A life-long Salem resident and one of the first outstanding “big men” in Salem basketball, Mark Johnson, was inducted into the Salem High School Sports Hall of Fame in 1988.

Johnson was a member of the 1947-48 basketball team that compiled a 27-3 season mark, the best in Salem’s history. With Johnson leading the way, Salem was North Egypt Conference champion with an 11-1 record. That team was also inducted into the Hall of Fame. Johnson, at 6’5″ was the tallest of the Wildcats that year, leading the team in scoring with 429 points. When he was a junior, the Wildcats also won the North Egypt title, also with an 11-1 record. In high school, in addition to basketball, Johnson also participated in football and track.

After graduating from high school, Johnson attended the University of Illinois and Southern Illinois University, graduating in 1953, and he played basketball there. He served in the Air Force from February, 1954, to February, 1956, and in August of 1956 was hired to teach in the Salem Grade School system at Oak Park and Central. At the same time he was junior varsity basketball coach at SCHS, a position he held until 1975. He also served as assistant football coach at SCHS.

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An all-around athlete in high school, one of the inductees into the Salem Sports Hall of Fame in 1987 continued to gain prominence and honors in the sports world on the coaching level. A 1949 SCHS graduate, Bob Frala was a three sports star in his high school years.

In tandem with Jim Bredar, as the “Gold Dust Twins”, Frala started on a road to successful ventures in the sports world in football, basketball and track as a member of Wildcat athletic teams.

After graduation, he attended the University of Illinois, concentrating on the coaching aspects of sports. While at Illinois, Illini Coach Ray Eliot said that “Bob Frala has one of the most comprehensive notebooks on football I have received from all of my classes.”

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The Salem coach who changed the complexion of the game for Wildcat football followers and the only coach to win conference titles in the three major sports, Howard G. Thurman, had a tie-in and, as he said, “a love affair with,” Salem sports that spanned seven decades.

A 1930 graduate of Salem High School during which time he participated in football and track, Coach Thurman installed the split-T formation in 1952 for the first time in Salem. During his seven seasons as football coach, the Wildcats won two North Egypt Conference crowns, finished second five times and ended with a 35-7-2 NEC mark and a 42-19-2 overall record. Thurman-coached teams won the championship in 1952 and again in 1956.

Although they finished second in 1953, losing to Lawrenceville 19-18 in the opener. Salem went on to eight straight wins, capping a record-setting 348-point season with a resounding 55-13 romp over Mt. Vernon in the finale.

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One of Salem’s premier basketball players, who really had only one year of prominence in high school, gained most of his fame after high school graduation in college and in military service. Jim Bredar, a 1949 SCHS graduate, was standout enough to be named to the all-conference basketball team.

As one erstwhile sportswriter called him, “the Radar Kid,” Bredar scored 422 points his senior year, as the Wildcats finished with an 18-9 record. That team had a 14-6 record in regular season play, uniquely 7-3 at home and 7-3 on the road.

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The oil industry brought Salem some fine athletes and one of the finest was a hard running fullback that earned the nickname, “The Bull Moose.” Don Wile, who graduated from Salem Community High School in 1944 and participated in football, basketball and track, was an inductee of 1986 into the Salem High School Sports Hall of Fame.

Wile was the scoring leader on the outstanding 1943 team that had only a 7-7 tie with Benton to otherwise mar a perfect season. That 1943 team gained world-wide attention with the 188-0 win over Fairfield in which Wile scored 88 points. Football was Wile’s strongest sport, lettering four years.

After graduation from high school, he attended Evansville College for one year, lettering in football as a halfback. He transferred to Tulsa University where he lettered his sophomore and junior years. He devoted his senior year to studies only.

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A 1986 inductee into the Salem High School Sports Hall of Fame earned the nickname of “The Battering Ram” in powering the Salem Wildcats to a North Egypt Conference Championship in 1941 and to a 13-12 victory over Centralia in the well-publicized “Battle of Marion County.” Bob Scoles, a 1942 graduate of Salem Community High School, was named to the Champaign News-Gazette All-State Team his senior year.

Twice a unanimous first team choice for all North Egypt Conference honors, Scoles’ senior year was particularly outstanding as the Wildcats finished with an 8-1 record and won the championship with a 6-0 mark. The year before the Wildcats had tied with Flora for conference top honors, each with 5-0-1 marks, tying 7-7 in their head-to-head meeting.

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