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W.B. Tunstall

Hall of Fame

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Inducted 1976

College

Johns Hopkins University

Born in Virginia but raised in Baltimore, Brooke Tunstall was first exposed to lacrosse is his pre-teens. At age 11 his family moved to Mt. Washington, only a short distance from the famous Mt. Washington Club. This proximity was to prove decisive in developing a deep and abiding love for the game of lacrosse. As a water boy for the club's team, he was able to observe and emulate the great stars of the 1930s -- the Turnbull brothers, Fritz Stude, Lorne Guild and others. He attended Baltimore Polytechnic Institute where he was named first team All-Maryland in 1938-40. In 1941 Tunstall entered Union College in N.Y., where he played football, hockey and lacrosse. In 1942 he was selected to play in the annual North-South lacrosse game. He was also named an honorable mention All-American attackman. 

World War II interrupted his engineering studies and Tunstall served in the Marine Corps from 1943-46. In the winter and spring of 1943-44 while in the Marines, he was sent to pre-officer training at Cornell University. While there, he was eligible to play lacrosse and hockey. Cornell's lacrosse team only lost one game that spring and Tunstall was named first team All-American attack. Upon his discharge as a first lieutenant in 1946, he returned to Baltimore and played for the Mt. Washington Club, which won the National Open Championship. 

In September of that year he entered Johns Hopkins University to finish his engineering studies. In 1947 and '48 he captained the JHU lacrosse teams, which in both years won the National Intercollegiate Championship. Tunstall was also named first team All-American both years and was the Turnbull Trophy winner as the nation's outstanding attack player in 1947 and 1948. In both years he played for the South All-Star teams, received the Hopkins' Turnbull-Reynolds and Sidney Erlanger awards and was later named to the Hopkins All-Time Lacrosse Team. 

After graduation, Tunstall again played for the Mt. Washington Club team in 1949-50 and 1952 (missing 1951 because of another Marine Corps tour during the Korean conflict). Again, Mt. Washington won the Open Championship in all three years. Tunstall joined the C&P Telephone Company in Maryland in 1948 and later was transferred to AT&T in New York where he retired as a vice president in 1985. He later authored a well-received book ("Disconnecting Parties") about the 1984 break-up of AT&T. Brooke Tunstall passed away in March, 2012.