runner Up Finish, Amassed 1066 Career Points, 1959 State Basketball Tournament MVP, 28 Points and 21 Rebounds in the State Championship Game
HHS Class of 1959
His yearbook picture of 50 years ago features the caption, ‘grant me the mind to conceive; the understanding to direct; the hand to succeed’. Without a doubt, the man we honor today, George McDaniel, has had his 1959 prayer answered. His professional successes, his responsibility to community, his devotion to his family…remain hallmarks of his life.
Mr. McDaniel’s exploits as a high school athlete and nine-time letterman are legendary. Although he played baseball and was the leading scorer on the Broncho football team, it was on the basketball court that he especially excelled. George McDaniel became a four-year starter on the boys’ varsity team after only two games on the freshman squad…a spot he never relinquished throughout his high school years. Before his high school career ended, he had amassed 1,066 points and established a senior record of better than 24 points a game.
The highlight of his senior season was a trip to the state Class B finals at old Jenison Fieldhouse in East Lansing. Along the tournament trail, the Bronchos corralled Flushing as George hit for 30. They edged Romeo and clobbered Sault Ste. Marie. Then, in front of 12,000 fans, George dropped in 28 before losing to perennial power River Rouge in the final. Detroit sportswriters named him tournament MVP and awarded him a spot on the All-tournament team. His tournament final game record of 21 rebounds remains in the MHSAA record book having been surpassed only twice in fifty years.
George McDaniel wasn’t ‘just an athlete’ at Holly High. His success in the Bronchos band, his tenure in student government and as senior class president was an early predictor of the success that would mark his professional career.
After Holly High, George earned a scholarship to the University of Detroit. At U of D he played on a team that featured future New York Knicks star and later world champion Dave DeBusshere. McDaniel captained the men’s team in his senior year. In 1963 he earned his degree in business.
Mr. McDaniel began as an advertising salesman at the Detroit News and eventually became part of the management team. In 1980 he became the national advertising manager at the Orlando Sentinel. In 1987 he was named Vice-President and Director of Advertising for the Daily Press in Newport News, Virginia. Professionally, he was recognized with numerous awards. Never one to shirk civic responsibility, George routinely served with charitable organizations…including working for US service men and women as part of the USO. While in Newport News, he served as chairman of the capital fund campaign to build Peninsula Catholic High School which opened in ’94.
In 2000 George retired and with his one-time high school sweetheart…now wife…Sandy (Mackenzie), moved to Florida. They have been blessed with five children…Mary, Darren, David, Susan and Brian and super-blessed with 16 grandchildren.
Success doesn’t ‘just happen’. It is fostered and nurtured in a strong family, in classrooms and band rooms, as well as on dirt fields and hardwood floors. George McDaniel is living proof. He did indeed possess the ‘mind to conceive, the understanding to direct, and the hand to succeed’. The community of Holly is fortunate to call George McDaniel one of its very own.