Gold Medal Hall of Fame completes a marriage dream
- Klas Stolpe
- 2 minutes ago
- 9 min read
2026 selection ‘a honeymoon’ for inductee Marie Beierly as she joins husband Tim Wilson in GMHOF
By Klas Stolpe
Juneau Independent
“I was surprised, I was pretty content just being a Hall of Fame wife,” Juneau Lions Club President Marie Beierly said after being selected into the Gold Medal Hall of Fame. “This was definitely something we did not expect, and we just enjoyed the years we have been involved with Gold Medal. I guess it is kind of like a second honeymoon.”
Beierly was part of the 2026 Hall of Fame class inducted March 27 during the 77th annual Juneau Lions Club Gold Medal Basketball Tournament in Juneau.
She was inducted as a radio play-by-play announcer, the same as her husband — Juneau Lions Club past president Tim Wilson was noted for his induction in 2018, along with his playing career for Klukwan and Lions Club work. They are the first husband and wife in the Gold Medal Hall of Fame.
“I am just so happy for Tim,” Beierly said. She laughs. “Oh my, that sounded like bragging… I am happy for his honor.”
That same day last week, Wilson received one of the tournament’s highest honors, the Dr. Walter A. Soboleff Award for Lions Club leadership, motivation, spirit and outstanding volunteer work and pride in communities throughout Alaska.
Wilson was visibly shaken when standing with all the present Hall of Fame members as the honor was announced, he began to recognize the list of volunteerism being read for the 2026 Soboleff winner.
“I do not know what to say,” a tearful Wilson said later that night. Each question asked resulted in more tears and deflections to those whom he credited for his involvement in the Lions Club. “I… I am really overcome… But I am just so happy for Marie, for her award… For her to join her father in the hall, that means so much to me.”
Marie’s father, Bob (Robert Paul Beierly II, 1940-2009) Beierly, was inducted posthumously into the Gold Medal Hall of Fame in 2010. Her mother, Flora Mae Beierly (1942-2021), was a Lions Club volunteer. Bob Beierly was a long-time Gold Medal radio announcer and is responsible for the journey daughter Marie and son-in-law Tim are still traveling.
Marie, too, was visibly shaken as she sat at the announcers’ booth court-side and the impact of her induction began to sink in.
“So surprising, so unexpected,” she said. “I wasn’t sure what to do. Thought of my dad… I thought of Tim.”
What she did was receive the congratulations of a gym full of fans and players and shook the hands of Hall of Fame members standing on court until reaching her husband, who placed the GMHOF medal around her neck and the two embraced.
“You know,” she said. “I have been working at Gold Medal longer than I have known Tim.”
The tie that binds this all together started back at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas in 1993. That college has a long-standing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the University of Kansas focusing on education, service and research.
The two shared a public speaking class, and Tim looked over and smiled at Marie.
“I didn’t like him,” Marie said. “I didn’t like him at all. I thought he was full of himself.”
And persistent.
Marie ran track and cross-country. Tim played football. Their practice times overlapped as much as their classroom times.
A dinner after practice did not help.
“I still did not like him,” Marie said, laughing. “But he just kept glaring at me in class and I kept ignoring him to make him mad enough to stop bothering me.”
Tim stated, “The more she ignored me the more I wanted to keep bothering her.”
Marie was a senior from Alaska in her last semester, Tim a freshman from Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
“Eventually I started talking to him,” Marie said.
Marie finished her studies at the University of Alaska Southeast and Tim at Kansas, but after the semester he came to Juneau and she introduced him to Gold Medal. The two were married in 1995.
At first Tim was just ushering people to seats and helping wherever needed.
“He did try announcing a few times and he was pretty good at it,” Marie said. “He got to know the players and his voice really projects really loud so everybody in the gym can hear him. He kind of put that on the backseat and started really getting deeply involved with Lions Club. Just really sitting and listening and learning.”
Bob Beierly was already a Lions Club member and announcing the tournament.
Walter Soboleff persuaded Marie to join her father as a member in 1996.
Marie had already been helping her father since 1974.
“My dad was the radio announcer and I just kept coming to the games with him,” she said. “One day he says, ‘Sit by me, I need you to help spot these players for me. You tell me who made the shot and tell me how many fouls.’ So I did, and we worked out this hand system and then I would whisper in his ear the player's name and he would announce it. And I had to be really quick because his eyesight was getting a little poor, so was his hearing. After years of that, he says, ‘I need to take a break. Here, take the mic.’ I was like, ‘What, no, the game's still going on.’ So, I started announcing myself, doing the shot by each player and timeout, the whole thing. And when I was really nervous or scared he would ask me to tell him what happened in the game and said he needed another break and I got more comfortable with it. Then he finally said, ‘I can't do this anymore. You have to take over from me.’ And I did.”
Marie said a moment that stands out to her is a championship night in the 2019 masters bracket game between Kake and Hoonah. Kake’s Kip Howard made the winning shot from half court.
“It went in, buzzer beater, Kake won,” Marie said. “Nobody could hear me over the mic. The entire gym was roaring, applauding, and I say, ‘The new master bracket champions, Kake…’ No one can hear me.”
She said an emotional realization was seeing some of the current players and remembering seeing them as young kids pretending to be their favorite Gold Medal basketball player, or announcer.
“Throughout the years when I was announcing there was sometimes a child sitting right next to me every single game I announced,” Marie said, motioning in the direction of current JDHS senior Raynonna Fraker. “She is a senior graduating this year and she was one of my announcers last year, but she can't do it this year because she's really busy as a senior. She's got lots of activities going on and I look at her I was like, oh my god, she was one of those little kids that was sitting right next to me every single game.”
Marie noted that the nature of the game can involve a bad call, and she tries to keep the crowd in line and entertained.
“A lot of people remember my dad,” she said. “They love the energy that he would give back to the crowd. And I try to do the same. The new thing for me this year is the jokes.”
Her jokes, very old-school corny, always include her own laughter bursting out before she says the punchline and results in even more fan-friendly laughter when the joke is revealed.
Tim remembers his first Gold Medals. The announcing was a family thing with Bob, Marie, and her brothers Robert (1964-2013) and Thomas.
“As the years went on, it was actually her dad that introduced me to the Lions Club and took me to my first meeting,” Tim said. “He told me, ‘If you just sit there and shut up, you might learn something.’ Those were his exact words. That was my introduction to the Lions Club. And then I had Lions like Ted Burke and Janet Burke and Steve Brandner. I never realized it at the time, but it was kind of like they were grooming me one day to be able to do what I am doing now. I never really realized it for a long time just how much they meant to our club and the tournament and for them to teach me and lead me…I mean, everything, everything I do is because of them. It is what they taught me. And if I am not sure about something, I always ask myself, ‘What would Ted do? What will Steve do?’ And to this day I have called them.”
Tim’s accomplishments that earned the Walter Soboleff Award far exceed his Gold Medal work that allows the club and tournament to run smoothly. They include dressing as the Grinch for Light Flights to entertain kids waiting for the helicopters, picking up youths for Shop with a Cop, wrapping and delivering Christmas gifts to those in need, collecting and shipping clothes to a small western Alaska community struck by a catastrophic storm and receiving the Lions International Melvin Jones Award for exemplary service to the club and community. He spent his own money to give away special blankets at this year’s tournament.
He noted that when the Walter Sobleff Award winner’s accomplishments reached a second sentence, “I just started shaking my head. I love the Lions and sometimes I stretch myself too far above volunteering for things or volunteering us for things. My wife will tell you she'll be the first one to say, ‘Stop it. Slow down.’ I love our tournament, I love what we do.”
Two minor health scares brought him to the realization "that I can have others help me do some of the things we need done.”
Last week, during a brief moment to sit after the awards, he noted this year’s proudest moment among the Gold Medal faithful, when he looked at the packed crowd on the first day, that increasingly pushed the seating to its limits.
“Four days of ferries had been canceled,” Tim said. “We had three days of flights being canceled. But look at the gym. I mean it's packed. We had to open up the balcony. It's hot in there so we are opening up the doors. Our players and our fans, they are the greatest. I mean, you look at them and you look at the gym and you're wondering, how did they get here? How did they do it? And they went above and beyond. They were chartering flights. I heard that they were calling for extra catamarans. They called to see if they could get another ferry scheduled. I used fishing boats. Fishing boats. They're taking fishing boats in that weather, in those seasons, they're bringing fishing boats from Haines. I know what Stuart DeWitt brought his boat from Haines. I mean, are you kidding? We have the best fans in the world. The best fans. And, you know, if they are willing to go above and beyond like that to show their support for their community and for the tournament. Then we should be too.”
It was actually a day later before Tim and Marie realized they were the first husband and wife in the Gold Medal Hall of Fame. Their daughters Lijo and Jazz, who also volunteer, pointed out that distinction to them.
On the final day of Gold Medal, Marie asked Tim what he thought their parents would think of how far they had come.
“I am sure they would be proud,” he said.
What both have noticed is the new era of youth and Gold Medal, of social media and fitting in. This year was marred by communities losing loved ones to suicide and substance abuse. Special attention was given to let young fans and players know that they were special, that they were loved and they are needed in this world.
“It is hard,” Marie said. “My dad’s philosophy…when he was younger he saw these two kids fighting downtown, like fist fighting, beating the tar out of each other. He said to them, ‘You got this much energy you come back and see me tomorrow at this time.’ And he put a basketball in their hands. And he made them play basketball.”
She mentions the two youths’ names and that from then on her father took the two lads and others to play in youth tournaments at Sitka.
“Gold Medal is a great relief for a lot of people,” Marie said. “And it has been a long exhausting winter. Coming to Gold Medal and just forget about roofs collapsing or shoveling and coming to the gym and burning off all that energy, rooting for your favorite player or your favorite team. We need things like Gold Medal or Celebration.”
Tim never expected to hear his name in the same sentence as Walter Soboleff.
“I never expect to receive anything for doing this,” he said. “I have always said that at Gold Medal we are all family and friends. And we proved that the other night when tragedy struck Hydaburg and we did a five-minute blanket dance and raised over $2,400 in less than five minutes. And it is things like that which makes this all worth it.”
• Contact Klas Stolpe at klas.stolpe@gmail.com.
