Bowling Inventor Callaway Now Croons Family Times - Michael Callaway - Brief Article

Bowling Digest, June, 2001 by Larry Paladino

HOME-HEALTH-CARE entrepreneur Michael Callaway has a way of putting his heart, soul, and money into whatever he does, with bowling being one of his most enjoyable outlets and among his biggest benefactors.

Although the affable, multi-talented man is off in a different direction right now--recording and promoting a 10-song, easy-listening CD called "Golden Memories," written by him and his late father, Jack--Callaway hasn't forsaken bowling, even after taking a financial bath backing an armswing invention, the Easy Bowler, designed to help handicapped bowlers.

"One of the amazing aspects of the Easy Bowler is that it was a fabulous training aid to help bowlers improve their timing and hand release," Callaway says. "As a matter of fact, when I first started using the Easy Bowler, I was a 180-average bowler, and my average went up 25 pins my first year. I bowled my first 300 game that year.

"I invested almost two and a half years of my life and about $400,000 in this product, and unfortunately it was not well-received by the bowling proprietors. A lot of the bowling proprietors are absentee owners, and they just didn't have the time or manpower to commit to a new idea."

As the new century emerged, Callaway decided to devote his efforts to a longtime dream of recording family music he calls "gifts of the heart" to "give and to share with those we love." Callaway's late mother, the former Jimye Thorpe, was a professional singer and a big band performer in the '30s. His grandmother, Evelyn Callaway, was said to have played the piano for Jesse James and the Younger Brothers gang, and his father and mother once had a half-hour radio show, "Jack and His Uke."

"The CD has always been a lifelong dream of mine," Callaway says. "I can remember listening to my mother and dad sing in our home. My father was always writing love songs for my mother or Christmas carols for us kids. I used to play the ukulele with my dad at parties, and we had a ball. I started singing at the age of 10 and had my own group at the age of 18 called the Continentals, and we sang and performed at local clubs in the Phoenix area in the late '60s."

It's a cinch, though, sports will continue to take up a lot of his time. In addition to being a lifelong bowler, Callaway is a six-handicap golfer who has had six holes-in-one (the latest in December in Miami) and who, in 1978, went from a 15-handicap to a 2-handicap in six months to earn a Golf Digest designation as one of Michigan's most improved amateurs.

To order Callaway's "Golden Memories," contact Luv Records at (248) 350-2583.