Bumming around town with Bill Bumerton

Bumerton is a retired Navy fighter pilot who had been missing in action for several years while he traversed the globe looking for greener grass. He discovered the grass is only greener here (it’s blue in Kentucky), so he returned to again take charge of his 1954 green Hudson Hornet that had been in storage, refilled his pipe, and is continuing his smokin’ ways. Here is what he recently told us at the Sports Paper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You just got done talking to retired Central Kitsap teacher-coach (softball) Bruce Welling and he was in Minneapolis, where his wife Marianne was attending an optometrist conference. Marianne is an optometrist for people with low vision. Welling said he just had taken a walk to the Target Center, which was three blocks from their hotel. … Welling, by the way Big Dawg, was a junior on the 1965 East Bremerton High School football team that you just wrote about in a big story, wasn’t he? He was the backup quarterback, went on to Central Washington for his education and returned to coach at CK. He just retired at the end of last school year and is now volunteering with the Bainbridge High School softball program led by Liz McCluskey, who happens to also work for the Seattle Mariners, which, by the way, you used to cover when your were a regular with the old Bremerton Sun (now Kitsap Sun). You were on the Mariners beat for almost 30 years, the last seven as MLB’s official scorer at Mariner games. You left out, Big Dawg, some important parts of that 1965-66 East High sports year. Those black-and-white Knights reigned supreme in all sports that year, winning Olympic League titles not just in football where they were undefeated, but also in basketball, wrestling, baseball and track and field. The Knights basketball team that year went 17-2 and won two postseason game before playing Port Angeles in a winner-to-state and loser out game. The game was held at Central Kitsap and went back and forth all night long. Sometime in the second half, and you aren’t sure now Big Dawg just when, PA coach Bob Klock made a decisive move. Cal Pharr, an all-around athlete who could shoot the ball, rebound it, pass it and handle it, led East.  Klock, it is alleged, went to his last man on the bench and asked him to go into the game and, according to some stories, bear hug Pharr. He did as told and as Pharr broke away from him he apparently put up his hands in self-defense.

Frank White

Bremerton’s Frank White, who was part of the two-man refereeing crew, blew his whistle and tossed both players out. It was just what Klock had apparently wanted. Port Angeles went on to win the game. White still remembers the game, He says former Bremerton basketball coach and athletic director Larry Gallagher always reminds him of it when they run into each other. “I kicked both of them out of the game,” says White. “I told the players before the game if I see anybody raise his fist they were out of the game.”  That decision didn’t make White popular with East fans and White said the young referee from Port Angeles who was working with him “Was scared to death. I told Bill Clifton (another veteran referee who was in the stands that night) to get by the door so I could get out of here fast after the ballgame.” Gallagher, who now lives in Olympia (three blocks from the Capital Building) and assists his son Jeff with the Black Hills High School basketball program, says Klock “Put in the player and he kind of roughed up Pharr.” Gallagher was a sophomore and was not on the varsity East team. He was sitting in the stands watching when it all unfolded. “Calvin Pharr was the best player. He was a hellevua athlete.” … Gallagher, by the way, Big Dawg, says it was a tough first year for him and his son, the head coach, at Black Hills. He figures it will take another year to get the program the way they want it. “We had a group of players who had been through three coaches. It was a tough deal, and tough to deal with,” says Gallagher. “But we got some good players coming back. We only have one senior, but the sophomores and juniors we have will be good in two years.”  Gallagher said when he and his son took over last season they didn’t know they were supposed to find non-league opponents, so they had to scramble to put that together, and wound up playing at Klahowya and home with Port Angeles. This year they will be at Port Angeles and at Bremerton (Dec.3). … Another thing about that 1965-66 East High sports season was that the Knights apparently had a pretty good center in basketball named Erick Steinman. Gallagher said he was about six-foot-four, and also was a pitcher on the successful East baseball team. “He was a left-handed pitcher who just threw darts,” Gallagher said. … A funny story: Keith Gundlefinger, who was on the 1965 East football team and the school’s basketball team as well, said he only played football one year at Central Washington after graduating from East. The coaches there wanted him to just be a kicker and Gundlefinger want to also play a position and when they couldn’t come to an agreement, he decided not to play his senior year. “Tom Parry was the head coach and he always had some chew in his mouth and when I told him I wasn’t going to play he spit that chew all over,” says Gundlefinger. “I think (assistant coach Gary) Fredricks was more disappointed because he was the one who (recruited) me over there. But he understood I wanted to play a position.” It wasn’t easy for Gundlefinger to get through school. He had to work numerous jobs to pay for it. “I had all kinds of jobs,” he said. “I was an irrigator on a farm, I worked for a moving company and I worked for a health clinic on campus. This was before farmers had motorized irrigation and I had to go out to the farm twice a day to move the irrigation.” Gundlefinger has two sons, one (Mike) played select baseball all over Indiana when they lived in Indianapolis and then played at Western Carolina and Southwest Missouri State. His other son, Brian, is living in Maui. “He’s kind of living the life we all wish we could live,” Gundlefinger says. “He worked for a cruise ship for a while, then he got to know a guy who owns a zip line in the hills of Hawaii and he hired him to be a marketing and zip line guy. And he lays on the beach.” … Another one of those East guys on the 1965 football team, John Dearing, told you he intended to be a singer but discovered early that he didn’t have the chops for it so got his degree in broadcasting and at one time in the late 1970s worked as a color man with Bud Grahn on KBRO Radio in Bremerton doing high school football and basketball games. He says he wasn’t very good at it and eventually went to work in public affairs for the federal government in Burea of Land Management. He retired a little over two years ago and moved to Mesquite, Nevada where he does a little writing and photography on sports and veteran affairs for a quarterly magazine, plays golf and senior softball and sings with a guy (Mike Rye) at various sports bars around town. Dearing, who plays bass guitar, says they have a regular gig at the Playoff, a sports bar, but also play in other places as well.  … Biff Strom, the quarterback of the 1965 East football team (he also was an all-Olympic League defensive back), says he cracked five ribs in the last football game of that year against Shelton (a 21-0 victory to claim the OL championship) and didn’t know it. He was a pretty good wrestler and was 5-0 in matches and had visions of maybe a state championship at 145 pounds. But in practice before his sixth match, Mike Altenburg  (also on the football team), who was the nephew of his future wife, “had his hands around my chest and threw me down. I fell right on his fist and broke one of those ribs. I took my wife (then his sweetheart, Karen Barnhouse) to the basketball game that night and I couldn’t do anything. The next morning they put me in the Navy Hospital for a week. They took 17 x-rays before they could find out what was going on. The broken rib punctured my lower left lung. Strom back to play on the East baseball team in the spring of 1966 and wound up hitting .350 while playing third base. He went to school at Pacific Lutheran and then went into the Air Force for six years. He became a Weapons System Officer, sitting in the backseat of the Phantom F4 fighter jet. Then he was in the Air National Guard for 20 years In Hawaii. He went to work in the pest control business in Hawaii and eventually moved to Sacramento area where he still is in the bug business (he has a masters in entomology).  Strom’s real name is Donald, but he got the name Biff from his mother who couldn’t remember his name and started calling him that because it rhymed with Butch and Buzz, the nicknames of his two older brothers. Just so you know, Big Dawg, Butch’s real name is Robert and Buzz is William. I know, I know, don’t ask me how Strom’s mother got their nicknames. … Ray Magerstaedt, an all-Olympic League guard on the 1965 East football team, served in Vietnam during the war there. He remembers “when the monsoons came and being scared to go on patrol. I would think about my football teams all through the patrol. I would repeat all the games in my head when the rain was coming down (so much) I couldn’t see two feet ahead of me. Girl scouts could have taken me out. But I played the games over and over (to keep from having those scared feelings). I could tell you a lot about those games. In our first game (a 24-13 victory over Mount Tahoma) the guy in front of me beat me up. All the skin on my forehead was scraped off because dirt (from the Lincoln Bowl in Tacoma where the game was played was all dirt) got in between my head and helmet. A lot of time I was faced down in the dirt. The guy, and I’m not sure of his name now, played division two football. I’m not proud of that, but when somebody is better than you there is not much you can do. But I didn’t lose to a man after that.” … Hey, Big Dawg, Clay Blackwood, who was the volleyball coach at Olympic College not too many years ago, and did a great job there, is back coaching the sport in the area. He got hired in June as the new coach at Bremerton High School. You will do a story on his rebuilding efforts there when you get a chance, right? But for now, just go get me a tall latte.

 

 

See more stories, including the big one on the East High 1965 football team at http://www.sportspaper.org/