Tim Bringle Memorial Award

The spirit of Tim Bringle fills the rooms and halls and particularly the playing fields of Elkhart Schools. This spirit is not a frightening thing, but rather the warm and friendly, free and easy, fun and likable companion that indeed characterized Tim Bringle, the young man.

Tim was born Ray Delos Bringle on Feb. 8, 1919, in the little town of Brook, Indiana, near the Illinois border. He came to Elkhart with his parents, brother, and sister, and attended Middlebury Elementary School.

Very early in his school life, Tim Bringle was marked by two helpful attributes: a coordinated, athletic talent and, even more important, a charming, disarming personality. Progressing through Roosevelt Junior High School, his athletic ability set him apart from most of his classmates. Later, at Elkhart High School, Tim was destined to become one of the premier "superstars" of EHS sports history.

He climaxed a stellar athletic career, graduating in 1937, by blazing away to 19 touchdowns, almost every one of them a broken-field classic. In basketball, he played forward on a strong basketball team and shifted immediately at season’s end to the track team, on which he was the No. 1 pole vaulter. These athletic exploits, which saw him named All-State in football, were followed by football stardom at Indiana University.

Enlisting in the Air Force in 1941, Tim Bringle became Sgt. Bringle, crew chief, and top gunner on a combat B-17 crew.

Tim and his nine crew members were shot down and killed in a raid over Germany in July of 1944.

Listed as missing in action until after his death was verified following the war, Tim Bringle’s name is now memorialized by the award bearing his name, which is presented to the outstanding senior athlete in Elkhart who most closely epitomizes this heroic young man.

The one dimension which overrides even pure athletic prowess in the Bringle Award is that the recipient must be cut from the same self-effacing, humble, altruistic cloth that exemplifies this honor. Without the "spirit," an athlete becomes a cold mass of statistics reflecting physical skills and lusterless accomplishments derived from a well-endowed body and early physical maturity. With the "spirit," an athlete is a well-rounded, dedicated person who realizes that success is transitory and fleeting, yet to be savored with an attitude of gratitude and appreciation that sets him above and beyond his peers, devoid of childish arrogance.

Such a young man was Ray D. "Tim" Bringle, so it should be to all who carry his "spirit" as winners of the Tim Bringle Memorial Award.

The Tim Bringle Memorial Award is presented annually to the top high school senior male athlete at Elkhart Community Schools.