This originally posted 9/22/2013.
Read how the Linfield football team honors Paul Durham on his 100th birthday here.
He was born in Portland, Ore., on Oct. 18, 1913, and died at age 93 on June 22, 2007, in Honolulu, Hawai'i.
Years ago, Linfield established an endowment fund in his memory. Many generously donated to the fund at that time.
In the 2012-2013 school year most proceeds from the Paul Durham fund were used for football expenses ranging from a coaches retreat to a video board. In addition, some funds were used to buy or assist in buying equipment for soccer and other sports.
Recently, the fund received significant anonymous donation from an individual who asked it be credited to “Ooney Gagen,” a fictitious player Coach Durham used over the years as a foil in the sports pages he edited for the McMinnville News-Register.
The donor challenged others to donate and bring the fund total to or exceed $100,000 as a salute to the coach’s 100th. All Wildcats are encouraged to accept this challenge!
It's the 4th quarter and we're in final 2 minutes. Let's ensure this endowment is robustly funded to support Linfield athletics long after the final play.
Questions? Please contact Ray Olson, Bob Ferguson or Bob Haack.
Make a gift to the Paul Durham Fund for the Support of Athletics by check or online:
- Check: Please mail to Debbie Harmon, Linfield College, 900 SE Baker St., McMinnville, OR 97128. Write Paul Durham in the memo field.
- Online: Please go to www.linfield.edu/gift. Designate “other” and in the field type “Paul Durham”
Let’s reach or exceed $100,000 by Coach Durham’s 100th birthday – Oct. 18, 2013. Thank you. Go, Wildcats!
Ray Olson, Class of 1954
“Paul Durham touched the lives and was a significant role model for hundreds of his students who went on to have careers as school teachers, coaches and administrators. In my opinion, Paul was one of the most important educators in the State of Oregon in the 20th Century. Paul taught us by example to work hard, be positive, have a sense of humor, be organized and prepared, communicate verbally and in writing and to have high standards. He established a sense of community that was maintained throughout his and our lives. With very little resources, Paul made the Linfield athletic program a national power and instilled in us qualities I listed above and many others that we, his students and athletes, passed on to thousands of our students and athletes.
“One thing we old-timers who are still around can do in Paul’s behalf, in continue contributing to the Paul Durham Fund for the Support of Athletics.”
Contact Ray Olson: brolson@pacifier.com, 360-896-3023
Bob Ferguson, Class of 1965
“’How ya runnin’ son?’” Whenever I hear this favorite greeting of Paul Durham’s at a gathering of ‘Cats, I am reminded of how permanently he stamped us with his values. A few of his other hallmark traits; in four years we never heard him swear, he was never late, and instead of handing back the hygiene weekly quiz papers, he humorously ‘tossed’ them to students.
“A few times each year Coach Durham talked about ‘The Buck-a-Month Club.’ I’ve yet to meet a member!! If all of us players had contributed just a dollar a month for the past 50-plus years, with adjustments in inflation and interest….well, you get the idea. With the Paul Durham Fund for the Support of Athletics we have a chance to catch up on our dues.
“Bill Dressel’s answer to ‘How ya runnin’ son?’ was ‘I’m at ninety percent Coach, workin’ on a hundred.’ Let’s honor Paul’s 100th birthday by getting his endowment to 100 percent. We are all ‘runnin’ a little better because of Coach Durham.”
Contact Bob Ferguson: robefergus@aol.com, 360-991-3342, landline: 360-254-1224
Bob Haack, Class of 1969
“Coach Durham's values and life's lessons are part of us today and we are so fortunate. He not only represented Linfield, he walked and talked these life values every day. I think back to the Championship Bowl Game in Augusta, Georgia, and the banquet that followed. As the team entered the facility, an individual came up to Coach Durham and told him Linfield's black athletes would be served in the kitchen; Durham quickly and politely responded, ‘then we will all eat in the kitchen.’ We all sat at the banquet and not one Linfield player ate; we might have been hungry but we were full of pride for our coach, our team and the message we gave.
“He was the coach of coaches, his philosophy which we coaches have embraced as part of our own, has been passed on to our players. They may have never played for the man, but they have certainly learned from him. Let's all come together, this one last time, to honor this great coach and human being, who meant so much to us and did so much for Linfield.
“Many of us remember Coach Durham's summer break letters with the closing, ‘Keep those cards and letters coming.’ With this tenant in mind, keep your letter coming and don't forget your check.”
Contact Bob Haack: hawkstein@aol.com, 503-706-7060, landline: 541-207-3399
About Coach Paul Durham
This story is a rewrite of Paul Durham’s obituary posted June 23, 2007, at the Linfield Athletics website.
Born Oct. 18, 1913, in Portland, Ore., he was 93-years-old at death.
Coach Durham (friends and former players had addressed him as "Coach" for 60 years) coached, taught and built the athletics program at Linfield for 20 years.
Nearly 40 years after he left Linfield to become athletic director at the University of Hawai'i, Wildcat coaches continue to pass on to their athletes Durham's positive values of dedication, sportsmanship and scholarship.
Durham was Linfield's head football coach for 20 seasons, compiling a record of 122 victories, 51 defeats and 10 ties for a .694 winning percentage. (In his final 12 years ("once I got the hang of it," he said), the Wildcats went 90-16-6 (.830), won six Northwest Conference championships and reached the national championship game of the NAIA twice.
His 1956 team started the string of 51 consecutive winning seasons (called "The Streak") that continues to this day and is the national record at all levels of college football.
Durham was inducted into six athletics Halls of Fame, including the charter class of the Linfield Hall of Fame in 1998.
He was inducted into the Portland Interscholastic League Hall of Fame in 2001, Oregon Sports Hall of Fame in 1989, the NAIA Football Hall of Fame in 1969, the Helms Foundation Hall of Fame and the University of Hawai'i Circle of Honor in 1997.
He also was nominated for the national College Football Hall of Fame. He was chosen NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) football Coach of the Year in 1962 and Oregon Man of the Year in 1961.
For three seasons (1949-1952), Durham and Oregon baseball Hall of Fame member Roy Helser were co-coaches of men's basketball. One of those teams won the Northwest Conference championship.
In 1961, Durham's football Wildcats capped the first unbeaten, untied regular season in school history with a trip to the "Camellia Bowl" in Sacramento, Calif. Linfield was the first college from the Northwest Conference to participate in the NAIA football playoffs.
The Wildcats lost a hard-fought national championship game, 12-7 to rugged Pittsburg State of Kansas. Linfield again finished unbeaten and untied in 1965 and defeated Sul Ross State of Texas 30-27 in the NAIA semifinals before losing to St. John's of Minnesota 33-0 in the NAIA "Champion Bowl" in Augusta, Ga.
In the season-opening game of 1967, Durham took the Wildcats to Honolulu, where they upset the University of Hawai'i, 15-13, at rainy Honolulu Stadium before a Honolulu Stadium crowd of about 20,000 - still the most ever to see a Linfield game. Hawaii was so impressed with Durham and the Wildcats that it hired him away from Linfield in 1968 to direct its athletic program. He guided the ambitious Rainbows from lower-level competition into NCAA Division I.
Durham stepped down as athletic director in 1975 for health reasons but taught in the Hawai'i College of Education until his retirement in 1981.
The foyer that serves as main entryway into the Linfield athletics complex, completed in 1989, is named in Durham's honor.
He was a star athlete at Linfield in the 1930s, competing in football, basketball and track and field, and is one of the few Wildcats in history to earn 10 letters. Durham graduated from Linfield in 1936 and he received his master's degree from the University of Oregon in 1941.
He then coached at high schools in Yamhill and Portland - Commerce (now called Cleveland) and Franklin (his alma mater) - before returning to the college 12 years later to coach football. He succeeded Henry Lever as coach.
A year later, in 1949, he succeeded Lever as Linfield director of athletics.
He was a Renaissance man. Not only did he coach and teach (he taught health classes in addition to the life lessons he imparted on the football field).
Durham read widely, sang in choirs and as a soloist, was an accomplished formal speaker, a wonderful story and joke teller (the Honolulu Quarterback Club's weekly meetings were officially opened when he told a joke) with a deep, booming voice.
"He was an incredible person whose positive impact reached far beyond Maxwell Field and Manoa for more than 60 years," said Chuck Charnquist, long-time Portland Trail Blazers official and former Linfield sports information director.
Durham received a small scholarship to attend Linfield as the nation sank into the Great Depression.
He earned a free room by working at the original Macy's Funeral Home in McMinnville. "I shared a bed with another football player," Durham said. "In those days, two guys sleeping in the same bed did not raise any eyebrows."
Raising a family (sons Jeff and Terry and daughter Cathy) on a small-college coach's salary was a challenge, so Durham augmented his income in many other ways. During summers -- in addition to teaching classes at Linfield -- he ran the McMinnville city recreation program - overseeing activities in the city park during the day and softball games at night.
And, he was sports editor of the then-daily local newspaper, the McMinnville News-Register. He wrote a popular sports column, "Dodging with Durham." One observer opined that Durham might have been the only college football coach in America who was never criticized in print by the local sports editor.
He was chosen First Citizen of McMinnville by the Chamber of Commerce and was elected president of the Linfield Alumni Association and honored as Alumnus of the Year.
Durham's deep baritone singing voice was in great demand. He sang in the choir at the First Baptist Church on Sunday mornings and picked up a little extra cash singing popular hymns like "How Great Thou Art" at funerals at Macy's.
Durham's second wife, Kitty Chang, died in Honolulu in 1994.
His first wife, Amelia "Litz" Durham, a former Linfield bookstore employee, died in Oregon in 2004.
At his death, "Coach" was survived by three children, Jeff of Tigard, Terry of Beaverton, and Cathy Devine of Chicago, Ill., seven grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren (with two more on the way) and more friends and admirers than could ever be counted.
Memorial services were held June 28, 2007, in Hololulu, at Borthwick Mortuary, and July 2, 2007, at Linfield's Ted Wilson Gym. Coach and Kitty are buried at Rose City Cemetery in Portland.
