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Football greats pay tribute to Bill Walsh
A memorial service for the legendary 49ers coach draws 1,200 mourners at Stanford
By Matthew Barrows - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, August 10, 2007
Story appeared in SPORTS section, Page C1
STANFORD -- When Bill Walsh and the 49ers won their first Super Bowl in January 1982, no one knew how the city they represented would react. Did San Francisco feel like celebrating? Should the city hold a parade? What if no one showed up?
Organizers were expecting a crowd of 5,000 in front of City Hall. What the team encountered as it rounded the final corner of the parade route was a throng of a half-million fans who roared to the heavens when the white-haired coach stepped forward to greet them. Walsh was a pope on a balcony, a king before his people, a conquering hero.
Twenty-five years later, the gathering at Walsh's memorial service indeed befitted that of a head of state.
Two former mayors and a U.S. senator were among the 1,200 who filed into Stanford Memorial Church on an impossibly sunny Thursday morning. Media moguls, corporate giants and television personalities also paid their respects.
But mostly it was about football royalty.
There were former players -- Merton Hanks, Dwight Clark, Roger Craig and Jerry Rice to name just a few -- from each of Walsh's three Super Bowl teams. There were men who coached against Walsh -- Dick Vermeil, Mike Ditka and Don Shula -- and those given their start by Walsh, such as Mike Holmgren, who took the day off from coaching the Seattle Seahawks to attend the service.
A phalanx of Stanford football players, all wearing their cardinal jerseys, stood like modern-day knights on either side of the walkway that led to the church. The team filed silently into the church before the service and left just as quietly afterward.
The service was uplifting one moment, touching the next. Most of all, it was appropriate. After all, it was prepared by Walsh, a relentless planner, over a 10-month span.
On Thursday, July 26, Walsh told friends and family to begin readying themselves for the event. He felt as if he had a week left in him, he said. Four days later he died of leukemia at age 75.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell called Walsh a "football inventor." Former quarterback Steve Young remembered him as a master psychologist. Walsh's first words to him: "I thought you were 6-2."
Walsh's most famous pupil, Joe Montana, fought back tears before he could give his reflection.
"He took a 189-pound, skinny-legged quarterback out of western Pennsylvania," Montana said, "and gave me the opportunity to continue doing something that I loved."
Some of the most poignant words were delivered by Harry Edwards, a renowned sports sociologist whom Walsh brought into the 49ers' organization in the early 1980s.
Edwards' stirring eulogy was a short history of everything that Walsh gave to football -- from the minutia of his famed West Coast offense to bigger-picture issues such as advocating minority hiring for coaching positions.
Edwards and others also recalled the deep malaise San Francisco had fallen into when Walsh was hired in 1979 to take over a woeful 2-14 team.
The mayor and a city supervisor had been gunned down in 1978, the same year 900 or so Californians perished in the Jonestown tragedy. And by 1981 the city was just beginning to understand the ramifications of AIDS.
It was Walsh and his first Super Bowl team that lifted the city from its depression, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who was then San Francisco's mayor.
"The sun was a little brighter, the people a little nicer," she said of the day Walsh returned home with the Super Bowl trophy. "That, ladies and gentlemen, is what a great team can do for a city."
About the writer: The Bee's Matthew Barrows can be reached at mbarrows@sacbee.com.
Football greats pay tribute to Bill Walsh
A memorial service for the legendary 49ers coach draws 1,200 mourners at Stanford
By Matthew Barrows - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, August 10, 2007
Story appeared in SPORTS section, Page C1
STANFORD -- When Bill Walsh and the 49ers won their first Super Bowl in January 1982, no one knew how the city they represented would react. Did San Francisco feel like celebrating? Should the city hold a parade? What if no one showed up?
Organizers were expecting a crowd of 5,000 in front of City Hall. What the team encountered as it rounded the final corner of the parade route was a throng of a half-million fans who roared to the heavens when the white-haired coach stepped forward to greet them. Walsh was a pope on a balcony, a king before his people, a conquering hero.
Twenty-five years later, the gathering at Walsh's memorial service indeed befitted that of a head of state.
Two former mayors and a U.S. senator were among the 1,200 who filed into Stanford Memorial Church on an impossibly sunny Thursday morning. Media moguls, corporate giants and television personalities also paid their respects.
But mostly it was about football royalty.
There were former players -- Merton Hanks, Dwight Clark, Roger Craig and Jerry Rice to name just a few -- from each of Walsh's three Super Bowl teams. There were men who coached against Walsh -- Dick Vermeil, Mike Ditka and Don Shula -- and those given their start by Walsh, such as Mike Holmgren, who took the day off from coaching the Seattle Seahawks to attend the service.
A phalanx of Stanford football players, all wearing their cardinal jerseys, stood like modern-day knights on either side of the walkway that led to the church. The team filed silently into the church before the service and left just as quietly afterward.
The service was uplifting one moment, touching the next. Most of all, it was appropriate. After all, it was prepared by Walsh, a relentless planner, over a 10-month span.
On Thursday, July 26, Walsh told friends and family to begin readying themselves for the event. He felt as if he had a week left in him, he said. Four days later he died of leukemia at age 75.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell called Walsh a "football inventor." Former quarterback Steve Young remembered him as a master psychologist. Walsh's first words to him: "I thought you were 6-2."
Walsh's most famous pupil, Joe Montana, fought back tears before he could give his reflection.
"He took a 189-pound, skinny-legged quarterback out of western Pennsylvania," Montana said, "and gave me the opportunity to continue doing something that I loved."
Some of the most poignant words were delivered by Harry Edwards, a renowned sports sociologist whom Walsh brought into the 49ers' organization in the early 1980s.
Edwards' stirring eulogy was a short history of everything that Walsh gave to football -- from the minutia of his famed West Coast offense to bigger-picture issues such as advocating minority hiring for coaching positions.
Edwards and others also recalled the deep malaise San Francisco had fallen into when Walsh was hired in 1979 to take over a woeful 2-14 team.
The mayor and a city supervisor had been gunned down in 1978, the same year 900 or so Californians perished in the Jonestown tragedy. And by 1981 the city was just beginning to understand the ramifications of AIDS.
It was Walsh and his first Super Bowl team that lifted the city from its depression, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who was then San Francisco's mayor.
"The sun was a little brighter, the people a little nicer," she said of the day Walsh returned home with the Super Bowl trophy. "That, ladies and gentlemen, is what a great team can do for a city."
About the writer: The Bee's Matthew Barrows can be reached at mbarrows@sacbee.com.