Education, Family, Friendships, Pride

MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. -- For Paul Alexander, Central Michigan University has been about family, friendships, bonding and an education that has served him throughout his adult life.

The Mount Pleasant business owner and his wife, Maryanke, have drawn on all of that as inspiration in becoming a benefactor for the Chippewa Champions Center at Kelly/Shorts Stadium, a transformational project that will house locker rooms, offices, sports medicine and training facilities and serve the entire campus community.

"I've seen other facilities grow and expand and improve and I can only imagine the challenges, if you don't have that, of recruiting the caliber of player that we need and so that excited me," said Alexander, who earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees from CMU. "If we can lay a bigger foundation, something that will help the student-athlete become better and be a success, then if we can help that happen, we're happy to do so."

Alexander said he attended nearly every CMU football game as an undergrad and was an eye witness to the 1974 team that won the NCAA Division II national championship. He graduated in 1975 and six years later founded Mount Pleasant Abstract & Title of Isabella County. The business has grown and thrived and today employs some 100 people.

"I think it is even a little deeper for me because we are right in the backyard of CMU," said Alexander from the company offices in downtown Mount Pleasant. "We're part of the same community. The closeness and the tightness is even deeper and this has developed over a lot of years."

The Alexander family bond with CMU runs deep, beginning in the late 1930s when his late father, Ed, attended the school and played football. Alexander's sister, Sandy, attended CMU in the late 1950s and early '60s, and was a member of the homecoming court. A young Paul and his parents were frequent visitors to campus in those days.

When it came time for Alexander, then a high school student at St. Stephen in Saginaw, to choose a college in the early '70s, the choice was easy and, clearly, was the right one.

"One of the coolest things, and it's separate from the education, was the lasting relationships that I built (at CMU)," he said. "There's four or five guys that we (still) get together regularly, now with families, and we always will. It was those friendships that we developed, as well as the education.

"Looking back, and the more we've accomplished since that time, I can see the foundation being built for a lot of the things I've accomplished. A lot of that had to do with the classes at CMU, the number of professors I still can remember to this day. And it has to do with the relationships that I built with the friends that I still have. All of that has molded me into what we've accomplished today.

"When we get together our wives probably get tired of hearing the same stories, but they made us what we are and they're important to us. It's very sentimental. It's deeper than just a friendship."

That continued for Alexander into his professional life when he became a regular supporter of Chippewa Athletics.

In the mid 1980s, he attended a golf fundraiser at which he bid on, and won, a road trip to accompany the CMU football team. It was the start of an annual tradition: Each year at the outing/fundraiser, a trip was up for bid.

Alexander won it every year for at least a decade.

"The players and the coaches treated me well, but they treated my 6-, 7-, 8-year-old sons like kings," Alexander said of those road trips. "The memories that that built are lasting memories that are pretty deep-seated."

All three of Alexander's sons attended CMU, his wife earned her master's degree from the university, and her son graduated from the school's ROTC program.

"Might be a grandkid or two heading in that direction too," Alexander said.

The foundation for Alexander and a rock-solid relationship with CMU was laid long before he was born, and that relationship was cultivated and later thrived through his education and the lifelong friendships he forged during his days as a student on campus. The head coach's office in the Chippewa Champions Center will be named in his honor.

"Central is all about education, it's all about a lot of my successes, but it's also about relationships with friends and it's also about family," he said. "Central's been a good friend to me in a number of ways. In a small way I think this is a bit of a way to be a good friend to Central.

"Wins are awful nice and we love to see winning seasons, but I think the really important part is the team building and becoming part of the Chippewa family," he said. "The team has that feel, but I think it goes beyond the team; it can bring in the supporters and it can bring in the fans to become a part of that family."

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