Pressick, Lt. Col. James E. “Jim”

Lt. Col. James E. “Jim” Pressick – (2002)

 

The amazing career of Lt. Col. James E. (Jim) Pressick, both athletically and militarily, made his eventual enshrinement into the Lorain Sports Hall of Fame a virtual certainty. A talented three-sport (baseball, football and basketball) standout at Lorain High School in the early 1950s and beyond, Pressick was literally touched by past LSHOF enshrinees.

As a senior, Pressick captained the 1954-55 LHS basketball team that produced future Hall of Famers such as Coach Al McConihe (1971), plus teammates Dale Reichert (1979). Carl Hartman (1980) and Tom McConihe (1995), the coach’s son.

Also a three-year starting defensive end in football at LHS, Pressick is probably most widely acclaimed for his baseball skill, defensively at shortstop and offensively. His coach, Tony Misko, was a 1997 enshrinee. As an amateur, Jim was the starting shortstop on the Lorain National Tube Class A team (1988 team enshrinee) that won the 1957 NABF (National Amateur Baseball Federation) national championship. He also played on Lorain’s Wolf Dry Goods, a 1958 NABF national quarterfinalist whose sponsor-manager, the late Jack Wolf, was enshrined in 1998.

Pressick was varsity shortstop as a freshman at Bowling Green State University in 1957, but after transferring to Ohio University his sophomore year, his baseball was limited to the intramural level after a brief pro career. He graduated from OU in 1962 with a BS degree in commerce. His talented play on the National Tube team in 1957 caught the eye of Detroit Tigers scout Pat Mullin. Jim turned pro, but played only a one-half season with the Tigers’ farm club in Montgomery, Ala. His teammates there included Hartman and Ken Farschman (1994 enshrinee). His brief fling at pro baseball ended early when “they started throwing curves,” Jim laughed.

While his sports career earned him tonight’s enshrinement into the LSHOF, Pressick is proud of a 22-year (1962-84) military career in the United States Air Force as a jet fighter pilot in which he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He flew 100 combat missions in Vietnam flying the F-4 Phantom, and later flew the supersonic F-15 Eagle in Germany, Holland, South Korea as well as California and Virginia where he now resides with his wife, Mary. He has two sons, Garrett and Rynn and a daughter, Reagan Charkhtabian, from his first marriage, and a stepston, Michael.