The Wolverine

August 2014

The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports

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  WHERE ARE THEY NOW? BY JOHN BORTON C layton Wilhite has been around the world and back again. From Sydney to London to New York, the advertising executive knew no territo- rial boundaries. These days, he's settled comfortably back into the launching pad — Ann Arbor. The former two-year all-state Bay City prep star invested his col- legiate years in the mid-1960s with University of Michigan professors and U-M football coach Bump Elliott. Those four years changed every- thing, Wilhite insists. "Many of us believed the ability to deal with great adversity and great success made you a stronger, better balanced and more mature human be- ing," Wilhite recalled of his Michigan football experience. "For me, the great success was the 1964-65 Rose Bowl team. The adversity came in the form of injuries, demotions followed by resurrections and some- times, just the uncertainty of the future. The remedy? "If you keep your head down and think about the task at hand, don't try to anticipate too far down the road, you'll probably get where you want to go, because you've got ability and you want to work hard." Wilhite and the Wolverines had to work hard. The young man from Bay City wasn't jumping into a Michigan juggernaut, but rather a football pro- gram than hadn't won a Big Ten title   WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Clayton Wilhite Saw Pasadena, And The World, Via Michigan Wilhite, right, has worked as an advertising executive in a communications and marketing career spanning more than four decades, including taking time to work on the Presidential campaigns of Gerald R. Ford and George H. W. Bush, left. PHOTO COURTESY CLAYTON WILHITE

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