Cal Football: Pappy's Boys Decide to End Their Run After 33 Seasons
![](https://www.si.com/.image/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/MTczNDA2NTI1MTk1Mjk4NzEz/marinos-schabarum-olszewski-monachino-.jpg)
So many of them are now gone. They remained Pappy’s Boys to the end, devoted to the coach who molded them as football players and young men at Cal.
But Jackie Jensen died in 1982, Matt Hazeltine five years later. Johnny Olszewski was gone by 1996, Jim “Truck” Collum in ’98 and Rod Franz a year after that. Les Richter, Bob Celeri, Ed Bartlett, all great players, also now deceased.
Lynn Osbert “Pappy” Waldorf, the most beloved of all Cal coaches, had such profound influence on his former players that in 1987, six years after he died at the age of 78, those players came back together to honor their old coach.
They formed Pappy’s Boys, thought to be perhaps the only group of its kind of the country: Players who reunited once or twice each year, linked only by their love and respect for a single man.
The remaining Pappy’s Boys, whose young legs made them heroes of three straight Rose Bowl teams in 1948, ’49 and ’50, are in their 90s today. Even those who played for Waldorf’s final team in 1956, are approaching their mid-80s.
On Sept. 4, assuming the coronavirus pandemic doesn’t rip up the calendar, Pappy’s Boys will gather as a group for the last time. Members voted this spring to disband after 33 years.
“It’s very sad,” said Jim Marinos, 90, who quarterbacked the Bears in 1950. “The time is right because so many of our members are passing away. The attrition is so severe that we’re down to a handful of players.”
Pappy’s Boys once numbered more than 300 former players. Now barely 30 are able to attend their yearly get-together. Said Lefty Stern, the group’s secretary and historian, “We spend too much damn time going to celebrations of life for teammates.”
Waldorf was an immediate success at Cal after arriving from Northwestern in 1947. The Bears were 9-1 in his debut campaign, then posted three straight unbeaten regular-season records before losing tight games in the Rose Bowl all three years.
But wins and losses weren’t the reason former players Bob Karpe and Dick Erickson spawned the idea for Pappy’s Boys.
![Pappy Waldorf checks in with the press box](https://www.si.com/.image/t_share/MTczNDAzNDgwODY4NzkyMjE3/c-waldorf-sidelines-1.jpg)
“I don’t think that matters at all,” former halfback Jack Hart said of the winning. Hart was co-captain of the 1958 team under coach Pete Elliott that made Cal’s most recent visit to the Rose Bowl, but the Bears were just 3-7 in his lone season playing for Waldorf.
“He was just such an overpoweringly strong influence and leader of that program and everything about it was good and positive. It was truly one of the great experiences of my life being exposed to him,” Hart said. “Being involved in his last game was a special honor.”
The Bears won that game, beating Stanford 20-18 in the Big Game before carrying Waldorf off the field.
Marinos, who helped the Bears reach their third straight Rose Bowl after the 1950 season, said Waldorf offered his players more than football knowledge.
“Pappy was a very charismatic, personable human being,” Marinos said. “He was an intellect. He wasn’t just an Xs and Os football coach. He knew Shakespeare thoroughly. He was a gentleman.
“I looked at him, and I think we all did, as more than just a powerful coach but a powerful man. A man’s man.”
Mike White, who played on Waldorf’s final team and later served as the Bears’ head coach from 1972 through ’77, said Waldorf represented a rare level of integrity. “He was consistent and he was believable and he was honest and he cared for his players,” White said.
![This statue went up in the Faculty Glade in 1993.](https://www.si.com/.image/t_share/MTczNDAzNTEzMzQ5NDgyMzkz/04-waldorf-statue.jpg)
Pappy’s Boys had no real agenda beyond gathering to talk about their old coach and relive their shared memories. But the group is responsible for two permanent tributes to Waldorf, a statue of him that resides in the Faculty Glade and the Lynn O. Waldorf seating area just outside Memorial Stadium.
Pappy’s Boys also have raised funds to provide an endowed scholarship in Waldorf’s name to one player on the team each season. Todd Steussie was the first recipient in 1993, and others include Deltha O’Neal, Kyle Boller and Jared Goff. Quarterback Chase Garbers is the most recent recipient. The university will continue to handle administration of the yearly scholarship.
Otherwise, Pappy’s Boys for years met once in the spring, often for a golf event, then again for a dinner the night before the Bears’ first home football game.
These days, it’s tougher to get the old gang together. Golf is no longer on the calendar and the gatherings are just once a year.
“It’s always been a last-man-standing organization,” said Stern, who never played football but served as an early-day sports information contact for the athletic department and covered the team for the Berkeley Gazette newspaper. “There was a certain time where there would be one lonely guy and we didn’t quite want to go out that way.”
Tuck Coop, whose great-grandparents attended Cal in the late 1880s, has served as chairman for Pappy’s Boys in recent years. He called the assignment “an absolute blessing.”
“They are motivated by all the right things,” he said. “They loved Pappy Waldorf and they love each other.”
Coop said that while the vote to disband was decisive, he understands there are mixed feelings about closing shop.
Marinos is among those who hesitated, not sure he was ready to flip the switch. But he also acknowledged, “Every year we lose six or eight or 10 guys. It’s so depressing to learn how many wonderful guys, friends of ours, are passing on.”
Doug Duncan, who played center on Waldorf’s first two Cal teams, is the oldest living member of Pappy’s Boys, according to Coop.
“I find that hard to believe,” said Duncan, still sharp at 94, acknowledging that if he’s not the oldest, “I don’t know who the hell they are.”
Duncan says he expects to attend the banquet in September, but wishes it wasn’t the group’s swan song.
“Well, I’m disappointed the young guys haven’t joined and been active in the group as much as our years,” Duncan said. “The Rose Bowl teams seemed to have carried the ball for quite a number of years.”
![Halfback Jack Hart played on Pappy Waldorf's final team.](https://www.si.com/.image/t_share/MTczNDAzNTk3OTA2NjUwODk4/fb-hart-jack-run-close.jpg)
White’s worry is that his old coach could gradually be forgotten by future generations of Cal fans. “I hope that as this winds down, there still is a key place in Cal football history for Pappy Waldorf. That’s the message that I’d like to send.”
Hart says he is not worried Waldorf will fade from view and he’s looking forward to the farewell banquet the night before the Sept. 5 home opener vs. TCU.
“Half the value of our organization was getting together, seeing old teammates and laughing about old times,” Hart said. “It had an amazing run. This is a gracious way for it to go out.”
TOMORROW: Pappy Waldorf's winning formula at Cal.
Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo
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