Linfield General Interest News from Linfield Sports Information
Updated July 2, 2007
Updated July 2, 2007
Durham eulogy touches hearts
McMINNVILLE, Ore. - You could call them Durham's Disciples.
More than 200 former players, retired and active coaches, friends, admirers and family attended services Monday (July 2) for Paul Durham, the legendary former Linfield College football coach, who died June 22 at his home in Honolulu. He would have observed his 94th birthday on October 18.
Durham's 1956 team started the string of winning seasons that has eclipsed every other school that has ever played college football and continues at 51 years.
Today's service was held in Linfield's Ted Wilson Gymnasium, which is entered through the Paul Durham Foyer, where a relief of the former Wildcat coach and athletic director is mounted prominently.
Although Durham the coach is enshrined in at least seven Halls of Fame, from Portland to Los Angeles to Hawai'i, and he guided Linfield into two national small-college championship games, it was Durham the Man who was celebrated by 14 speakers during today's 75-minute service.
The Rev. John Lee of Portland, a letterman in three sports and baseball All-American in the mid-60s, quoted a hymn and the Bible in describing the coach who recruited him off the mean streets of Hartford, Conn.
Lee said there is a hymn including these words, "When I am resting in my grave and there is nothing more to be said, may this life that I have lived speak for me . . . may the service that I give speak for me."
Coach Durham's impact speaks for itself, Lee said. "Coach Durham was about lives."
Quoting from the Book of Genesis, Lee said, "God said, 'Multiply and replenish the Earth with like kind.' "
With a wave over the crowd of mostly white-haired Durham's Disciples, Lee said that through his consistent teaching of values, respect, sportsmanship and dedication, "Coach Durham replenished Oregon with himself."
Scott Carnahan, the current director of athletics at Linfield, noted that Durham was one of the founders of Linfield's athletic tradition. "His influence still lives here today."
Ad Rutschman, who played for Durham from 1950-53 and succeeded him as football coach with 23 winning seasons and three national championships, noted the "impact he had on me and my family. He was my coach, mentor, colleague, role model, and friend."
Pete Dengenis, another All-American recruited from Hartford, said, "I never had a dad at home and Coach Durham was my father figure.
"He gave (the Hartford players) the opportunity to be productive citizens when we could easily have become throwaways." Dengenis, class of 1964, is a consultant with the Oregon Education Association.
Bob Ferguson, a 1965 All-American who played on Linfield teams that lost a total of four games in four years, remembers best how Durham looked everyone in the eye and asked, "How you running, buddy?" "
"The message was crystal clear," Ferguson said, "He cared about you. Everyone who played for him understood that."
Years later, visiting his former coach in Hawai'i, Ferguson asked Durham, "How you running, buddy?"
Coach answered: "80-20. Working on 90-10."
Terry Durham, one of Paul's sons and a Linfield quarterback when the Wildcats won their third and fourth Northwest Conference championships in five years, said:
"Very few people leave footprints on the Earth. I think he did.
"Dad left a legacy of people who followed his life."
Another service was held June 28 in Honolulu, Coach Durham's home the past 40 years, since he left Linfield to be director of athletics at University of Hawai'i in 1968.
Private family interment will be at Rose City Cemetery in Portland.
The family prefers that memorials be donations to the Paul Durham Endowed Fund for the Support of Athletics in care of the College Relations Office at Linfield.
The annual reunion of Durham's former players is scheduled Wednesday, July 11, on the second floor of at Riley Center at 10:30 a.m. (with lunch at 12 and informal, open-mike program at 12:45 p.m.)
