One last swish for Yardley

John Hall

The bird flew high once again here. It may have been his final public

flight, but it’s not a sad time, because he’s definitely up there

flying as high as it gets. That’s for sure. We have already done our

mourning, and this was an occasion to celebrate as we smile and laugh

and remember a remarkable man. We have too many good memories to

allow any further sorrow to get in the way. We don’t pass off. We do

it George’s way, with a mighty grin, and shoot for nothing but net.

George Harry Yardley III was born Nov. 3, 1928 in Hollywood, and

he died Aug. 12, 2004 at home in Newport Beach after a 16-month

struggle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease. It

is so named for the New York Yankee baseball hero who, although

struck down at the peak of his career with ALS, said in his famous

farewell address over an echoing microphone in Yankee Stadium that he

considered himself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.

When first diagnosed with this same destructive terminal horror a

year ago April, George, bravely and sunny-side up, typically

commented he considered himself to be much luckier than Gehrig,

because at age 74, he’d been blessed to live twice as many years. He

made it to 75, just three months short of 76, still feeling lucky. He

was buried last week with a private family graveside service at

Pacific View Memorial Park.

Nicknamed “The Bird” during his Stanford days, where he graduated

with a civil engineering degree in 1950, George dominated a lot of

box scores over the years, but the box score he leaves behind is the

most impressive of all -- dynamic daughters Marilyn and Anne; sons

Rich and Rob, the terrific twins; 14 grandchildren; younger brother

Bob; nephew Bill; and the countless number of loving friends who have

joined his family.

We had a similar memorial for wife and supermom Diana in the same

place where the family, including the much-loved matriarch, Dorothy

Yardley, had so many wonderful celebrations after Diana left us over

five years ago, on Jan. 14, 1999. The classic Yardley Christmas

cards, hilarious family portraits with the entire clan -- old and

young and younger -- in various costumes that have become

collectibles with his friends continued right through the most recent

holiday in December. But George was the first to tell you he was

never the same without Diana.

So, here we are, and there they are together again, at last side

by side at Pacific View. Lifetime loving partners then and now, and

we will leave it to the poets to put a better exclamation point on

this forever romance. We will never forget either Diana or George.

It is known by everyone that George, the marvelous athlete who

also won senior golf and tennis titles on reconstructed knees and was

a two-time All-American volleyball spiker, is a member of just about

every Hall of Fame ever invented -- starting, of course, with the NBA

Hall of Fame. He’s also a member of the Stanford, Orange County, Bay

Area, Michigan, Newport Harbor High and Fort Wayne Red Coat halls, to

scratch a few.

Not so well known to the masses is that the NBA’s first

2,000-point man and then young and slim, 6-foot-5 blond beanpole who

broke the immortal Hank Luisetti’s scoring records at Stanford was

also a Hall of Fame friend, son, husband, grandfather and, most of

all, a Hall of Fame human being.

I’m not his oldest friend. Some here today go all the way back to

grade school. George never lost touch with anybody. But I’m old

enough. We met as Stanford freshmen on the first day of basketball

practice in 1946, about 58 years ago this fall. He soon proved to me

that I had more of a future dribbling words as a newspaperman than in

dribbling a ball.

He also proved to me he was and will always remain the most loyal

and all-around joyful person I’ve ever known, a sheer delight to be

around with his unwavering sense of humor, a joker deluxe, proud and

sometimes feisty but also always extremely humble, a hard worker who

built his George Yardley Co., specializing in mechanical-engineered

equipment from scratch with one employee in 1960 into a major league

industrial firm employing a force of nearly 50 men and women. And

generous to the last drop. He gave his name to an endless list of

charity events and supported dozens of others.

We were all lucky his family staged that great tribute dinner for

him April 29 at Big Canyon, where we all got to tell him to his face

how much we loved him.

Nothing but net, George, nothing but net.

* JOHN HALL, a San Clemente resident, is a retired Los Angeles

Times and Orange County Register sports writer.