The Willamette University Football Team, Part 1

When the Japanese attacked Oahu all leisure travel was suspended, leaving hundreds of people stranded in Hawaii.

Among the people stranded, were Hollywood movie makers, and the Willamette University and the San Jose University football teams. The Hollywood movie makers immediately pitched in and made dummy cardboard planes and placed them on the airfields to fool Japanese into thinking not all planes were hit.

The Willamette football team made an immediate, active, and (for some) a long-term commitment.

One of the biggest football events in Hawaii was the Shrine Bowl game, climaxing the school football season. In 1941 University of Hawaii was scheduled to play teams from Willamette and San Jose. In the first game, on December 6, 1941, Willamette lost 20-6 to the University of Hawaii and had the rest of their time in Hawaii to "relax." But that didn't happen.

PHOTO: The 1941 Willamette University Bearcats: (front row, from left): Irv Miller, Cecil Conner, Pat White, Tony Fraiola, Al Walden, Jim Fitzgerald, Buddy Reynolds, Chuck Furno, (second row from left) Earl Hampton, Bill Reder, Martin Barstad, Ted Ogdahl, Jim Burgess, Gene Stewart, Glenn Nordquist, Wally Olson; (third row from left) Dick Kern (manager), Paul Cookingham, George Constable, David Kelly, Ken Jacobson, Allan Barrett, Marshall Barbour, Clarence Williams, Assistant Coach Howard Maple; (back row from left) David Kurtz, Robert Bennett, Gordon Moore, Andrew Rogers, Neil Morley, Marv Goodman, Carrel "Truck" Deiner, Coach Roy S. "Spec" Keene. Note Cookingham, Kurtz, Clarence Walden and coach Maple did not make the trip to Hawaii. (Willamette University)

The morning of the attack, their coach volunteered his players for guard duty at Punahou School. And he sent the Willamette co-eds who were in Honolulu to a Navy hospital to act as nurses’ aides. The students were for two weeks before passage could be secured for them aboard the ocean liner President Coolidge.

(If you read the next post, you will read a different version of "volunteering." In that article, with direct quotes from the players, the coach bartered the services of the team for passage home. However, I think the athletes would probably have volunteered. Many of them went on to serve in the military during the war. Bill Reder was killed in action, and many continue in community, political, and social service to their country. The San Jose team members also aided the Army, but it is not so much part of the schools tradition. At Willamette, that team is mythic--and all were inducted in the Hall Of Fame for their action.)

Some of the football players from Willamette stayed on island to become volunteer policemen, and later join the regular forces and some worked with the Army Engineers at Punahou.

NOTES: The story of the stranded Shrine Bowl football teams was featured on an ESPN special that aired November 24-28, 2000 entitled “The Moment of Impact." Another good coverage of the event can be read at http://www.d3football.com/notables/2003/12
as well as the Willamette University website.

The Sorority Sister and the Pilot, 3

Bill graduated from Mount Union College of Ohio in 1938 and worked for the Ohio State Unemployment Office for the stupendous salary of $115 per month. In 1940 when an army “fly boy” came through the office inviting those eligible to apply for the United States Army Air Corps, Bill signed up. He remembers, “The salary was $225 per month plus travel and glamour! I wasn’t sure what an airplane was but the money sounded great.”

In June 1941 Bill graduated from flight school in Alabama and was immediately assigned to Hickam Field as a bomber pilot. He admits, “I was never a star in formation flying, I’ve always suspected that’s why I wasn’t chosen to be a fighter pilot. The guys I went to flight school with called me ‘Lucky Sam.’” But when I asked him why he got that name, he answered, “Sam’s my middle name. My friend, Phil Rasmussen still calls me that.” He winked. “Phil and I would ride around Honolulu in our new Chevy convertibles at 70 miles an hour. That was the kind of formation flying I understood!”

One of Bill and Phil’s routine adventures was to go down to the dock to meet the Lurline. “We’d look over the ‘crop’ of college girls that came in,” he said. “I missed the afternoon Ruth arrived, but coincidentally, I was invited to the Cal party by a fellow officer at Hickam. When I met Ruth, it was love at first sight.”
Ruth doesn’t remember their first meeting so fondly. She says, “I thought he was a typical fly boy. He was fortified by rum and Coca Cola and I didn’t think much of him. Bill asked me out on a date for the next night. I said yes, but I did it to appease him. In his condition, I assumed he would never remember me by morning.”

Ruth left that party with another army lieutenant. She can’t remember his name, just that they went to get ice cream and he took her straight back to her room with not even a handshake between them. But, unknown to Ruth, Bill was already jealous.

The next day when Bill called Ruth to confirm the date, she said, “Oh, I thought you were kidding. I have a date with the Navy.” Bill was furious. “The Navy!” He shook his head as he told the story. “I swore I would never call her again.”


PHOTO: Hangar 11 at Hickam Field, December 7, 1941

But Bill was already in love; he went to his best friend, Phil Rasmussen, for advice, and Phil came up with the idea of taking Ruth on a beach picnic. “Phil and I always had a ‘kit’ for beach parties in the trunks of our cars—complete with a barbecue grill and an army wool blanket.”

Ruth accepted and Bill picked her up in his red Chevy convertible. “The blanket didn’t impress her,” Bill recalls. “And that set the tone for our 1941 romance.”

However, day by day, Ruth’s opinion of Bill softened and when it was time for her to return to California, she told one of her sorority sisters she was going to stay in Hawaii and find a place to live because, “I think Lt. Cope might ask me to marry him.”

Bill finished the story. “Well, Ruth didn’t say yes without a qualification. She said yes, then added, ‘By the way, I love you.’”

Ruth Lindman and William Cope married at the Hickam Officers’ Club on November 27, 1941. Phil Rasmussen was their best man.
PHOTOS: Hickam Air Field, December 7, 1941 (U.S. Air Force)

The Sorority Sister and the Pilot, Part 2

PHOTO: During the war the Aloha Tower was painted in camouflage.

To continue with Ruth and Bill's love story:
When the day came, Ruth and Bill were waiting for us at a window-side table. Ruth was in a pink and green calico mu’u mu’u; she wore a white silk hibiscus over her left ear, a cloud of rouge on her cheeks and gleam of frosted pink lipstick. “Bad Billy” stood when my husband and I approached the table. The men both retired military officers, both pilots, settled in for a non-stop conversation about aviation. My husband, in his fifties, and Bill, approaching ninety, reminisced about their first planes, first squadrons and glided their hands in the air as they simulated a few of their particular flights.

Ruth looked out the window and pointed to the Aloha Tower. From our vantage point from the Lurline only the peak of the tower was visible at the end of the Aloha Tower Marketplace. “The first time I sailed into Honolulu the tower was the tallest building on the island. It was the only thing you could see from the ship, except for the Royal Hawaiian and the Moana Hotels.”


PHOTO: A band scene on the Lurline in the late 1930's.

These days neither the Royal nor the Moana are visible from one block away and the view of them from a ship is dwarfed by high-rise hotels and sleek extensions to historic buildings.
PHOTO: State room of the Lurline, pre-World War II.

Ruth continued, “I remember looking at the clock on the Aloha Tower, but I forget what time it was when we docked. I think it was early afternoon; it was August of 1941…I can’t remember the date. I remember seeing the big A-L-O-H-A letters and the American flag flying. I had the same feeling I had when I saw the Statue of Liberty when I sailed home from Europe.

“We stood at the rail of the Lurline and threw paper streamers and colored confetti to the crowds on the dock. They still had boys who dove for coins then. It was just like in the movies. There were hula dancers on the pier wearing ti leaf skirts and the Royal Hawaiian Band played for us.” Ruth remembers walking down the gangway. “The perfume of the flowers hit you as soon as you walked off on to the dock and so did the women selling the flowers. They were a quite aggressive lot.”

(When I talk about the lei sellers during the war, I mention that the police often had to break up fights among lei sellers at the pier.)

During the summer of 1941, Ruth, along with five of her Alpha Delta Pi sorority sisters, came to Hawaii for a whirlwind month-long vacation of golf, swimming and parties with fellow “Cal” (University of California, Berkeley) friends. Ruth was 25 years old, unattached, and had no intention of settling down.

Her first night in Honolulu, Ruth went to a party thrown for her and her sorority sisters by “Cal” friends. It was at that party that she met Bill.

PHOTO: Bill and Ruth's apartment on base at Hickam was on Signer Boulevard, across the street from the Officers' Club. This is a photo of that housing in 2006.