A new book by sportswriter John Egan tells the story of basketball Hall of Famer Vern Mikkelsen. Mikkelsen played alongside George Mikan and Jim Pollard on the Minneapolis Lakers when they won a series of NBA championships in the late '40s and early '50s. He was introduced to the game when his family moved to Askov, Minnesota where his father, a Danish immigrant, was hired as a Lutheran minister. Mikkelsen, who lives today in the Twin Cities, says the man who recruited him to play at Hamline University, ended up in Askov by accident. That is Vern Mikkelsen who sang with the Hamline A Cappella choir for three years before quitting to concentrate on basketball. To read about that and more you'll want to track down a copy of a brand new book, "The Vern Mikkelsen Story" by John Egan.

This file was digitized with the help of a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).