Story by John Gunther, Coos Bay World
newspaper, June 23, 2020
COQUILLE, Oregon
— Jess Thurman loved kids.
He made a career
of educating and coaching them after his role as a successful football player
for Coquille High School and Linfield College in the 1950s, with stints at
Brookings, Winston and Glide.
It even prompted
him to come out of retirement to coach the Red Devils for a stretch in the
1990s, after he had settled into life as a business owner.
“When (coach)
John Van Burger left and went to Montana, there was no head coach,” John Christiansen
recalled this week. “Nobody would do it.
“Ken Trathen
talked (Jess) into coaching and then talked me into coaching with him.”
Christiansen, who
was a teacher at the high school at the time, fondly remembered Thurman, who
died Saturday.
“He truly liked
kids,” Christiansen said.
Thurman had
retired back to Coquille after his stints as a teacher and administrator in
Douglas County, running a liquor store and restaurant in town. But he got right
back into coaching, leading the Red Devils for several years and narrowly
missing the state playoffs a few seasons.
“It was tough to
get into the playoffs,” Christiansen said, adding the Red Devils were
successful under Thurman.
And he had a good
bond with his players.
“He would sit
outside (the store) and talk to the kids,” Christiansen said, adding that
Thurman also would feed the team dinner on game nights. “He thought it was
important for the team to come down and have a decent meal.”
Christiansen
didn’t know Thurman well before they started coaching together, but quickly
grew to respect him as a head coach.
“He knew what he
was doing,” Christiansen said.
That came decades
after Thurman, himself, was a good athlete for Coquille and, somewhat
remarkably, a successful player for Linfield College as well, after losing his
left hand in an industrial accident during his junior year at Coquille.
Thurman played
for legendary Coquille coach Spike Leslie — the high school field is named in
his honor — and it was Leslie and Thurman’s teammates who gave him the belief
he could still be a successful player after his accident.
“Without Spike
Leslie, he wouldn’t have been able to continue,” Thurman’s daughter, Diana
Lavender, recalled when Thurman was inducted into the Coquille Hall of Fame
last fall. “Spike said, ‘Jess, it only takes one hand to center the ball.’”
Len Scolari, who
graduated with Thurman in 1952, said Monday that the players weren’t about to
let Thurman quit, either. Several of them went up to see him in the hospital a
couple of days after the accident.
“He was crying
and saying, ‘I won’t be able to play football,’” Scolari recalled. “I told him,
‘You’ve got all summer to practice snapping the ball.’ We weren’t going to let
him off the hook.”
As a running
back, Scolari depended some on Thurman’s blocking up front and said he was
always a good blocker.
Scolari said
Thurman had a strong senior season, earning all-district honors and helping the
Red Devils make the playoffs, where they had to compete in the same division
with the state’s biggest schools.
Coquille opened
against University High School in Eugene on a muddy field in temperatures below
freezing and won 20-6. Scolari, also the team’s kicker, remembered Thurman
snapping the ball perfectly on the extra point attempts — the one Scolari
missed was because the holder dropped the slippery and cold ball, he said.
Coquille lost the
next week to Grants Pass, which also had beaten Marshfield in the first round
of the playoffs, and Thurman went on to Linfield.
“He was a darn
good player,” Scolari said. “He always had a positive attitude, especially
after he lost his hand.
“He was good with
everybody. Everybody liked him.”
Thurman was
Linfield’s starting center his final three years and other players for the
Wildcats recalled him as a great teammate.
“Jess was an
equal,” recalled Linfield teammate John Prutsman in a 2015 story for
Wildcatville, a blog mostly about Linfield football. “He really wasn’t
handicapped, just inconvenienced.”
Prutsman noted
that Thurman also played on the line or at linebacker on defense for Linfield
and played intramural basketball, softball and volleyball, as well as golf.
Maybe his most
memorable play for the Wildcats was a center eligible pass that Thurman caught
from quarterback Ad Rutschman, who later coached Linfield.
“If you are going
to throw a pass it is not normally going to a center and certainly not to a one
handed guy,” Prutsman recalled.
Thurman almost
scored on the play, too.
“Jess was not
much for speed but great on determination,” Prutsman said. “He made it down to,
I believe about the 10-yard line before he was tackled.”
Thurman enjoyed
going back to Linfield and Christiansen will cherish a trip there in the 1990s.
“Ken Trathen came
down with cancer,” he recalled. “He wanted one more trip to Linfield to watch a
football game.”
As it turned out,
both Linfield and Southern Oregon, that week’s opponent, had players from
Coquille.
So Christiansen,
Thurman and Trathen got in a pickup and drove to McMinnville, with Christiansen
and Thurman providing play-by-play for Trathen, who couldn’t see anymore.
“We went up and
had a wonderful time,” Christiansen said. “It was a highlight of knowing the
old guys.”
Trathen died not
long after that, but Thurman and Christiansen remained close.
“He loved to
fish,” Christiansen said, adding that success on the Coquille River wasn’t
important.
“He didn’t care
if he caught anything,” Christiansen said.
“We’d go out and sit and cruise up
and down the river for a while.”
And Thurman was
well-known as a business owner in the community.
“He was very
proud to be from Coquille,” Christiansen said.
