Keith Wunderlich

Thank you so much for stopping by my Author’s Page!

I was born in Detroit, MI and have lived in the area my entire life. My geographical location has quite a bit to do with my two books. Vernor’s Ginger Ale is about the history of one of Detroit’s favorite home-grown soda pops. Coach of Champions is about my grandfather, Coach David L. (D.L.) Holmes, who coached track at Wayne State University in Detroit for 41 years. Seeing that Vernor's Ginger Ale came out in 2008 and Coach of Champions in 2025, I'll concentrate on the Coach Holmes story here!

Coach Holmes was my mother’s father. He passed away when I was three years old, too early for me to remember anything about him. My memories of him are from stories my mother and uncle told me as I grew older. I also attended Wayne State University Sports Hall of Fame events over the years and talked to many of his track men. I look back on those encounters and wish I’d paid more attention to the stories I heard. I don’t remember any of the details, but I know they painted a picture of my grandfather in my mind: kind, gentle, smart, proper, athletic, knowledgeable but humble, inventive, ambitious, loving, with a unique ability to see talent where others could not. He was also light-years ahead of his time in the acceptance of athletes of color and non-Christian religions.

Coach Holmes was the athletic director, track and cross-country coach at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan from 1917 to 1958. With forty-one years of indoor track teams, outdoor track teams, and cross-country teams, as well as teams in other sports he coached when he was starting out, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of young men whom my grandfather coached. It’s a legacy with scores of stories yet untold even within Coach of Champions.

This book began decades ago under the authorship of my uncle, Professor David L. Holmes Jr. He was Coach Holmes’ son and my mother’s brother. His work as a professor at the College of William and Mary, which included writing many other scholarly books, prevented him from ever finishing the book based on his father and my grandfather, Coach David L. Holmes. I desperately wanted him to finish the book because I knew it was an incredible story that had to be told. He was in his late eighties and residing in an assisted living facility when I asked my uncle if I could complete the project, and he agreed. My aunt Carolyn Holmes sent me all the research, newspaper clippings, and interview transcripts from my uncle’s work. I dug in and found that I had to include some of the interviews my uncle completed. My uncle was surprised when he found out I had changed directions a bit and he was now in the book and not just the coauthor of it!

It was impossible for me not to include my uncle. He did scores of interviews with track men from my grandfather’s teams at Wayne State University in Detroit. All but one had passed away by the time I inherited this project. All those conversations would have been lost had my uncle not conducted those interviews decades earlier. The information he gathered was a time capsule of stories that could be told only by the athletes that lived them. The book was nearing completion when, in April of 2023, my uncle passed away at the age of ninety. The responsibility to share his great love and depth of knowledge about Coach D.L. Holmes was now solely on my shoulders.

Coach Holmes was at Wayne State University a long time, yet he was a man ahead of his time. He saw talent where other coaches did not. He analyzed the exact movements of athletes to produce the most efficient and effective use of energy possible. He was an inventor of track equipment and innovative training techniques. And he was integrating his track team racially, ethnically, and religiously as early as 1920.

I am still amazed when I read the times my grandfather was running in 1908 as a college track man at Oklahoma A&M on a dirt track with primitive track shoes. The times are considerably better than mine in the mid-1970s on a synthetic track with awesome shoes—and I was the fastest 100-yard dash man at my high school and the fourth fastest in my county. I often wish he had been there to coach me. He had a way of taking average talent and turning those athletes into champions.

This book is also about those champions. State champions, national champions, world record holders, and even a few Olympians were produced by Coach Holmes. He took athletes who never even considered going to college and turned them into NCAA champions. In many ways, his athletes achieved more than he ever did on the track. That may have been his unspoken motivation. He was a surrogate father to his athletes, and he wanted more for them than he had personally accomplished. And he was more than a surrogate father to many of them.

This book was written for all those who were touched by the life of Coach Holmes. While most who knew him personally are no longer with us, many more have been touched by his legacy. Still more, who never knew him until now, can be moved by a man who taught others that they could be more than they thought they could be.

Keith Wunderlich