{"id":808,"date":"2013-09-19T22:32:58","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T22:32:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=808"},"modified":"2013-09-19T22:32:58","modified_gmt":"2013-09-19T22:32:58","slug":"white-and-pharr-get-tangled-in-a-little-bit-of-east-high-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=808","title":{"rendered":"White and Pharr get tangled in a little bit of East High history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bumming around town with Bill Bumerton<\/h1>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019 ways. Here is what he recently told us at the Sports Paper.<\/p>\n

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\"Bumerton<\/a>
Bumerton sees all<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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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. \u2026 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\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019t 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"Frank<\/a><\/p>\n

Frank White<\/p>\n

Bremerton\u2019s 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. \u201cI kicked both of them out of the game,\u201d says White. \u201cI told the players before the game if I see anybody raise his fist they were out of the game.\u201d\u00a0 That decision didn\u2019t make White popular with East fans and White said the young referee from Port Angeles who was working with him \u201cWas 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.\u201d 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 \u201cPut in the player and he kind of roughed up Pharr.\u201d Gallagher was a sophomore and was not on the varsity East team. He was sitting in the stands watching when it all unfolded. \u201cCalvin Pharr was the best player. He was a hellevua athlete.\u201d \u2026 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. \u201cWe had a group of players who had been through three coaches. It was a tough deal, and tough to deal with,\u201d says Gallagher. \u201cBut 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.\u201d\u00a0 Gallagher said when he and his son took over last season they didn\u2019t 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). \u2026 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. \u201cHe was a left-handed pitcher who just threw darts,\u201d Gallagher said. \u2026 A funny story: Keith Gundlefinger, who was on the 1965 East football team and the school\u2019s 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\u2019t come to an agreement, he decided not to play his senior year. \u201cTom Parry was the head coach and he always had some chew in his mouth and when I told him I wasn\u2019t going to play he spit that chew all over,\u201d says Gundlefinger. \u201cI 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.\u201d It wasn\u2019t easy for Gundlefinger to get through school. He had to work numerous jobs to pay for it. \u201cI had all kinds of jobs,\u201d he said. \u201cI 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.\u201d 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. \u201cHe\u2019s kind of living the life we all wish we could live,\u201d Gundlefinger says. \u201cHe 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.\u201d \u2026 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\u2019t 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\u2019t 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.\u00a0 \u2026 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\u2019t 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\u00a0 (also on the football team), who was the nephew of his future wife, \u201chad 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\u2019t 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).\u00a0 Strom\u2019s real name is Donald, but he got the name Biff from his mother who couldn\u2019t 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\u2019s real name is Robert and Buzz is William. I know, I know, don\u2019t ask me how Strom\u2019s mother got their nicknames. \u2026 Ray Magerstaedt, an all-Olympic League guard on the 1965 East football team, served in Vietnam during the war there. He remembers \u201cwhen 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\u2019t 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\u2019m not sure of his name now, played division two football. I\u2019m not proud of that, but when somebody is better than you there is not much you can do. But I didn\u2019t lose to a man after that.\u201d \u2026 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.<\/p>\n

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See more stories, including the big one on the East High 1965 football team at http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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