Hook, line, and what?

EDITORS: Black and white photo available on request

It’s more than just another fish story. The battered trophy Wally Moilanen found in 1978 at the edge of a creek while fishing for brook trout near Tapiola in Houghton County remains a mystery. How did it get from Ann Arbor to the Upper Peninsula? The weathered and dented silver-plated “loving cup” with the inscription 1924 University of Michigan Straight Rail Billiard Tournament Won By Curtis D. Becker hung on a nail in Wally’s barn for 20 years until being returned to the Billiards Room in the University of Michigan’s Michigan Union. A friend of Wally’s offered to search for the champion or a family member by using the Internet, but that effort brought no positive results. The two friends did find “Curlycue Mike” on the Internet. Mike manages a Web site for “Billiards in Michigan” and he contacted Betsy Sundholm, manager of U-M’s Billiards Room.

Sundholm searched various records at the University and determined that Curtis had been a student at U-M, but did not graduate. And that is as much as anyone in the Upper or Lower Peninsula knows. While the mystery continues, the trophy rests comfortably in a display case outside the Michigan Union’s Billiards Room.

Anyone with information about Curtis Becker or his family is asked to contact the Union’s Billiards Room at (734) 763-5786.

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