Remembering Pappy

They're a little grayer, a little softer around the middle, and this time they come with wives, children and grandchildren in tow.

But the 190 men who gathered at the Holiday Inn in Emeryville Friday evening still show the broad shoulders and back-slapping camaraderie of the former athletes who carried Cal to three Rose Bowls more than 50 years ago.

These are Pappy's Boys-the men who played football for the Bears between 1947 and 1956, when Lynn "Pappy" Waldorf coached the football team. Today they are retired lawyers, judges and NFL coaches, scattered across the country in places as far away as Saint Louis and New York.

But every year, the Friday before the first home game of the season, this far-flung group reunites in or near Berkeley to talk football, swap war stories and pay tribute to the man who presided over the greatest era of Cal football history.

"It's clear that Pappy touched all your lives," Athletic Director Steve Gladstone told the men over dinner. "Whatever is good in these guys you can be sure Pappy helped to polish and develop."

The men, well into their 70s, have been meeting every year since the club was founded in 1985. Their organization is 504 members strong, although not all of them can always make the reunions-which are regularly attended by campus figures like Gladstone and Chancellor Robert Berdahl.

The Pappy's Boys club was founded by former tackle Bob Karpe, who, after holding reunions with the other tackles for years, decided that the group should be expanded to include everyone who played under Waldorf.

The club was started with two missions, said Pappy's Boys executive director and former quarterback Dick Erickson-having a good time and supporting Cal's football program through good times and bad.

But they have an underlying goal too-to honor the memory of the man who made both Cal football and the men he coached what they are today.

In spring 1947, Waldorf took on a team that had sputtered to the end of its last season with a 2-9 record. Within his first year, Waldorf took a team of mostly war-hardened veterans to a 9-1 record.

The team went to the Rose Bowl the following three years, holding a near perfect record of 29-0-1. The only blot on Waldorf's record was that the Bears never won a Rose Bowl game.

The club has a $400,000 endowment devoted to Cal football and raises money for the program on an annual basis. Every year, it pays for hundreds of underprivileged kids to take a bus trip to the university for a campus tour and a football game.

Waldorf's coaching style-known for being educational, not dictatorial-helped produce not merely great football players, but good citizens, said Dick LemMon, who was the club's president last year. Waldorf cared about his players, and they, in turn, wanted to win for him.

When the team traveled to Philadelphia to play against Navy, for example, they were on the road with two black team members. But their hotel would not accept black guests.

Waldorf took the two men to a different hotel in town and stayed with them himself. The team revered him for it, Erickson said.

The ranks of Waldorf's teams have spawned coaches for the NFL's St. Louis Cardinals, Oakland Raiders and Denver Broncos, and several of his players were recognized as All-Americans.

"He was just so inspiring," said Jim Marinos, who played quarterback from 1950-51. "This is a group that I don't think will be ever replicated in the history of the University of California."

Still, the group "kinda likes what they're seeing" in current coach Jeff Tedford-his holistic devotion to his players, taking care to ensure that they are doing well even off the football field.

"We feel very strongly toward him," Erickson said. "He's obviously doing the right things for the kids and making it about the players-how it should be."

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