Perfect Fit: Hillsdale “An Easy Place to Be” for Lucadam

Written by Doug Goodnough

More than 60 years later, his H Club sweater still fits him perfectly. Jim Lucadam, ’65, had the same feeling when he attended Hillsdale College as a football and baseball recruit in 1961.

“It was the only college I ever applied to,” said Lucadam, who was from the small town of Keego Harbor in Oakland County, Michigan. “It was the only college visit I made.”

He first learned about Hillsdale from Nelson O’Shaughnessy, one of three brothers who attended Hillsdale. He was teaching and coaching in a nearby school district and took Lucadam under his wing. An athletic scholarship offer from Hillsdale soon followed, and the small school setting suited him just fine.

It was also a chance to get out of the shadow of his older brother, John, who was a star high school quarterback and was attending the University of Michigan.

“I was always John’s little brother,” Lucadam said. “All the way through high school, everybody compared me to John. He was the star player, and I was just one of the grunts on the line.”

However, when John suffered an injury at Michigan and decided to transfer, he decided to join Jim at Hillsdale. They were teammates in both football and baseball, and Jim said one of the most special moments they had was on the baseball team.

“My brother was a pitcher, and I caught,” he said of John, ’64, who passed away in 2018. “And I caught my brother in a playoff game, and that was a real thrill for me. We never played together much. He was always telling me what to do and how to do it, and I resented that. But when I caught him and I called the pitch, he threw it.”

He said Hillsdale legend Johnny Williams was his baseball coach, and he remembers the stories he would tell. He also recalls home games on Martin Field behind Central Hall and driving to road games in the team station wagons.

As a freshman, Lucadam also made an unlikely friendship with Bob Clark, ’64, who was a senior fullback on the football team. Lucadam moved into a house on Manning Street with some football teammates, including Clark, who eventually would go on to a career directing movies, including Porky’s and A Christmas Story.

“He was built like a fire plug and he played fullback,” Lucadam said of Clark. “He used to run about a foot off the ground. And I remember in a Blue and White [spring] game, I went to tackle him and he just ran me right over. Bobby jumped up and laughed in my face. He thought it was funny. I did, too. We became friends.”

Lucadam heard Clark’s many wild stories of his southern Florida upbringing that eventually made it into film. He also recalls the scuba diving class Clark taught in Stock Field House, and the time he and some other friends taught the Floridian how to drive in the snow.

Returning to campus in April of 2025 for the 50/60-Year Reunion, Lucadam said Hillsdale “looks a lot different but very similar” from his time as a student. Facilities like the Dow Hotel and Conference Center and the Knorr Student Center were just being completed when he was graduating. The economics major remembers attending the unique “Phillips 66” leadership discussions as a student led by then-Hillsdale College President J. Donald Phillips.

“They set it up so that they had all of these recliner chairs that were really comfortable,” Lucadam said of the Phillips 66 setup. “You had them in groups of six, in different places, so you could have a discussion. The first day, we held class at nine o’clock in the morning, and the professor got up on the stage and was talking to us, and we sat in these recliner chairs. Pretty soon we were leaning back, and about half of us were asleep. That didn’t last very long. The next week we showed up, and we were in a classroom down the hall, and there were steel chairs, so we paid much more attention.”

After graduation, Lucadam accepted his first—and only—job as a teacher and coach at Huron Valley High School, where he spent the next 38 years before retiring. He and his wife, Karen (who taught 28 years at Huron Valley), moved to Florida 20 years ago, and they split time there as well as in Colorado. The accomplished photographer said they attend College events from time to time near their Palm Harbor home.

“We met President Arnn,” Lucadam said of a recent College event. “I’ve kept track of Hillsdale in the news. It’s hard not to hear about Hillsdale. It was an easy place to live and an easy place to be.”

Doug Goodnough, ’90, is Hillsdale’s senior director of Alumni Marketing. He enjoys connecting with fellow alumni in new and wonderful ways.

Published in May 2025