Ooney Gagen ("Ooo-Nee Gay-gen")
If you are a Linfield Wildcat fan of a certain vintage, you may well know Ooney, who played for both Linfield and McMinnville High teams.
It's a guess, but plausible, that Ooney was a creation of Paul Durham (1913-2007), when he was sports editor of the McMinnville News-Register.
At the same time Durham was athletic director, coaching and teaching at Linfield, he was also "sports editing." His duties included writing a sports column, "Dodging with Durham."
Across the sports editor's desk would come photos shot at sporting events. Some of the photos, especially from basketball, would show a player whose face was obscured by a basketball which had been thrown, tossed or passed in front of the camera. These were action photos. The ball in front of the camera lens (and, thus, in the photo obscuring player's face) was unintentional. What to do with a photo like this? Some would have tossed the photo. Not sports editor Durham.
The player with the obscured face became Ooney Gagen. Or, a set-up photo showing someone with an obscured face was Ooney.
With this story see a photo (football helmet on backwards) of Ooney from a sports page in the Jan. 23, 1957, issue of the News-Register. The other photo, from the Feb. 10, 1965, N-R, is not of Ooney, but could well have been.
