Craig Remsburg

GREEN BAY, Wis. — A staple in sports reporting in the central Upper Peninsula died earlier this week.

Craig Remsburg worked at The Mining Journal for 42 years, from 1974 to 2016, all but one of those years in the sports department of the Upper Peninsula’s largest newspaper.

He was 74 years old and had health issues for much of the past decade.

Born on Oct. 15, 1950, in Detroit, he graduated from Redford High School in Redford, adjacent to Detroit, in 1968. He attended Henry Ford Community College before graduating from Michigan State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

He whetted his appetite for sports as a sportswriter at the State News student newspaper at MSU, according to his obituary scheduled to run in the Journal.

Remsburg liked to say about sportswriting, “I get paid for watching sports — what could be better?”

While he spent a few years as a journalist near Detroit after MSU, he moved to the U.P. in the mid-1970s to begin his long career at The Mining Journal.

For about a year he was a general assignment reporter at the Journal’s Ishpeming bureau before he became a sportswriter, and for about two decades the paper’s sports editor, in its main office in Marquette.

Remsburg won numerous awards for both sports writing and editing at the Journal.

He developed close relationships that spanned back to Tom Izzo’s and Steve Mariucci’s stints playing for Northern Michigan University sports teams right through the state championship runs made by the Ishpeming High School football teams of the 2010s.

And he was a dedicated member of the council of the U.P. Sports Hall of Fame from 1986 until his retirement in 2016.

It was mentioned in his obituary that Remsburg enjoyed music like Lynyrd Skynyrd, .38 Special and other Southern rockers, reading, and fishing with his sons.

He is survived by sons Clint Remsburg of Grand Rapids and Connor Remsburg of Westland, sister Lynne Rose of Ypsilanti, and grandchildren Colton and Berkleigh Remsburg.

A memorial gathering will be announced at a future date.

And he requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made in Craig’s name to the U.P. Sports Hall of Fame that helps fund scholarships the group provides annually to U.P. high school graduating scholar-athletes. Those can be sent to U.P. Sports Hall of Fame, P.O. Box 245, Houghton, MI 49931.

Story contents based on Craig Remsburg’s obituary appearing in The Mining Journal. Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee’s email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.