By: Wilt Browning, Sports Hall of Fame Inductee

Taken alphabetically, Jim Beatty was the first star of the athletic world ever inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame.

Now, almost 50 years later,, Beatty, the first man in the world ever to run a mile indoors in less than four minutes, became yet another pioneer: the first individual to be honored by the North Carolina Sports Hall as part of its Great Moments series.

The series was launched in May 2011 with the celebration of a legendary team, UNC’s 1957 national championship basketball team. Beatty shared the honor in the series’ second year with another team, the Carolina Hurricanes of 2006 who brought the revered Stanley Cup to the state in one of the National Hockey League’s most remarkable playoff series.

But back in 1963, in the Hall’s infancy, Beatty was enshrined in what then was a makeshift edifice along with baseball great Wes Ferrell, football legend Charlie (Choo Choo) Justice, baseball and football star Ace Parker and one of the nation’s great softball players, Estelle Lawson Page.

With the 2012 class of inductees, the membership in the Hall of Fame is closing in on 300, and it is a compendium of great accomplishments on the field of competition and in related areas, including administration and sports media. Now under the guidance of Don Fish, the Hall’s Executive Director, a major celebration of a half century already is being planned for the late spring of 2013; Beatty’s addition to the Great Moments series is something of a starting point in that observance.

Such a starting point could not have been better chosen. Beatty made history in 1962, just a year before his induction as part of the Sports Hall’s first class, by covering a mile in Los Angeles in 3:58.9. The All-American Tar Heel runner shattered 11 American and three world track records at various distances that season and was the 1962 James E. Sullivan Award winner as the nation’s top amateur athlete and the first person ever chosen as the ABC Wild World of Sports Athlete of the Year.

So, Beatty set a high standard for inclusion in the Sports Hall, perhaps the finest and most diverse in the nation. For years, however, the Hall was one of the state’s best-kept secrets; considering its beginnings, that is no surprise.

The Sports Hall, born in Charlotte, eventually found its base in Raleigh where it became the passion of retired sports writer Bob Wills, first Executive Director, who literally kept its files and most of the memorabilia of the early inductees in the trunk of his car. The North Carolina Museum of History, already overcrowded, was the repository of some of the material, but as the honor roll grew, the relationship with the Museum developed more deeply. Following museum’s expansion in the early 1990s, 3,000 feet of exhibition space was dedicated to the Hall of Fame which has served as a sports mecca in the state ever since.

Beatty’s track shoes are there on display with dozens of other keepsakes, like the uniform worn by Buck Leonard, the first North Carolinian inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Visitors also will find one of the Richard Petty stable of race cars and the famous No. 3 driven by the late Dale Earnhardt. The Sports Hall’s exhibit is once again bursting at the seams with artifacts and memories as dreams of someday becoming part of a future expansion program at the Museum are nurtured.

It is a repository for memories in the state and celebrates senior citizens perhaps as does no other single entity in North Carolina because the nature of the Hall is to preserve memories. Most, but not nearly all, of those enshrined there are well beyond the age of competition. And it all began with a man named Jim Beatty, running a mile faster than anyone ever had.