Hall of Fame: Jerry Keithley (Newport Harbor)

Richard Dunn

During the Great Depression, funds were tight in school athletic

budgets, so Newport Harbor High’s baseball players played softball in

1933-34.

“We played softball with a 12-inch ball, then track (in the spring),”

said Jerry Keithley, an all-around athlete and a member of Newport

Harbor’s first graduating class in 1934.

“We had Ralph Reed as our (track and field) coach, and his objective

... the way he saw it, is that every kid who wanted to participate in

athletics could do so,” added Keithley, who competed in football,

basketball, baseball (sort of) and track and field.

“(Reed) wanted you to participate in as many sports as possible,

whether you were good or bad, and he did quite a job of getting everybody

to participate in athletics. You didn’t have to concentrate on one sport.

You played as many sports as you wanted.”

When Keithley attended Newport Harbor, most of the students arrived by

bus. Keithley’s family lived on Balboa Island and his stop was the last

each day for the bus headed to the high school, which imported kids from

as far south as Laguna Beach.

Keithley, Harbor’s student body president his senior year, earned a

football scholarship to the College of the Pacific in Stockton (now the

University of the Pacific) and played three years for legendary former

coach Amos Alonzo Stagg.

“He was a very highly respected man,” Keithley said of Stagg, a

pioneer of the game and considered by many as the greatest coach in

college football history.

“He was kind of worshiped on the West Coast when he came here (from

the University of Chicago). Every place we went, all the writers were

very interested in him and they wanted to know everything about him. He

was a very fine man. He was very strict, but all coaches were pretty

strict in those days.”

Keithley, a 6-foot, 175-pounder who started at end for Pacific in

1937, enjoyed his best games that season against Nevada and St. Mary’s,

once a college football power.

“I’ve got (Stagg’s) picture on my wall right now. He’s looking at me

and this little trophy he gave me when I graduated -- a Senior Award,”

Keithley said of the coach who introduced sending a man in motion,

reverse runs, end arounds and laterals.

After graduating from Pacific, Keithley pitched for a semipro softball

team in Northern California, then entered World War II in the South

Pacific as the skipper of a mine sweeper.

Following the war, Keithley became the city manager of Stockton, then

continued in that path the rest of his career, becoming city manager of

Palo Alto for 16 years, Oakland for six years and Glendale for six years,

before retiring.

Born in Butte, Mont., Keithley now lives on the golf course at La

Quinta in the desert.

The latest honoree in the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame celebrated

his 61st wedding anniversary in April with his wife, Mary. They have a

son and a daughter and two grandchildren.