imported>Jevansen: add to :Category:20th-century American people

2025-10-15T09:49:08Z

add to Category:20th-century American people

← Previous revision		Revision as of 09:49, 15 October 2025
Line 18:		Line 18:

	==References==		==References==
	~~{{DEFAULTSORT:Champion, William}}~~
	~~[[Category:1880 births]]~~
	~~[[Category:1972 deaths]]~~
	~~[[Category:Mancala]]~~
	~~[[Category:People from Trinidad, Colorado]]~~
	<references />		<references />

Line 32:		Line 28:
	* The ''[[Boston Globe]]'', Saturday, December 7, 1962 page 23		* The ''[[Boston Globe]]'', Saturday, December 7, 1962 page 23
	* ''[[Melrose Free Press]]'', December 19, 1963, "Kalah Recognized as Valuable Educational Aid - 350 Students Participate in Tournament"		* ''[[Melrose Free Press]]'', December 19, 1963, "Kalah Recognized as Valuable Educational Aid - 350 Students Participate in Tournament"

			{{DEFAULTSORT:Champion, William}}
			[[Category:1880 births]]
			[[Category:1972 deaths]]
			[[Category:Mancala]]
			[[Category:People from Trinidad, Colorado]]
			[[Category:20th-century American people]]

imported>Plantbaseddiet: Adding External link category

2025-04-16T13:10:38Z

Adding External link category

New page

{{short description|American game designer}}
{{Multiple issues|{{more footnotes|date=March 2016}}
{{RefImprove|date=February 2019}}}}

'''William''' "'''Willie'''" '''Julius Champion Jr.'''<ref>{{Cite book |last=Interior |first=United States Department of the |url= |title=Official Register of the United States: Containing a List of Officers and Employees in the Civil, Military, and Naval Service ... |date=1899 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |language=en}}</ref> (June 15, 1880 – February 12, 1972) was the inventor of [[Kalah]], a game in the [[Mancala]] family.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Duh |first=Matjaž |url= |title=Beiträge zum "Internationalen Jahr der Jugend" |date=2011 |publisher=LIT Verlag Münster |isbn=978-3-643-90081-4 |language=en}}</ref>

==Early life and family==
William Julius Champion Jr. was born on June 15, 1880, in [[Trinidad, Colorado]], to [[US Civil War]] veteran [[William Julius Champion Sr.]] and [[Elvira Hellen Gammons]], a descendant of [[Mayflower]] passenger [[Thomas Rogers (Mayflower Pilgrim)|Thomas Rogers]]. Willie married [[Alice Viola Brown]] on June 15, 1908, in [[Boston]], Massachusetts. He died on February 12, 1972.

==Education==
Champion graduated [[cum laude]] from [[Yale University]] in the class of 1905 after walking from his childhood home in [[White Cloud, Michigan]], to Yale's campus in [[New Haven, Connecticut]] (over 850 miles), and "earning all of his expenses" as he put it. His academic major was [[geology]]. The jobs he worked to pay for school included a sales agent for the ''[[Saturday Evening Post]]'' and a summer on the road with the [[Barnum and Bailey Circus]] (which later became the [[Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus]]).

==Professional life==
Champion experienced wild swings in fortune throughout his long life. In addition to various business ventures and investments, he held full or partial interest in a [[gold mine]] in [[Colorado]] and the Champion [[lead]] mine in [[Niranda, Ontario]], Canada. A local newspaper obituary called him a "radio pioneer", saying that after graduating from Yale, Champion moved to the Boston area and went to work with [[Lee DeForest]], inventor of the [[vacuum tube]], and goes on to say that he "helped set up and operate Boston's first radio transmitters".

==Kalah==
Champion invented the board game of [[Kalah]] in 1940 and worked for years to popularize the game in the United States. He long held that the game had intrinsic educational value and held other benefits. Family history has it that in 1910 he first read about ancient mancala games, on which he based Kalah. He started manufacturing Kalah game sets in [[Mystic, Connecticut]], about 1940 and later in [[Salem, Massachusetts]], [[Brockton, Massachusetts]], and finally [[Holbrook, Massachusetts]], in around 1960.

==References==
{{DEFAULTSORT:Champion, William}}
[[Category:1880 births]]
[[Category:1972 deaths]]
[[Category:Mancala]]
[[Category:People from Trinidad, Colorado]]
<references />

== Extertal links ==

* Territorial census for Colorado 1885, Las Animas County
* Loring, Judith Cooper, (2004) Champion Family History - personal notes
* Curts, Boyd G. (editor, class secretary) (1930), History of the Class of 1905 (Yale)
* The ''[[Boston Globe]]'', Saturday, December 7, 1962 page 23
* ''[[Melrose Free Press]]'', December 19, 1963, "Kalah Recognized as Valuable Educational Aid - 350 Students Participate in Tournament"

William Julius Champion Jr. - Revision history

imported>Jevansen: add to :Category:20th-century American people

imported>Plantbaseddiet: Adding External link category