Friends remember Andros as educator in emotional tribute to beloved coach.

Byline: Bob Rodman The Register-Guard

CORVALLIS - It was a memorial service to honor Dee Andros, but it truly was a "celebration of his life."

For nearly two hours on a sunlit but wind-chilled Friday afternoon, former players, former coaching comrades and many others paid tribute to the man known as "The Great Pumpkin."

Andros, the rotund Oregon State football coach in the 1960s and 1970s, died nine days earlier from complications of diabetes and a series of strokes. He was 79 years old.

"The earth has shaken and a mountain has fallen," said Rev. John Dennis, a Corvallis minister.

The coach of OSU's famed "Giant Killers" team in 1967, Andros led the Beavers for 11 seasons. But he was so Oregon State that the Ol' Punkin bled orange and black for the better part of 40 years, touching and impacting thousands of lives as coach, athletic director, fund-raiser, friend and soulmate.

"He taught us football," Steve Preece, a quarterback on that Giant Killer team, told an estimated gathering of 1,000 people. "But more than that, he taught us life's lessons.

"There is not a person who's not a better human being for having known Dee Andros."

Dry eyes were difficult to come by as one speaker after another took memories to the podium, people such as former OSU basketball coach Paul Valenti, retired Marine Col. Julian McFadden, former Andros assistant coaches Bob Herndon and Ed Knecht, and longtime pal and former Washington State and Fresno State coach Jim Sweeney.

Videotaped messages from former OSU player and former Oregon coach Rich Brooks as well as former OSU coach and current San Francisco 49ers coach Dennis Erickson were shown.

The audience was filled with card-carrying members of the Andros Fan Club, even Ducks - Oregon director of athletics Bill Moos, former UO athletic director Norv Ritchey, former UO football assistant coach Joe Schaffeld, former California basketball player Darrell Imhoff, former OSU basketball coach Jim Anderson, former OSU quarterback Paul Brothers and former UO players Dave Wilcox, Doug Post and Darrell Aschbacher.

Amid film of the Giant Killers' 3-0 win over USC, amid photos of Andros and his two families - the real one with wife Luella and daughter Jeanna and his football one - amid a clip of Andros parked in the back of an apparently unsinkable crew boat and amid a photographic trip through Andros' full and rich life, the celebration went on.

"How great it is that we are having this for the Great Pumpkin on Halloween," said Paul Marriott, a longtime friend.

One could almost see Andros, arms waving, his game face on and spitting fire and brimstone as he rumbled down the ramp onto the turf of what was then called Parker Stadium.

If your memory was dim, the speaker system in OSU's indoor practice facility - where the ceremony was staged - brightened it, playing portions of Andros' famous and fiery speeches.

"It's no sin to get blocked," he shouted, "but it is a sin to stay blocked. ... You've got to believe you're as good as anybody in America. ... I played the Ducks 11 times and won nine of them, and the two the Ducks won were the most miserable two weeks of my life.

"I had to listen to it for the whole year. It's not just another game, it's a war (with the Ducks). ... You've got 60 minutes of football left (he'd tell each season's seniors), but you've got 40 years to remember it."

There was talk of Andros' take on the role of a quarterback. "He's very important," the former Marine who won a Bronze Star for his World War II heroics at Iwo Jima in 1945 would say. "He's the guy who gets the ball in the hands of the fullback."

Craig Hanneman, the only single captain Andros had on a team (in 1970), said the coach "had a special place in his heart for fullbacks. He recruited 10 a year and once started 17 of them in a game."

And, Andros would not-so-gently remind folks: "Why pass the ball? There's only three things that can happen, and two of them are bad."

Asked once to recite an Iwo Jima speech he used to motivate his teams, Andros replied, "I don't remember, but if I said it, it happened."

McFadden, a former fighter pilot and Vietnam War veteran, said: "Dee made me feel like I was somebody. I was one of the little people from the Andros Nation, and I loved him."

A tearful Sweeney, whose duels between his WSU teams and the Andros squads became the stuff of legends, seemed the most impacted by Andros' death but held on for story time:

"Dee loved the Marines. When they played `The Star-Spangled Banner' before a game, he'd salute. He thought they were playing his song," Sweeney said.

"Dee loved all of his players, whether they were great or not."

Sweeney struggled to finish.

"I know he's gone," the sad coach said. "I know he's gone to a better place.

"God, I do love Dee."

CAPTION(S):

Jim Sweeney, a friend and colleague of Dee Andros, told the crowd that "Dee loved all of his players, whether they were great or not."