Clifford “Mickey” Melberger ’61 M’62, GP’14 earned both his bachelor’s in business administration and master’s in education from Bucknell. A four-year starter for the football team, Melberger was an outstanding halfback and team captain of Bucknell’s 1960 football team that finished 7-2, outscored its opponents 188-59 and won the Lambert Cup as the top team in the East, receiving the Cup on the Ed Sullivan Show. Melberger was Bucknell’s leading rusher and led the Middle Atlantic Conference in scoring that year. He received honorable mention All-Middle America Conference and Associated Press Little All-America recognition. He was inducted into the Bucknell Athletics Hall of Fame in 2005. He is the namesake of the Melberger Award, presented annually to an outstanding NCAA Division III football player. While an undergraduate, Melberger was also a member of Sigma Chi fraternity. In the 50 years since his graduation, Melberger has continuously served as a Bucknell volunteer in numerous areas and capacities, including the Career Development Center and on the Bison Club and Alumni Association boards. He and his wife Ruth Ann have led by example in annual and capital giving. They are vice chairs of the Bucknell Campaign, are members of the Campaign Executive Committee, and have set up three scholarships. They have hosted first-year Bison Gathering receptions in northeast Pennsylvania for many years. He served as the leader for this year’s 50th Reunion class program and gift committee. He and his wife recently underwrote the high definition filming of the Rooke Chapel holiday concert.
Melberger is the owner, founder and chairman of the board of Diversified Information Technologies, a 29-year-old national and international data and document information management company, headquartered in Scranton, PA with 2,000 associates worldwide. The Diversified company grew out of a business plan created and implemented by Bucknell professor Neil Shiffler and his students. From that plan, Melberger founded Diversified. He is also the owner, founder, and chairman of the board of GreenSpace Properties, LLC, a real estate management and development company. Melberger’s firm contributes scholarship funds in the name of the outstanding Bucknell football player in each weekly game. In his professional life, Melberger has hired Bucknell graduates, and has provided internship opportunities.
Melberger has served on various charitable boards and has received numerous business and community service awards. In addition to the scholarships they established at Bucknell, he and his wife have also funded scholarship programs at Wilkes University, where Mickey is a former Trustee and his wife Ruth and son Mickey Jr. are graduates, and Wyoming Seminary where his daughter Erica is a Trustee. He and Ruth Ann reside in West Pittston, PA and also own a farm on the outskirts of Lewisburg which they regularly open to Bucknellians, including coaches and classmates and their families. They recently purchased a home in downtown Lewisburg to more easily visit their grandson, Thomas Romanowski, who just finished his first year at Bucknell. The Melbergers have two children, Erica, married to Tom Romanowski, and Mickey, married to the former Amy Fetch. They also have six grandchildren, Thomas ’14, Ann and Kate Romanowski, and Dylan, Kari and Evan Melberger.
