Edith ‘Duffy” Reynolds was a great Linfield Wildcat fan; she remembered watching Ad Rutschman star for Linfield football playing in Forest Grove versus the Pacific University Badgers
With her death on 8/22/2021
of Edith "Duffy" Reynolds,
a Linfield College grad and Linfield home economics professor emeritus, the
Linfield Wildcats lost a great fan
The first Linfield College
sporting event she attended was a football game in McMinnville. It was the 1947
season and she was a freshman. Wayne
Harn was the Wildcats head coach. Harn was Linfield head football coach for
the 1939 and 1946 and 1947 seasons.
Maxwell Field was a “sloppy
mess,” she told Wildcatville. “It was a mud bowl after rain. At one game after
halftime you could not tell one player from another because of mud on uniforms
covering up jersey numbers.”
Attending all home football
games, all men’s basketball games (no women’s intercollegiate sports then) and
some baseball games were something Duffy always did as a Linfield student.
Something she did not do was
attend games when Linfield was on the road. “I didn’t have a car. No one had a
car,” Duffy said.
She wanted to major in
history at Linfield. But, Duffy was advised it’d be hard or next to impossible
to get a job with a history degree. She changed her major to English with a
Home Economics minor and planned to use that education to be a school teacher.
After graduating from
Linfield in 1951, her first job was teaching Gaston near Forest Grove. “Gaston
High had me teaching girls’ physical education for grades seven through 12. I
was not a good PE teacher,” she said.
A bright side to Gaston: There
were Pacific University graduates in Gaston. They gave her a ride to and from
the Sat., Oct. 20, 1951, Linfield at Pacific football game in Forest Grove.
There she saw Ad Rutschman, freshman Linfield football player, a standout
running and defensive back, help lead the Linfield Wildcats, coached by Paul Durham, to a 6-0 victory over the
Pacific Badgers.
POSTCRIPT --
Paul Stagg was head football coach of the Pacific University
"Badgers," 1947–1960. He was the
son of Amos Alonzo Stagg, considered
one of the great innovators in the development of college football. Paul Stagg considered recruiting Ad Rutschman
to play football for Pacific after Rutschman graduated from Hillsboro High
School/Hilhi in 1950. (Pacific in Forest
Grove and Hilhi in Hillsboro only about 10 miles apart.)
Stagg visited Hilhi and said Rutschman was
"too small" to play for Pacific.
The rest of the story is that Rutschman went on to stellar career as a
Linfield College athlete playing football, basketball and baseball. And, after
graduating from Linfield, a stellar career as a coach at both Hilhi and
Linfield.
On Jan. 23, 2017, via email
Duffy Reynolds, responded to Wildcatville questions about seeing Ad Rutschman
playing football for Linfield in Forest Grove versus Pacific.
"I was teaching at
Gaston Jr. high and high school, my first year of teaching, 1951-1952,"
she said. "So the game I attended must have been (Oct. 20, 1951) Somebody
(I cannot remember who) invited me to go to the Pacific-Linfield game. We were
sitting with the Pacific fans, with the team sitting down below us. When Ad
Rutschman made a touchdown (he was a really fast runner), a (Linfield fan)
sitting a couple rows below me stood up and yelled 'Hey, Staggs, so Rutschman
is too little to play for Pacific!'
"Looking at the (6-0)
score I guess (Ad) only made one touchdown, but he made several good plays
because I know the man yelled several times."
My "memory of the
yeller is vivid. I think he had a few
drinks before he came to the game. I
thought it was really funny but I did not laugh because I was surrounded by
Pacific fans."
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