Pirate Treasures -- Gary Blockburger
Orange Coast College Hall of Famer Jim Carnett offers us a special glimpse into a former Pirate and lifelong friend, Gary Blockburger.
I've known Gary Blockburger since we were in the fifth grade.
We share roles in a story set in a specific place and at a specific time. Its details, however, have grown a bit sepia-hued over the decades. We've had 60 years to embellish. We grew up on Costa Mesa's east side in the 1950s and early '60s. To this day, we live blocks apart with our wives – and memories -- near our old stomping grounds.
We both attended Lindbergh Elementary School, Everett Rea Junior High, Costa Mesa High and Orange Coast College.
In school, Gary was a big deal. His name conjured up images of speed and power. Tall, blonde and athletic he was a great competitor, a fine student and all-around nice guy.
Girls swooned over him. Guys saw him as iconic and they aspired to be as cool as Gary was. Many boys even imitated his slight stutter (which has long since been corrected).
I was the antithesis of Blockburger. Unartful and gangly, I loved sports but was anything but an athlete.
Fast forward 60 years.
Gary and I chatted the other day about a 1955 event that's been in our memory banks for decades. We were fifth-graders, and it was long a spring tradition for Lindbergh's fifth-grade boys to play the sixth graders in a basketball game to establish athletic superiority for the school year.
Preparations for the '55 game began weeks in advance. Practices were arranged. Moms dyed white T-shirts and trunks in our fifth-grade colors, pink and black. Gary was a gifted athlete, though not a basketball player per se. He was a sprinter … a locomotive: blazing fast, powerful and he could jump. His son, Sheldon, decades later, won a bronze medal for the U.S. in the decathlon at the 1991 Pan Am Games. Sheldon was an outstanding OCC – and later LSU -- track and field athlete. The Newport Harbor High grad was Coast's Athlete of the Year for 1984-85.
As a high school senior in 1962, Sheldon's dad, Gary, ran a 9.5 hundred-yard-dash in the state finals, one of the fastest times in the nation. A different era, he also won a race that year in his bare feet. He was an OCC sprinter for the 1962-63 season.
Gary was a starter for our fifth-grade hoops squad. I rode the bench. That was okay, I was proud to be on the roster.
Despite the many good athletes on our team, the more physically mature sixth graders were favored. Students turned out in force to watch "The Bruhaha on the Blacktop."
We fifth-graders played well. We, in fact, won the game by a score of something like 44-36. Gary, at 5-feet, 10-inches (he was 6-2 at OCC) and with noteworthy speed and jumping skills, was a force in the paint.
I didn't step on the court until the final two minutes of play and hit a pair of set shots. They were meaningless but made for a sweet lifelong memory. They also represented the sum total of my athletic career.
My first shot banked in; the second was silk. As each left my hand, I threw up a prayer: "Please God, let this go in."
I don't think I was delusional when I noticed a couple of girls sending shy smiles in my direction during the postgame party held in our classroom.
Gary and I rarely saw each other after high school. He worked for 26 years as maintenance and operations director for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District. I was Orange Coast College's director of community relations for 37.
We had children … and grandchildren.
A few years ago, I wrote a Daily Pilot column describing my battle with Parkinson's disease. I received an immediate telephone call from Gary.
"Listen Jimmy, I've got Parkinson's, too. Let's talk."
We met at TeWinkle Park for a brisk stroll and conversation. We've since talked a good deal about Parkinson's … and about life. We exercise weekly with a dozen or so other Parkinsonians. We encourage one another, and we share coping strategies.
It's been great seeing Gary again; and some things haven't changed. He's still a great athlete.
I, on the other hand, haven't hit a jumper since the Johnson Administration.
Andrew Johnson, that is.
