Hillsdale’s campus houses a politician, a newspaper editor, a filmmaker, a stand-up comedian, an ordained minister, and a magician. His name is Buddy Moorehouse.

Moorehouse is an adjunct instructor of documentary journalism at Hillsdale. His relationship with the college began in 2014 when John Miller, director of the Dow journalism program, invited him to speak to his sportswriting class. Miller connected with Moorehouse after watching his 2012 Emmy-nominated sports history documentary “Black and Blue.” The film tells the story of Willis Ward, a Michigan collegiate football player in the 1930s who was benched in a game against Georgia Tech when they  refused to play against a black athlete. Ward’s best friend was future president Gerald Ford.

“It was this amazing untold story about friendship and racial politics in the 1930s,” Moorehouse said.

Michigander by choice, Moorehouse was born in Illinois but grew up in Ypsilanti, Michigan and has largely remained in the state since. He studied journalism at the Uni

versity of Michigan and wrote at the college paper which launched him into the media industry.

“As soon as I wrote my first story and saw my byline in the paper for the first time, I knew that was what I wanted to do with my life,” Moorehouse said.

He spent 27 years as a newspaper reporter and editor at a number of outlets but left the field when the industry started to collapse in 2009.

“I knew at the time I didn’t want to get another job working in newspapers because I wanted to do something different, and I knew that probably wasn’t going to be a growth career,” he said. “But I still wanted to do something that involved storytelling.”

He and a friend, Brian Kruger, started a small filmmaking company.

“We were going to make and tell these documentaries about great Michigan sports stories that maybe people had forgotten about or didn’t know much about,” Moorehouse said. “Neither one of us had made a documentary before. Brian had a background in editing and shooting videos and I had a background in researching and telling stories, so we figured we could learn on the fly and figure out the other part of it.”

Their first film was “The Girl in Centerfield” which is about the first girl to play little league baseball. Their first film to make it to TV was “The Legend of Pinky Deras, ” the story of the greatest little-leaguer in history. It aired in 2010 and earned them their first Emmy-nomination. Their breakout documentary was “Black and Blue.” It also led to some of the most impactful moments of Moorehouse’s career.

“He was one of the most remarkable athletes and people in Michigan history. As an athlete, he was absolutely incredible,” he said. “It amazed us that this story had never been told before. Nobody in Michigan knew anything about the story.”

After he brought the story to light, Ward’s alma mater secured his legacy

“They decided to name the biggest room in the union the Willis Ward lounge. When they had the dedication for that, it was one of the great moments of my life,” Moorehouse said. “When I went in there, I knew if we had not found this story and been able to tell it, Willis Ward’s legacy would have been forgotten at my alma mater. That, in my life and my career, is the coolest thing that has ever happened.”

He always shows the film to his documentary filmmaking class.

“It really shows the power a documentary can have, of really changing things and getting people to realize things that they didn’t know before,” Moorehouse said.

Moorehouse is currently teaching the class for the third time. Miller brought him on full time so he could bring video journalism into the Dow journalism program.

“The idea was that we were going to teach the students how to make documentary films and that all the projects we did were going to be stories about Hillsdale College,” he said. “One of the things I learned is that as amazing a history as Hillsdale has, there are no documentaries out there about Hillsdale’s history. No college in America has a richer history than Hillsdale College, and it’s a crime there are no great documentaries out there about it.”

Each semester, the class has collaborated to make a short documentary about Hillsdale’s lost stories. The first class Moorehouse taught in spring 2021 produced “A Better Kind of Glory,” a film about the 1955 Charger football team. The team was invited to play in the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando, Florida but refused because their black athletes were prohibited from playing.

“One of the things that never came out until we did the documentary is that it was not the college’s decision to do that. It was the players’ decision to do that,” Moorehouse said. “The coach at the time, Muddy Waters, had the team vote to decide what to do. They decided either we all play or none of us play. It is a remarkable story that illustrates the special place that this college has.”

Moorehouse and the students spent the semester researching and putting the film together. 

“The cool thing is we were able to find two of the players that are still alive, and we were able to capture them on video and get them to tell us the story. If we’d waited another five or ten years to tell that story, it might not have been possible,” he said. “We immortalized them, we immortalized that story there, and you have the ability to do that with a documentary. You need to capture these stories when you can. I told the students,  ‘You’ll always have a place in Hillsdale’s history because you were the ones that told that story.’”

He said this story is one of the most remarkable in Hillsdale’s history.

“Hillsdale, which was founded as an abolitionist college, had always had these ideals that people were equal, no matter their race or nationality or gender or whatever. Push came to shove at that time, and they had to stick up for what the college truly believed in,” he said. “Unlike Michigan in the Willis Ward case, Hillsdale made the right choice.”

Students in the filmmaking class said they have enjoyed learning from Moorehouse.

“He is one of the most interesting, well-versed human beings I’ve ever met because he’s done so much,” sophomore Claire Gaudet said. “I think being a documentarian really lends itself to learning a lot of little things about this world and, in his case specifically, the state of Michigan. It’s been so nice being a sponge absorbing all these cool little things in his class.”

Moorehouse said he agrees his background is more diverse than most Hillsdale professors.

“I’m kind of the stereotypical person who can’t figure out what he wants to be when he grows up,” Moorehouse said. “I don’t necessarily have the richest background of anybody, but if anyone has a more diverse background at Hillsdale College, I’d be interested in hearing about that.”

Senior Reagan Gensiejewski took the class last semester and loved the experience.

“Journalism aside, Buddy is one of the most interesting men I’ve met and has lived such an accomplished and full life,” Gensiejewski said. “I look up to him as a journalist but as a person as well.”

Above all, she said his documentary filmmaking class has been an excellent opportunity for her education in journalism.

“He instilled a confidence in me as a journalist and video storyteller. There were moments I felt uneasy about my work or projects, but his faith in me or my work never wavered,” Gensiejewski said. “That’s awfully inspiring as a student beginning to work in journalism.”