Paul Durham, August 1993, Honolulu.
During his 80th birthday party.
During his 80th birthday party.
Story by
McMinnville N-R/News Register, August 1989. Minor editing by and additional
info from Wildcatville, March 2018.
Friday, Aug. 11, 1989
McMinnville N-R/News-Register
McMinnville, Oregon
Paul Durham’s touch lingers on at Linfield
Editor’s note: Paul H. Durham/Paul Henry Durham, longtime Linfield
College football coach and athletic director, will be inducted Saturday
evening, March 12, 1989, at the into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame in Portland
at the Red Lion Inn/Jantzen Beach. In a two-part series, the News-Register will
trace the career of Durham, who successes are still being felt today. Part 1
will focus on the early years. On Monday, Part 2 will follow Durham as he
brings Linfield to national prominence.
By PAT O’HALLORAN
N-R Staff Writer
Paul Durham is speaking of former Linfield College
President Harry Dillin and ex-Oregon
Journal Sports Editor George Pasero.
So the
story goes:
“What both
Dr. Dillin and George tell me is that Dillin came into Portland, kind of
snooping around and about for prospective coaches.
“The head
coach there (at Linfield) had been Wayne
Harn … Dillin came into Portland and got to talk to George Pasero and
Pasero says, ‘Why the hell don’t you hire Durham?’
“So Dillin
noses around a while and finally we talked and I got the job.”
A simple
conversation between a college president and a prep sports expert in the early
part of 1948, and it completely changed small-college athletics in the
Northwest, possibly even in the country.
For Paul
Durham took over the Linfield program in 1948, and the following year he
assumed the additional duties of athletic director.
--Note: Henry
Lever was football coach nine seasons, 1930-1938. Wayne Harn coached 1939,
but left for military service. Lever was coach 1941-1942. No football 1943-1945
during World War II. Harn coached 1946-1947.
When Durham became football coach in 1948, Lever remained at Linfield through 1948-1949, serving that school year as athletic director. First year for Durham as athletic
director was 1949-1950.
For 20
years Durham coached Linfield had took the school from run-of-the-mill to
consistent winner, laying the groundwork for 15 years later when protégé Ad
Rutschman’s team captured the national championship.
--Note: Henry Lever coached Durham and Roy Helser (both
members of Linfield Class of 1936, although Helser graduated in 1941) in all
sports at Linfield. The three season Durham and Helser were co-head men's
basketball coach were 1949-1950, 1950-1951, 1951-1952. Ad Rutschman attended
Linfield 1950-1954, graduating in 1954. Durham and Helser (a football assistant
coach) coached Rutschman in football at Linfield and in basketball. Helser
coached Rutschman in baseball.
Linfield
goes back further than 1948 for Durham, though. As a graduate of Portland’s Franklin
High School, his older brother, Phil, encouraged him to attend, as did football
coach Henry Lever. (Philip C. Durham/Philip Calvin Durham graduated from
Linfield in 1935, a year before Paul.)
After
graduating from Linfield in 1936, Paul Durham went to work.
“I went
out to Yamhill (High School), for four years … four great years.”
Yamhill
did not field a football team.
“The small
towns, when you’re coach – it’s just the greatest experience you could ever
have. They treat you like a million bucks,” Durham said.
While at
Yamhill High he taught “Glee Club and English and history and social studies
and I don’t know what all. Four years at a small school and you’re liable to
teach anything.”
After his
four years in Yamhill, he returned to his alma mater, Franklin High.
“I
assisted in football and coached the ice hockey and soccer teams,” he said,
“which I knew nothing about. I was a babysitter. They had to have faculty go to
practice and stand around. But there were always some kids on the team who know
the sports, seniors, who the other kids replaced, and they would run the
operation pretty much … They did the coaching.”
Things
were so bad in hockey, Durham said, “I had to learn what a blue line was.”
He crossed
back and forth between Franklin and Portland’s High School of Commerce, now
Cleveland High School.
He was at
Franklin in 1948 when Dillin and Pasero had their little chat.
--Note: Thanks to Dr. Bob Gill’s book “It’s In
Their Blood: Oregon Football Coaches and Their Legacies,” we know Durham
coached basketball and baseball 1936-1939 at Yamhill. He was at Franklin 1940-1941
coaching JV football. At Commerce 1942-1945 he was a football assistant and
head basketball and baseball coach. At Franklin 1946 he was head football,
basketball and baseball coach and head football and baseball coach in 1947.
Making the
transition from high school to college was easy in the post-World War II days,
Durham said. He didn’t need to recruit because hordes of men getting out of the
service were swarming the campuses.
He
persuaded three or four players from the Shrine team he assisted on that summer
to attend Linfield.
“That’s
about all the recruiting I was able to do. We didn’t have any recruiting money.
I didn’t know anything about recruiting.
“In fact,
we never did have any money,” he said with a smile.
Durham’s
first year, the football Wildcats were 3-6, with wins over Lower Columbia Junior
College, the University of British Columbia and Oregon College of Education (Western Oregon University). None of those wins
was by more than a touchdown.
Football
remained at the top of Durham’s list the next year, but the list grew longer.
He added
athletic director as a title, then became coach of the basketball team with
longtime friend Roy Helser.
Helser,
who is a member of the Oregon Sports Hall of fame for his prowess with the
Portland Beavers, had not coached basketball in years. So Durham agreed to
coach with him until he felt confident going it alone.
“We always
kind of kidded about it,” said Helser, who still lives in McMinnville, “because
whenever we called a timeout, here I’d have some kid pinned, then he could take
over, and then another. We’d have about four of us. Even the fans got a kick
out of it.”
The
job-sharing arrangement lasted for three years.
“I can
truly say we never had any disagreement between us,” Helser said. “Paul
understood me about as well as anybody could understand me.”
Monday, Aug. 14, 1989
McMinnville N-R/News-Register
McMinnville, Oregon
Durham lives the quiet life
Home base now Hawaii
Editor’s note: This is the second installment of
a two-part series examining the career of Linfield’s longtime athletic director
and football coach, Paul Durham, who was inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall
of Fame on Saturday in Portland. Part 1 Friday examined how Durham came to
Linfield and what happened in the early years.
By PAT O’HALLORAN
N-R Staff Writer
The first
eight years of Paul Durham’s tenure
as Linfield College football coach were not marked with overwhelming success or
failure.
His
records ranged from 3-6 – in his first year in 1948 twice more, to 6-3 in 1950.
In fact, for the first eight years, he had a losing record of 32-35-4. Over the
next 12 years, though things would change.
When
sportswriters today write of Linfield College’s astounding streak of winning
seasons, which now stands at 33, it is continued by Ad Rutschman’s 21 years.
But for 12
years Paul Durham turned a perennial bridesmaid into one of the brides.
Over those
dozen seasons, Durham’s teams ran up a record of 90-16-6 and won seven
Northwest Conference championships. It had been 21 years since the Wildcats had
won a league title.
Offense changes
Durham
changed his offense in the late 1950s after watching the success of Humboldt
State University, coached by Phil Sarboe, a former Washington State coach.
While
serving on the NAIA/National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Executive
Committee, Durham was assigned to escort Humboldt State to an NAIA playoff
game.
Sarboe and
Durham exited to a kitchen during a party.
“In about
three hours I learned the Flying T,” Durham said.
It was
known as the Flying T formation and overloaded the strong side with two tackles
and an end.
“Nobody
ever really defensed it,” Durham claims.
Nobody
ever argued the point, however.
Five years
after Durham began his winning way, the Wildcats made their first postseason.
In 1961, Whittier
(Calif.) College was the visitor and Linfield was the victor in the NAIA
Western Playoffs, nabbing an 18-7 win at Maxwell Field.
Then it
was on to the national championship game – the Camellia Bowl – the NAIA’s title
game for three seasons in Sacramento, Calif.
Against
Pittsburg State University of Kansas, the Wildcats were facing the top-ranked
team in the nation. Linfield lost, but the game was one the Wildcats felt they
should have won.
A
touchdown in the opening minute gave the Gorillas a 6-0 lead that kept up to
the fourth quarter. Pittsburgh State scored for a 12-0 lead and then Linfield
scored.
Linfield
got the ball late in the game but couldn’t score.
The loss
was Linfield’s only of the season.
‘Dodging with Durham’
While
Durham was leading the Wildcats to the heights, he also found time to edit
sports for the News-Register, in addition to teaching at Linfield.
His daily column
– “Dodging with Durham” – was an N-R staple for years, until Durham left for
Hawaii in 1968.
“Paul
would come down to the office about 5:30 in the afternoon after practice,” said
N-R Publisher and then editor Phil Bladine. “We would shoot the breeze many
times a week. He is such a great personality … one of the sharpest wits of
anybody’s you’ll ever know.”
The Cats
returned to the national playoffs in 1964, despite consecutive eight-win
seasons in between.
Durham
recalled that 28-6 semifinal loss to Concordia (Minn.) College in Fargo, N. D.,
on Nov. 26, 1964, because of the extreme cold.
“The wind
chill factor took it to 20, 25 below,” Durham said, “and we had some kids from
Hawaii on that team who couldn’t even stand up it was so cold. Somebody’s
relative had some heaters back there (by the benches), but it didn’t make any
difference.”
Linfield
returned to the finals by beating Sul Ross State of Texas 30-22 in a semifinal
game held in Texas.
In the
finals, held in Augusta, Ga., Linfield suffered one of its worst playoff
defeats ever, 33-0, at the hands of St. John’s College of Minnesota.
Produces coaches
Rivaling
Durham’s football coaching feats were what the Linfield physical education
department was turn out: coaches.
Hundreds
of coaches.
It helped
the recruiting, Durham said.
“Some of
them graduated at the end of my first and second year,” Durham said. “Pretty
soon they’re out getting coaching jobs. We kept in contact with them. They
started helping send back kids.”
“That to
be has been the life blood of Linfield’s athletic success --- the fact that
alumni, in particular teacher and coaches, have sent back, over the 20 years I
was there, several thousand different athletes.”
Two years
later, in 1968, another Linfield alumnus took over the program – Ad Rutschman.
Durham
resigned the football coach’s position in February 1968, following the 1967
season. In his “Dodging with Durham” column he wrote of spending Thursdays and
Fridays walking around like he had a football in his stomach – with the
football overinflated.
Health leads to resignation
“I had
ulcers,” Durham said, “I just had to quit coaching around 32 years. I was 54
and had to quit coaching.
“In the
last two, three years during the season the only day I felt good was Wednesday.
I’d get over the previous game by Wednesday and on Thursday my belly would be
hurting again.”
Durham
found that pressure affected him differently that some coaches.”
“Some
guys, Rutschman handles it well,” he said. “He’s a little older than I was when
I quit. I loved it, just loved it, but it got so I couldn’t do it anymore.”
He
resigned as football coach, then a little later as athletic director, after he
was offered the athletic director spot at the University of Hawaii, a NCAA/National
Collegiate Athletic Association Division I school.
He worked
for eight years in that position, but the bane of many athletic directors –
alumni – eventually caused him to step into a supervisory position in the
university’s education department.
Hawaii not trouble free
After the
University of Hawaii Rainbows began having some success in football, the alumni
began pushing for national championship-caliber teams, not always above the
table.
Two years
after Durham stepped down as athletic director, the NCAA stepped in with
probation and the banning of three regents – the university’s directors – for
violations of the association rules.
Paul and Kitty Durham, August 1993, Honolulu.
Durham
retired in 1981 and still lives in Waikiki in a condominium with his wife, Kitty. They have traveled extensively,
and Durham enjoys reading and golfing.
He has
season tickets to the Rainbows’ football and basketball teams and watches
baseball games.
Durham had
three children. Jeff, a former
McMinnville School District athletic director who holds the same post at Forest
Grove High School; Terry, a National
Basketball Association referee and Portland resident, and Cathy, an ex-stewardess, who lives in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a
Chicago suburb. All graduated from McMinnville High School and Linfield. Jeff
and Terry were successful athletes at the high school and college.
SIDEBAR: Durham, Linfield highlight banquet
By PAT O’HALLORAN
N-R Staff Writer
PORTLAND –
Paul Durham delighted the Oregon
Sports Hall of Fame banquet’s biggest audience ever with tales of his days as
football coach and athletic director at Linfield College.
Durham was
one of eight inductees into the Hall of Fame. More than a thousand people
crowed the Red Lion Inn/Jantzen Beach for the ceremonies marking the Hall’s 10th
anniversary.
And,
Linfield played a major role, with an unofficial count seeing the college
mentioned more times than any, save the University of Oregon and Oregon State University.
The
program opened with the Parade of Champions of 40 Hall of Famers. One who
didn’t make the walk – due to minor foot surgery – was longtime Linfield
baseball and basketball coach Roy
Helser, who was inducted in 1981 for his feats in Pacific Coast League baseball.
Several
sportswriters and sportscasters were asked to recall their favorite games to
cover, with the games and narration being displayed on two huge video screens
placed in the corners.
KOIN-TV’s
Rick Metsger waxed nostalgic about Linfield’s three national football titles in
the 1980s.
After the
dinner, four high school students were presented with $1,500 scholarships. The
awards were based on academic achievement, athletic accomplishment and
financial need.
Yamhill-Carlton
High School graduate Amy Weise was
the first honored. She graduated with a 4.0 grade point average and excelled in
three sports. She plans to attend Linfield.
Jason Saunders of Cottage Grove High School was another
awardee who plans to attend Linfield. He also was a triple sports threat and
had a 3.89 GPA.
The Don
Kirsch Memorial Award, named for the former UO baseball coach, was given along
with a $1,500 scholarship to Linfield graduate David Safford.
Safford
was District 2 NAIA/National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Player of
the Year with an 11-6 record, setting three Wildcat baseball pitching records
in the process.
Safford
plans to pursue a career in
Continued
Page 9/Banquet
Banquet: Tales and singing delight audience
Continued
from Page 9
business or
coaching. He graduated with a 3.4 GPA in business and economics. The
scholarship is awarded to a college baseball player who best combines academic
achievement, athletic accomplishment and financial need.
Durham was
introduced third among the eight inductees and had the audience eating out of
his hand with his stories.
The coach,
who led Linfield for 20 years and so many wins, was at the head of the class
once again.
Stealing a few, earning a few
He told of
stealing a few wins and earning a few wins.
One of his
teams stole a road win from a school whose officials were all alumni. Later,
the same team came to Linfield, whose officials were also alumni.
The only
difference? “They weren’t prejudiced,” Durham said, “just loyal.”
He spoke
eloquently of the lessons he had been taught.
“Some of
the greatest things I’ve learned have been from the teams I’ve played against,”
he said.
He listed
the many, many people who influenced his life. And then he broke into song.
He
promised he would embarrass his family, sitting together at a table, by singing
a song he and two friends made up in college.
A friend
of Durham’s – Chappie King – was recently staying in a nursing home in the last
days of a long life.
Chappie’s song to remember
“He didn’t
remember a lot of things,” Durham said. But the song was one of them.
It wasn’t
a particularly noteworthy song. It was about a professor at the school. He only
sang two stanzas in his singer’s voice – Durham was once in the Glee Club.
But it
spoke of a simpler time, when students sat in their frat houses and did things
like compose songs about professors.
Embarrassing?
No.
The warm
applause following his 15 minute appearance was a fitting punctuation to an
exclamation point career.
Paul
Durham is in the Hall of Fame.
SIDEBAR: Doing Durham
Paul Durham’s Linfield Coaching Record
1948 3-6
1949 4-4
1950 6-3
1951 3-3-3
1952 5-3-1
1953 5-4
1954 3-6
1955 3-6
1956 6-1-2*
1957 8-1
1958 7-1-1
1959 5-3-1
1960 7-2
1961 10-1*
1962 8-0-1*
1963 8-1
1964 8-1-1*
1965 8-1*
1966 7-2
1967 8-1
Career 122-51-10
Photos
with this story by Wildcatville August 1993 in Honolulu during Paul Durham’s 80th
birthday party. One shows him with his wife, Kitty. In another, he displays
birthday celebration t-shirt.
