Born: Feb. 6, 1961 in Milwaukee. Raised in Arab, Ala.

Parents: Hank and Marlene Matuszak.

Marital Status: Single.

Children: None.

Lowndes County Connection: Worked in three capacities at The Commercial Dispatch, serving as a sports writer from 1984-87, sports editor from 1994-2008 and sports copy editor from 2008-10.

Henry Matuszak received the surprise and thrill of a lifetime on April 18, 2025 when he was honored at the inaugural Lowndes County Sports Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

The Lowndes County Sports Hall of Fame board of directors called a special session during the banquet and passed a motion to create an award in Henry’s name.

Members of the board presented the unsuspecting recipient with the Henry G. Matuszak Founders Award in recognition of his role in starting the Lowndes County Sports Hall of Fame.

In making the presentation, the board announced the award would be presented annually to individuals who made behind the scene contributions to sports in Lowndes County. 

The idea of the award is to recognize individuals like Henry, who was a basketball manager and statistician in high school and college and later became a sports writer/editor (most notably at The Commercial Dispatch in Columbus).

Henry first presented an idea to honor sports icons from Lowndes County when he got an interested party to meet at the Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau on Dec. 16, 2022. He met with Nancy Carpenter, Frank Griffin and Glenn Lautzenhiser to see if it was possible to start a county sports hall of fame.

When it was determined there was enough interest, a board consisting of Henry, Glenn, Trip Hairston, Tom Buckley, Colin Krieger, Tony Phinisey and Jeff Smith was formed and soon afterwards the Lowndes County Sports Hall of Fame was officially credited as a nonprofit organization.

Henry got the idea for the hall of fame when he was nominated for the Marshall County Sports Hall of Fame in his home county in Alabama. He started thinking he didn’t remember writing articles about a Lowndes County Sports Hall of Fame when he wrote for The Commercial Dispatch. He quickly recalled there wasn’t such an organization.

Henry started to think about who he would put in a Lowndes County Sports Hall of Fame if there was one. He began doing research and writing down names and eventually started writing profiles.

It started out as fun, but Henry soon began to wonder why he was doing so much work and thought there had to be a reason. That’s when he decided to make some calls and gauge interest in actually creating a Lowndes County Sports Hall of Fame.

When the initial group met for the first time, Henry submitted nearly 200 names that he thought could be candidates for the hall of fame. He presented a list of athletes, coaches and contributors – both male and female. Listed were athletes and coaches who gained notoriety in football, basketball, baseball, soccer, volleyball, swimming, boxing, golf, tennis and track.

Before beginning his quest to start the hall of fame, Henry enjoyed two tenures at The Commercial Dispatch. He was a sports writer from 1984-87 and then sports editor from 1994-2008 and sports copy editor from 2008-2010.

Henry was dedicated to his career, getting his start as a sports writer at The Starkville (Miss.) Daily News. He also covered sports at The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News, The Decatur (Ala.) Daily and The Pine Bluff (Ark.) Commercial.

Henry is a 1979 graduate of Arab (Ala.) High School, where he was a basketball manager as a sophomore and basketball statistician as a junior and senior. He also kept baseball stats as a senior.

He went on to be a basketball and baseball statistician at Snead State Junior College in Boaz, Ala., from 1979-81 and a basketball manager at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa from 1981-84.