Reliving past glory days at OCC

Although he missed the 50th anniversary of Orange Coast College’s

‘51 championship football team last November, veteran Pirate center

Gil Stern has been sharing plans to visit and communicate with his

old teammates.

Stern, who has been traveling around the globe for years as an oil

exploration consultant, finally chose to call it a day and retire.

He reflects back on yesteryear with admiration for ’51 grid chief

Ray Rosso.

“Ray Rosso was the kind of guy you loved to play for. He was a

successful coach and he knew the game. He was a first class guy on

and off the field,” he said.

One thing he favored when he first arrived at OCC in the fall of

‘50 was the young staff, which included his sister as one

administrative secretary.

Rosso’s youthful grid staff featured assistant John Owens, who

once tutored Stern in high school; line coach Hueston Harper and end

coach Roy Ward, a former Newport and UC Berkeley grad.

To Stern, that meant a burst of constant energy and a flow of new

and fresh ideas.

One example that he recalled was that Russo had a program where

the plays were not addressed by numbers. He said they went by names

like “rocket” and “jet.”

Stern, who is married to a lovely lady named Jean, favored the

early day OCC since it had a spirited energy fairly remote from any

community.

The campus was located on a portion of the old Santa Ana Army Air

Base and a fair number of college personnel, including Rosso and

president Dr. Basil Peterson, lived in campus housing.

In addition, the football team had no local stadium in the early

years, but scheduled its games at two area high schools, Newport

Harbor High and Huntington Beach. He said the high school maintenance

staff “was always friendly and helpful.”

With amusement, however, he remembered that Huntington Beach was

sometimes blanketed by heavy fog, which made it hard to play football

at night.

He said, “Orange Coast was a good time. I enjoyed it.” Stern was

not recruited by OCC, but he did recall such an approach once by a

San Bernardino man once when he was working in an orange grove.” It

felt a bit strange and he declined.

Ironically, San Bernardino advanced in ’51 to temporarily capture

the championship, but it wound up with two ineligible players and had

to forfeit four games. Hence, OCC, a 14-6 loser to the Indians, took

the game by forfeit, 1-0.

Asked for his commentary on OCC’s ’51 success as a team, Stern

said, “We had good athletes and they were really tough guys.”

He mentioned some examples, like tackle Bob Woodhouse, guard

Freddie Owens, tackle Ed Mayer and tackle Jim Keeline.

“We had a lot of respect for each other,” he said, and the team

“was like a family thing.” Players come from many different

communities, but he didn’t recall anyone identifying each other in

that light.

The Pirates earned a mark of 7-3 overall and 6-0 in the

conference, scoring 147 points to the opposition’s 120.

Although most all their early day records have tumbled, two big

efforts still bring recall -- Johnny Black’s 234 yards rushing for

one game (vs. Mt. San Antonio) and Smith’s 111 yards rushing in one

game (vs. Chaffey).

Other runners drawing praise from Stern were Howard Del Miller,

Ned Parsons, Harlow Richardson and Jesse Smith.

After OCC, Stern said he shifted to Arizona to major in geology

and play two sports, football and baseball.

He had played golf under Rosso at one time and enjoyed that sport.

He also served as a line coach for the Arizona frosh gridders one

year.

He recalled three fine years in baseball as a catcher at Orange

High and also recalls the powerful Harbor High diamond outfit from

‘48, which won the league behind a sterling left-handed pitcher named

Frank Hamilton.

On a page of historical interest, Stern’s father, Herman, is the

one who surfaced with the name Yorba Linda for an area in east Orange

County.

Herman and his brother, Jacob, had been developing land in that

region.

Stern said, “He knew the family fairly well.”