LosGatosObserver.com

Charlie and Lucy Wedemeyer last summer at the Santa Clara Valley All-Star football game named in his honor

I first met Charlie Wedemeyer when I was Sports Editor of the Los Gatos Times-Saratoga Observer in the late 1970s. Los Gatos was on its way to one of the seven championships Wedemeyer won in nine years as head coach of the Wildcats, beating Branham in a huge game late in the season.

In that game, Los Gatos had a long drive for the winning touchdown that took up an entire quarter. Running back Jeff Petulla carried the ball every play on that drive, running through the same hole on every down.

Following the game, I asked Wedemeyer why he called the exact same play 13 times in a row. He looked me in the eye and said, “They never stopped it, did they? If they had ever stopped it, I would have called something else.”

Wedemeyer had it all figured out. He was the one responsible for turning Los Gatos into the football dynasty that it is today. The only thing he couldn’t figure out was how to defeat ALS, although he fought off the fatal disease for 32 years after doctors told him he had no more than two years to live.

Wedemeyer died early Thursday morning in a San Jose hospital surrounded by family and friends. He was 64. He will be sorely missed, but never forgotten.

Charlie was the youngest of nine children, and he was voted Prep Athlete of the Decade in Hawaii in the 1960s. Wedemeyer went on to Michigan State University, and he participated in the East-West Shrine Game following his senior year.

He married his high school sweetheart, Lucy Dangler, in 1966. He and Lucy moved to Los Gatos in 1973, and Wedemeyer took over the Los Gatos football program in 1977.

Shortly after taking over the program, Wedemeyer began to notice that he had trouble gripping the chalk in class. He was diagnosed with ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, shortly thereafter, but he never let it slow him down.

Wedemeyer kept coaching — and winning. By 1982, he was forced to a wheelchair. And early in 1985, he nearly died when he stopped breathing three times and was forced to undergo a tracheotomy and breath thereafter only with the aid of a respirator.

Unable to speak, Wedemeyer used Lucy as his voice and kept on coaching. He would whisper plays to Lucy, who would relay them to assistant coach Butch Cattolico, who would in turn signal them into the field. Los Gatos ended up beating St. Francis that fall to win its first-ever CCS football championship.

Let go as football coach in 1986, Wedemeyer refused to quit coaching. His modified van has been a fixture in the end zone of all Los Gatos football games since. He loved it when players would crowd around his van following a game to hear what the coach had to say.

Charlie Wedemeyer was born February 19, 1946 in Honolulu. His older brother, Herman “Squirmin” Wedemeyer was an All-American running back for St. Mary’s College in the 1930s.

Wedemeyer graduated from Punahou High School in 1965. He starred in football, basketball and baseball and went on to play wide receiver at Michigan State, where he was the roommate of former Los Angeles Dodger Steve Garvey.

In 1983, residents of Los Gatos organized a “We Love Charlie” Night at St. Mary’s Hall where money was raised to help Charlie and Lucy fight his disease. In 1987, PBS aired an Emmy award winning documentary titled “One More Season,” and a year later a made-for-TV movie “Quiet Victory: The Charlie Wedemeyer Story” aired.

In 1983, I wrote a feature story on Wedemeyer’s battle with ALS. In that story, I interview several people close to Charlie, including Cattolico, who said at the time that he had never met anyone who understood football better.

“I have never dealt with anybody who has a keener offensive mind,” said Cattolico back in 1983. “Charlie will just look at a defense and say, ‘OK, we can do this and this and this.’ I have been coaching with him for seven years now, but I still don’t know if I understand everything he is trying to do.”

On July 21, the 36th annual Charlie Wedemeyer High School All-Star Football Game will be played at Spartan Stadium. Only this year, Charlie and his van will be missing from the end zone for the first time since the game was named in his honor.

But something tells me that Charlie will be watching that game.

He was more than just a football coach. He was an inspiration to the thousands of kids he coached and to everyone in the town he adopted as his new home.

Services have tentatively been set for Saturday, June 19.

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