George Stanich Interview

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George Stanich — July, 2018

George Stanich won the Bronze Medal in the 1948 Olympics in the high jump. He finished second in the 1948 Olympic Trials, raising his personal best twice by a total of over two inches. He was a three sport star at UCLA in track and field, basketball and baseball. His top NCAA finishes in the high jump were seventh in 1948 and fourth in 1949. George’s baseball highlights included pitching a five-hit, 2-0 shutout over NCAA Champion Southern Cal. The three-year starter on UCLA’s basketball team led the Bruins to their first NCAA basketball tournament, played in several East-West All-Star games and was the initial All-American under legendary Coach John Wooden. He started college at Sacramento City College and was the baseball team’s leading pitcher, NCJCC champ in the high jump and 120 yard high hurdles and all conference center in basketball. In his prep days, George was also a three sport star. His personal best high jump was six feet, eight and ¼ inches at the 1948 Olympic Trials, though he is reported to have jumped two inches higher at a meet in Czechoslovakia. George was inducted into the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame in 1985. He graduated from UCLA in 1950, played minor league baseball for several years and served two years in the U.S. Navy before his 37-year professional career in teaching and coaching. He has three children, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild and lives with his wife, Valerie, of nearly 67 years in Gardena, California. George was extremely generous to spend two hours and fifteen minutes in two phone calls for this interview in late July and early August, 2018.

GCR:

You represented the United States 70 years ago at the 1948 Olympics in London in the high jump. As it was the first Olympics in 12 years due to World War II, what was the feeling for you and your teammates to compete for our country in the land of one of our staunchest allies?

We were all elated and I was for many, many reasons in going there. We took a boat which took us eight days and I’d say that three fourths of the Olympic team was on that boat. So I became friends with and got to know teammates from all of the other sports. England was one of our greatest wartime allies and we did stay in a military base that was about 50 miles outside of London. I stayed with an FBI man in a two room place in this air force base. I still wonder in my heart if the two pilots who occupied that room made it through the war or not. My wife and I have been over to Normandy a few times and we have had some experiences that were unreal meeting people who were taking part in that invasion. When we were in London for the Olympics they were still under rations and there was rubble all over so it was a post-war time. On top of elation, the other big feeling I had was competing for our country. That was an honor and it was a special time. I was a teenager so I was elated and appreciative. The war was terrible, but the price of freedom is very high. I have also visited Pearl Harbor. So that time in London was a very special time.

GCR:

Since you were only 19 years old and had only been competing in the high jump in high school and two years of college, was it amazing to be in the Olympics and competing with the best in the world?

I don’t know whether anybody else could have happen to them what happened to me as I had a very unusual way that I made the team. We didn’t have the Olympics in 1940 or 1944 because of the war. In 1940 they were supposed to be in Tokyo or Helsinki and in 1944 they were supposed to be in London, so this was the first one after the war. In my getting on the team it was an unbelievable situation making the team as a teenager. There were a lot of men at the Olympic Trials that were older and would have been our top runners or jumpers or athletes in 1944. So they were just hanging on and the high school kids were coming up and were phenomenal and there were guys like myself that were just young and getting started. So the Trials were a combination of the older guys hanging on to try to make the team and the young kids knocking on the door. It was all part of the Trials and making the team. Our country is such that you have the Trials on one day and the top three make it. I’ve always counted my blessings that I lived in a country that had that form and where politics didn’t enter in. There weren’t second chances. There was one day and one time. I’m not saying that is the best way to pick a team, but that is the way our team is picked.

GCR:

After you finished seventh in the 1948 NCAA high jump and sixth at the AAU championships, did you even think you had a chance to make the team?

At the NCAAs since I didn’t make the top six I didn’t qualify for the Olympic Trials. In those days, the top six qualified from NCAAs and the top six qualified from AAUs. So there would be twelve qualifiers. I represented UCLA and didn’t make it to the Trials. There were three of us from UCLA that didn’t qualify, but had potential to at AAUs. We were there in Minnesota at NCAAs and the question was what were we going to do now? We had a plane ticket home from UCLA since they had brought us there. But our coach and trainer, whose name was Alvin ‘Ducky’ Drake, worked out a situation for us. He had a close friend whom he had taught school with as a young man in the L.A. city system and who was a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club that gave aid to athletes in need. Ducky talked to this man at the NCAAs and three of us stayed. One had a wife who was about to have a baby so he went home even though I thought he had a better chance of qualifying than I did. So the three athletes and the coach made the decision that we would go to Evanston, Illinois where the Olympic Trials would be in three weeks. We made that trip through the L.A. Athletic Club and that is who I represented. I had on their shirt. We stayed in an old two story house and trained for two weeks where the Olympic Trials would be held. Then we took a train to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to the AAU meet. I didn’t qualify as you said in the top six, but because two of the guys who beat me at NCAAs were also jumping there, I got in as the eleventh or twelfth qualifier. Then we came back to Evanston near Chicago and had better quarters because we were Olympic Trials qualifiers.

GCR:

It sounds like the training where the Olympic Trials would be held really helped you to be at your best.

We trained for another week so I was there for three weeks at the place where I was going to try to qualify at the Trials. I knew every little breeze that blew and every piece of sand there. I lived there maybe four or five hours a day. I did a lot of stretching and I was like a rubber man. With the form I used you had to be loose and limber. I was going into the Trials with a lot of older jumpers who had been our best jumpers for years. There were young kids, but I was one of the youngest.

GCR:

At the 1948 Olympic Trials you cleared six feet, six inches on your final jump and then set two personal bests with six feet seven on your first attempt and then six feet eight and a quarter inches to finished second and make the U.S. Olympic team. How was the pressure to make the team, did you get into a zone when you were jumping and how exciting and surprising was it to make the team?

When the bar got up to six feet, six inches it was the point where jumpers started to get weeded out and six missed there. I had missed twice at that height, so it looked like I was going home to my construction job that was lined up for the summer so that I could make some money to get me through school the next year. And, lo and behold, on that third jump at six feet, six inches I said, ‘It was now or never.’ So everything just happened to click on that jump and I sailed over the bar. I had the misses against me, but I was one of six guys still in the competition. They raised it to six feet, seven inches and guess that the first was over? Yours truly was. The tide was turning a bit and coming together. I felt the confidence within me and I felt I could do it. There was one jumper who had missed on his first two jumps, but then he got it on his last jump. At that point, Craig Dixon came up to me and said, ‘Hey, you made the team.’ I said, ‘Craig, I haven’t made anything yet. There are still four jumpers and only three go. Get away from here. I’ve got to concentrate and work.’ They raised it up and again guess who was the first one over six feet and eight inches? It was yours truly. Right then I knew I would qualify at that height as others were breaking down. So, I went from missing the first two jumps at six feet, six inches to making the next two heights on my first jump. I tied for first with a young man from Rice University and Houston, Texas named Vern McDougal. The other guy who went in third place was Dwight Everman from Illinois who was also a football player who kicked on their football team. The first man to me once I qualified was my Coach Ducky Drake, who was a legend and a tough disciplinarian. He said, ‘Congratulations.’ And I said, ‘I can’t go.’ He looked me right in the eye and I said ‘I have this job and I’ll never make it through school next year if I don’t have this construction job in the summer in Sacramento.’ The job was all set up and I was all ready to go home and to go to work. He looked right back at me and said, ‘you can’t afford to not go to the Olympics.’

GCR:

What was it like getting ready to go, continuing training and making the trip to Europe?

Now I didn’t have a visa or a passport or any paperwork done where most of these guys who were pretty sure they would make the team had all of their paperwork taken care of. That had to work out. From there I went to New York to a place called Ellis Island and we trained for about a week and a week later all of us who made the team were on the boat for eight days. I made a lot of nice friends. I tease my wife always that I met a lot of cute swimmers that I fell in love with too. That was how I got there, coming from last to first. Things just happened to break right for me as a teenager, as a nineteen year old.

GCR:

Let’s talk about the Olympic high jump competition. First, when did the high jump occur in the Olympic program and how did jumping in the rain affect you both mentally and physically?

The 5,000 meters and the high jump were the first events and the Opening Ceremonies were the day before. It was eighty or ninety degrees for the Opening Ceremonies so I didn’t go so I could save my legs and save my feet. It was hot and we would have to stand a lot. The competition was a different world in those days as every country could enter three jumpers. Even if they weren’t really jumpers at all they had their three tries before they were eliminated. There were hundreds of jumpers. The competition took seven, eight or nine hours. That is correct that it was raining cats and dogs. For everyone it was the same as we had to live through the conditions. We had to know how to save ourselves and when to jump and when we didn’t have to jump how to keep ourselves warm. I was only nineteen so I was probably one of the least experienced. It ended up that the height I cleared was six feet, four and three quarter inches. I didn’t miss any heights at the lower levels.

GCR:

How close did you come to making that next height and possibly moving up in the places and medals?

They moved it up to six feet and six inches and that is where guys started getting eliminated. Lo and behold, the first two jumps I took I slipped and ended up on my back. They were horrible. There was mud and slop and there was no tartan surface. The landings in those days were either sawdust or sand. There were no foam pits like there are today. I was on my back twice and was wondering what I would do on my third jump. So, on my third jump I decided to jump right in the middle of the crossbar and the standards as there may be some better footing there. I had cleared the bar by a good amount, but I tipped it with my back leg because of the angle that I had wasn’t the same. I didn’t turn quickly enough and the bar was swaying and swaying and then dropped off. So that took my chance of going for the Gold. One of the Australian jumpers jumped right from the middle and that’s where I picked that up. He was the only one that made it.

GCR:

Could you talk a bit about the confusion about who actually earned what color of medal when they sorted out the Silver and Bronze medalists?

There were four of us, believe it or not, that tied for second as we had all cleared the same height prior to six feet, six inches. I thought for sure that I would get a Silver Medal because I never missed and I thought that wouldn’t go against me. We didn’t get the medals because of the rainy conditions. I guess when they first gathered to make decisions they didn’t even decide until a week later and I didn’t get a medal. I had taken the first jumps just to keep warm. Then a couple of weeks later they had a committee and I ended up getting a Bronze Medal. One of the other jumpers, the one from Illinois, had tied with me, but he didn’t even get a Bronze Medal. He had missed an earlier height so that must have counted against him. I never did find out exactly how they decided. I should have got the Silver Medal along with the guy who did because I never missed the other heights. I have received calls from others throughout my life – even a guy from Norway – who wanted my opinion on how it was decided. But anyhow, I don’t know how they decided.

GCR:

How did you get your Olympic Bronze Medal?

It was given to me in a little box. They didn’t have medals on ribbons. There was no ceremony. It was given to me by one of the administrators of our team and that is how I got my medal. I still feel I deserve the Silver Medal, but maybe the guy who got it didn’t take as many jumps as I did at earlier heights. But I felt I had to test the terrain out and test the weather out and keep a little warm too. With that weather it was a bad day.

GCR:

Was it neat that your roommate in London, Craig Dixon, who was your college teammate from UCLA, also earned a medal in London? And how nice was it to share the Olympic experience with your good friend who remains a good friend to this day?

You hit the nail right on the head as we are good friends to this day and did share that time in London. I had a wonderful friend there in Craig Dixon and we were the only two athletes that came out of UCLA. There were five Olympians that came from Southern Cal and they became close friends. Our Olympic Coach, Dean Cromwell, was also from U.S.C. and he was special to us too. I got to know all those five Olympians from U.S.C. and their team was the power in our day. In a twenty year period they were NCAA champions as many as fifteen years with this coach, so they were a strong track power in our time (note – U.S.C. won 16 of 21 NCAA track and field titles from 1935 to 1955). And UCLA was kind of the baby school that was growing up in our time.

GCR:

Since the top high jumpers were jumping a few inches below seven feet, what were the thoughts back then about attaining a seven foot high jump?

In the Olympics I had the desire to win the Gold Medal for our country and I wanted to be the first seven foot high jumper. I always kind of tease a bit because if I was the first seven footer everyone would know me. They always said a human being could not run a four minute mile and a human being couldn’t jump seven feet. So Roger Bannister did the four minute mile for England and I wanted to be the first seven footer.

GCR:

After the Olympics, did you compete in other competitions in Europe?

I spent the summer touring Europe afterwards and we went to about seven or eight different countries. I had a chance to go into communist countries like in Prague, Czechoslovakia. I jumped over in Prague and I was over six feet ten or six feet eleven. There is a picture of me and you can see that my clearance is well over seven feet. I had about five or six attempts in a couple meets where I could have made it, but I never did. One of the outstanding athletes I met was Emil Zatopek who won the 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters and marathon four years later in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. I was the outstanding visiting athlete and he was the outstanding home athlete. The pole vaulter who won the 1948 Olympics was a friend of mine and his wife worked in the library at UC- Berkeley. There was a picture of me from the meet in Prague that she found in a Life magazine. My friend, Glenn Smith, the Olympic Champion, sent the picture to me and you can see I’m well over seven feet. I treasure that picture. Emil Zatopek’s got a book out there which is a great one to read. He came to Los Angeles in later years and I was able to meet with him.

GCR:

I’d like to go back and discuss how you started in athletics, but first we should touch on a tough moment. Some children have terrible tragedies at a young age. Could you tell us a bit about how your mom was sadly left a widow when you were in elementary school?

We were farm kids and had about ten acres of farm land and on the Fourth of July my dad was killed when we were involved in a car accident where the car rolled over about three times. Our whole family was hospitalized and I lost my dad when I was seven years old. My dad and mom were both Croatians. They both came from Croatia. So, things were really tough. We had to move into town. My mom never remarried and hung with us always. We moved into the edge of town where there was the last bus stop. It was a rural area and we had a corner lot with extra land. On the side lot we could dig a ‘victory garden’ for the war effort and build a clubhouse.

GCR:

That sure is sad. Amidst that you got started in athletics in your youth. You competed in many sports so could you talk about some of your favorite sports to play as a youth and teenager?

I had a high jump and pole vault pit at my home. God blessed me with jumping ability. I had speed, but not the sprinter’s speed. I started there in elementary school in second or third grade and all summer long we lived at the playground. Both my brother and I were good athletes and we did all sports whether it was gymnastics, table games, ping-pong or you name it. The city would have competitions in track and field once a year and my goal was always to win a certificate. If you made the finals you got a certificate so I got in every event that I could like the baseball throw, high jump, running, the pole vault and more. I loved it. That was in elementary school and the poor playground directors, who were two ladies, couldn’t even get away from us at lunchtime as we bugged them to death. In junior high, which was a little closer to my home, I ended up playing basketball with junior college guys. They didn’t want me at first, but they saw how well I could jump and they loved to shoot. Little by little I played with these two Japanese guys who were tough as nails. If I couldn’t get the rebound I would touch it to them and they loved to shoot. So they started picking me to play with. I became probably the best junior high school player because of my competition on what were gravel courts. I was at Kit Carson Junior High. The older you get you start getting in the sports where you can compete. So I went to Sacramento High School which was one of two high schools along with McClatchy High School. McClatchy was the tougher of the schools and future Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren went there. In high school I competed in the high jump, I hurdled, I pitched baseball and I played on the basketball team.

GCR:

Who were your coaches in high school in the different sports and what did they do to help hone you in and contribute to your growth as an athlete?

All of them helped because I didn’t have a dad. I was a free spirit guy and I got into trouble. I don’t mean big trouble, but I was a good towel thrower in the showers. One of the basketball coaches was about six feet, eight inches tall and a Swedish guy. When we played for him and things weren’t going right he took his belt off. He caught me once throwing towels in the shower and kicked me off the team. I had to beg to get back on the team a couple of weeks later. The basketball coach was a northern Sweden country guy named Pop Borsen. Years later when UCLA played Houston for the semifinals in the national championship it was the only Final Four game I ever went to and this Pop Borsen came to that and I visited with him. He was in his later life and it was a beautiful visit with him. My baseball coach was Coach Vukovich. I think his first name was John. We were both Croatians. The track coach was Tom Weems. I went on to junior college for a year and so did he so he was my coach in high school and in junior college. He was a tough, mean guy. Even my junior high physical education teacher, Mr. Jensen had an influence on me. They all helped me because of my not having a dad. I had the skill and the talent as far as God blessing me with some great legs and jumping ability and I could outjump anybody. That got proven as I went along.

GCR:

Are there any track and field competitions that stand out in your memory from high school?

One memory I have is from the big meet in our neck of the woods in Sacramento which was the Fresno Relays. All of the colleges came there from southern and northern California. The high school hurdles was the first event because the height was three inches lower than the college hurdles. Always in the hurdles I didn’t have the speed to beat the guys. In northern California I was a top twelve guy or top six guy, but I was going to win this race. Whatever happened I had that drive and desire to win. There were about fifteen thousand people in the stands and I had never run before such a big group. They announced the finalists and I was one who had qualified. I wasn’t going to jump the gun, but I was going to try and catch it just right, and I did. I caught the gun just as it went off and, lo and behold, the first three or four hurdles I’m going like gangbusters and I’m leading. The guy on the P.A. said, ‘It’s Stanich from Sacramento High School leading the pack.’ But I hit those last three hurdles and in those days the hurdles were pieces of two by fours and I had three bloody bruises like strawberries on my one knee that trailed. I ended up fourth or fifth or sixth. I think I only beat one guy. I ended up placing where I belonged. One of the local runners who ran for San Jose and was one of the first guys to run ten flat came up to me and was telling me that he didn’t know I was such a good hurdler. But it didn’t work out for me and I couldn’t high jump that day because my leg was so bruised and so sore. It took me about a month to recover. I just remember being in front of that big crowd and it wasn’t my best event. In junior college I tried for a while to hurdle and I could see that the higher levels I went, the harder was the competition. I went from the sixth best in the state in high school to maybe twelfth best in the state in college.

GCR:

Since basketball was another sport in which you excelled in high school, are there any games or moments that stand out from the hard court?

In basketball my first year I think I’m the only guy who played on the D team, the C team, the B team, the junior varsity team and the varsity team all in one year. Coach Borsen saw my talent and kept moving me up. Our school year was divided in half and so we graduated half the students and when I was playing varsity for the championship we didn’t have two or three of our players. And McClatchy High School didn’t have two or three of their players. I was pulled up to varsity just to sit on the bench. I don’t even remember who won this game but it was played in our gym. The coach put me in for the last minute to get me in the game. Here I was a tenth grader playing against the big boys. I went in to get a rebound and there were two McClatchy boys going to get the rebound. So I grabbed them both around the wrist and I pulled their wrists down and tipped the ball to a teammate. In the next day’s newspaper they had a picture of me in there grabbing these two guys on the wrist. Going two steps forward to my playing basketball at UCLA, I could never box out the bigger, slower guys, but I could always get to the ball and tip the ball to a teammate.

GCR:

After you finished high school, you were Sacramento City College’s leading pitcher on baseball team, NCJCC champ in the high jump and 120 yard high hurdles and All-Conference center on basketball team. How did you decide to go to Sacramento City College and how did your older brother’s college choice affect yours?

I didn’t take a college prep program so I was going to go to work after high school. What had happened was that my brother was an outstanding basketball player, but on our farm he had an accident and lost three fingers on his left hand so he played all three years in high school without those fingers. He was classified as 4-F to go into the service and he worked for three or four years while I caught up to him. He went to junior college and the coach didn’t even know this about his missing three fingers. Then the war ended when he had started college and guys were starting to get out of the service and he played only about eight games the first year. The next year they were all out of the service and Sacramento City College had the best team we had ever had. I attended in Modesto a 16-team tournament and here was one player who had been at City College and was then at UCLA as a coach, so he recruited the whole team. My brother went on to UCLA with his whole team. I wanted to play with my brother. So I decided to go to junior college to make up all of my classes so I could go to UCLA. Ned Kay was our junior college basketball coach. I had a beautiful year there with all of the coaches there helping me. We won our conference in baseball and I was the junior college state high jump champion which I won in Modesto. My brother ended up playing first team during his junior year and they won the conference championship. That was my goal to be with him the next year. We had a good year and I went on to UCLA after I got all of my classes taken care of at junior college.

GCR:

How was your transition to the higher level of basketball at UCLA?

When I got to UCLA a lot of people were saying your silly going there because you’re not going to play. I ended up making the first team there but it took me a long time to make it and by the time the conference started I did make the first team. I had to beat three guys who were two or three inches taller and meatier. But I was quicker and could jump better than them. Eventually my brother and I were on the first team together. It was tough to crack the starting basketball lineup. But I finally did crack it. I had to fight for my life. I had to get in fights. I made it as a center though I was probably the smallest center in the country at only six feet and three inches. I could out jump any center despite their size of six feet nine, six feet ten or six feet eleven. There weren’t too many seven footers – maybe Bob Curlen. The big centers were physically strong and they would push their back side into you and control their territory. But I was always able to fake them out one way or the other and touch the ball to a teammate. So I became valuable to the team with rebounds and possession of the ball.

GCR:

What were some highlights of playing basketball at UCLA with your brother and you both starting?

We did go back east to play. We took trains in and we played Philadelphia and we played in Madison Square Garden. With my brother at UCLA it was a phenomenal experience for him and me for two brothers that played on a college team. I have always followed any brothers across the country that played on college teams. There are a few that made it into the pros and I followed their careers. The year before I got there, my brother’s UCLA team won the conference championship and went on to play form the Pacific Coast championship. In my first year we placed second as Cal beat us. We had a losing record of 12 wins and 13 losses. My junior year when I got back from the Olympics Coach Wooden came in and they didn’t have a losing record for about forty years (note – it was actually 55 years before UCLA had a losing record in 2002-03). Our team got recognized at that time because they finally had a losing team and they publicized that the last losing team was 1947-48. Wilbur Johns was the athletic director and basketball coach and he was the one who hired Coach Wooden. So I got a telephone call from my brother the next day and he said, ‘You know – we made it in the newspapers. And we made it on television. It took us a long time to get there but, brother George, we finally arrived!’

GCR:

You were the first of twenty-four All-Americans under Coach Wooden. How improbable is it that you are first on the UCLA All-American list that includes players like Walt Hazzard, Gail Goodrich, Lew Alcindor, Sidney Wicks and Bill Walton?

It really is amazing. I don’t want to pat myself on the back because I am very humble. To be an All-American you have to have a good team. I was an outstanding jumper. I was never a shooter or a dribbler, but that was my God-given skill. In making All-American they were designated in different ways in the early era than they are now. Not that I didn’t deserve this, but other people on our team contributed and were just as worthy as I was. I think because I was an Olympian and I had that label and I was an Olympic medalist that aided me. Coach Wooden and I were like a father and a son. He was like a father and a son to a lot of us. The work ethic from his background was invaluable. But I do want to make the point that what an honor that was. I had a player of mine at the community college who I am still close friends with and Keith Erickson was a pro basketball player for twelve years. He was the one the guys that really started it all with Coach Wooden because Coach Wooden hadn’t won any NCAA Championships until Keith and the team he played on. That was a great team with Walt Hazzard and Gail Goodrich and they won the NCAA title two years in a row.

GCR:

When they changed basketball coaches at UCLA to John Wooden, well before he became a legendary coach, what were some of the top characteristics, values and training techniques you learned from Coach Wooden that helped you as a player and then as a coach in future years?

I coached basketball for about twenty years, including the year in Croatia, which was Yugoslavia back then. That was part of my heritage and contributed to my beautiful life. Coach Wooden was instrumental in many, many things that became a part of me. But, as I mentioned, every one of my coaches along the way from junior high to high school to community college and UCLA contributed. Ducky Drake was unbelievable as my track coach. Art Rickell, the baseball coach, and Coach Wooden all molded pieces of me. And the pieces of me allowed me to give those pieces to the students I taught and the players I coached for forty years. Both my wife and I come from the tough end of the tracks and we took care of all of our students, including special needs students and low-skilled students. Coach Wooden was also an English teacher and came out of South Bend, Indiana and then taught in Terre Haute, Indiana, where Larry Bird played many years later.

GCR:

Have you read and absorbed the books written by Coach Wooden and, if so, what comes to your mind as a significant teaching?

Coach Wooden has about ten books that are well worth reading. He has a ‘Pyramid of Success.’ He could talk for two or three weeks and I probably could too. The foundation and heart of the pyramid is conditioning. That is just plain hard work. You have to outwork the other guy. The second level is teamwork. I’ve been in individual sports and team sports and in the team sports you’ve got to learn to play together. When you are coaching you have to do everything you can to mold a beautiful team and have the guys playing together. It’s amazing with the talent you have how wonderful you can be if you have teamwork. The next step is fundamentals of your sport. In basketball you’ve got to know how to pass, to shoot, to dribble and to rebound. Those are all techniques like blocking and tackling in football or pitching and fielding in baseball that are the heart of the pyramid. These are the steps that lead to the top of the pyramid which is success. And success is you having the peace of mind that you did the best that you are capable of becoming. You may be the worst guy on the team or the best guy or the in-between guy. But if you did your best then you can’t do anything more than your best. There are guys that have all the talent that don’t give their best. Coach Wooden took care of all the good players and bad players, the good students and bad students, and that was what both my wife and I did in our careers.

GCR:

How did Coach Wooden’s basketball practices get you ready for game day?

Probably his greatest skill is that his basketball practices were all planned down to the minute. He had a little three by five inches card and that motivated me to use this in my teaching and coaching. You didn’t waste any time as if one drill was going to long then you went right to the next drill. He tried to build habits and was a great lesson planner of teaching, demonstrating, learning, criticism and then some more practice. He was a farm boy from Indiana and in his later years when he would get together with his lettermen he once brought up something about me that he remembered I was one of his only athletes who ever worked the full amount of his job. A lot of times people learn to cut corners and Coach Wooden said I was the only student athlete who didn’t cut corners. I was so happy to have a job where I didn’t have to take a bus or street car. I worked in the cafeteria where I bused dishes and cleaned tables and took care of all the older ladies who served food and boy did they take care of me when I went through the food line. It was a tough game but we were really happy camper to get our education. It wasn’t an easy way, but they were lessons well-learned.

GCR:

In your three years at UCLA did you play big games in well-known arenas that are memorable?

Always as a young man growing up we would listen to sports on the radio and the number one place I wanted to play was in the old Madison Square Garden. The old one was full of cigars and smoke and was built like old Yankee Stadium, straight up and down. I ended up with UCLA playing there for three games. I was in an All-Star game representing the west and teammates of mine were George Yardley, who broke George Mikan’s scoring record; Bill Sharman, who was one of the only three people who were inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a coach and a player. On the east was Bob Cousy. I stayed in New York for a week with my western team and had a beautiful week. I played in the old Madison Square Garden three times, and this was a kid from Sacramento that dreamed of that as a kid. We won every game I played and were four and oh in those three games in Madison Square Garden and the one in Philadelphia. Our country then didn’t have many arenas.

GCR:

Let’s circle back to your collegiate track and field competitions. First, since you have talked so much about the importance of your team in basketball, at the 1949 Pacific Coast Conference Track and Field Championships you tied for first place in the high jump while Craig Dixon won both hurdle races and Taylor Lewis won the discus throw. What do you recall of that high jump competition and how much fun was it to compete as part of a team and to cheer on your teammates in their events?

It was unbelievable. Most of my teammates are dying out now, but I have kept in touch with those teammates you mentioned. It has been wonderful. I’m at the twilight of my life and we have had get-togethers for ten to fifteen years and I have been together with all of these guys. Our basketball guys are still getting together and on August 8th I’ll see the guys from the ‘Wooden era’ again. Some of the basketball teammates will look at me and say, ‘how do you know these track team guys because when you are in track and field there are fifty guys?’ But I got to know all of them. In baseball I got to know all of them too. In our day too, and I’m not trying to say our day is best, but more guys were two-sport guys. I’d say fifty to seventy percent of the guys were two sport athletes. Now most compete in one sport or they don’t make the team. The best in the west played multiple sports. You mentioned Taylor Lewis and he was one of the guys along with Jerry Shipkey, Craig Dixon and I who trained for those three weeks at Northwestern in 1948 to make the Olympic team and he didn’t make it. Jerry was a shot putter and both he and Taylor had better shots at making the team than I. One other thing that is really important to me that you should know is that Craig Dixon had a chore in making the team because there were four guys who were his equal and only three went.

GCR:

Speaking of that 1948 Olympic Trials in the 110 meter high hurdles, what can you say about the legendary Harrison Dillard, who hit a hurdle and didn’t advance to the Olympics in his specialty?

Harrison Dixon had won maybe seventy races in a row, but he tripped and fell and didn’t make it and put the other three on the team. Lo and behold, God blessed him and I don’t know how he did it, but he did qualify in the one hundred meters. He barely snuck in and qualified. I saw his race in London and he had the outside lane. He barely made it to the finals. They give the inside and outside lanes to the worst qualifiers. The best qualifiers were in the middle in the best lanes. But guess who won the Olympic one hundred meters? The outstanding hurdler, Harrison Dillard. That is an unbelievable story. It’s unreal him winning that. In the middle of the track was Barney Ewell, an older guy. He thought he won because he looked back and saw that he beat Mel Patton. He was rolling on the track because he was so elated. Then he found out when they looked at the photo that the guy in the outside lane beat him. And then Harrison Dillard came back four years later and won his specialty in Helsinki. I was in Helsinki and there he was winning the 110 meter high hurdles.

GCR:

You placed fourth in the 1949 NCAA high jump, but didn’t repeat your Olympic success. Were you more focused on basketball and baseball or were the other jumpers catching up with you?

Even when I made the Olympic team, there were other jumpers who had been jumping for years who were more consistent than me. High jumping is a fickle event. It’s not a running event and you’ve got to get over that bar. I didn’t devote my time to high jumping. What I wanted to do was to earn a living for my family and baseball was where the money was. Usually if you started in baseball it took seven years to get to the big leagues and then you didn’t make much money either. It was a different world then. I didn’t go from great to bad. You just have to spend the time at it day and night and I didn’t do that. The high jump was more fun for me and more love for me and something I could do without much practice. I put my time into baseball and pitching and that’s where I got a pretty good contract in the Pacific Coast League and it helped me to get started in my life. Believe it or not, I bought a new car after I got my bonus money to play for Oakland and I didn’t know how to drive it. Baseball and basketball were team sports while track and swimming were individual sports where you just had yourself to rely on. If you have teammates a lot of time you will get acclaim, whether you deserve it or not, because you’ve got good people working around you.

GCR:

It sure sounds like you enjoyed playing on a team much more than aiming for individual glory.

Here is a story that will answer that. I belong to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and went to about three national conferences. There was one in Estes Park in Colorado that was at high altitude above ten thousand feet. One of our speakers was scheduled to be a pole vaulter, Brian Sternberg, who was the World Record holder. But he was working out on a trampoline to improve his skills and he broke his neck. He knew that he was probably going to die in a few months and we didn’t know if he would make it to the conference. Lo and behold, there he was talking to us, maybe five hundred or so guys from Nebraska – the farm kids and the tough kids. One of the things he said that I’ll never forget is, ‘guys, I’ve been in an individual sport all of my life. If you get a chance, you ought to try a team sport. I think you might learn more in a team sport about yourself than you do in an individual sport.’ I’ve never forgotten that advice because individual and team sports are a different ballgame. You can be a very selfish and conceited individual and its ‘me, me, me’ but you can’t in a team sport. With a team you can help make everybody better. I was involved with both of them and I think form things I’ve said that you can understand my feelings.

GCR:

Switching gears to baseball, the UCLA-USC rivalry was, and still is, big in all sports. Can you recall how it was in baseball when you pitched and threw a five-hit shutout as the Bruins beat USC for the first time in five years?

I remember that game like it was yesterday. The sad thing now is that my catcher on that team who was a U.S. Marine passed away this year in the first part of June. He was in on one of the last attacks on an island that General McArthur wanted to have so that he could take his planes off from, bomb Japan and come back to the same island. But we ended up with atomic bombs and didn’t even need control of the island. We lost maybe a thousand Marines there. He was a beautiful human being. Back to the game, I was only nineteen years old and we beat USC two to nothing at our field, which was called Joey Brown Field. It was where Pauley Pavilion is now. I was pitching pretty well and I kept the ball down low. We got two or three double plays. I had good fielding behind me. The USC guys went on and won the NCAA Championship that year. I pitched against their best pitcher that day. I got really mad at our coach later that year because we played in the Pacific Coast League Park, which was the home of the Hollywood Stars, and he pitched someone else. I thought I really earned that, but as a young kid I behaved like a young nineteen year old.

GCR:

After graduation you had athletic choices of minor league baseball, NBA basketball or possibly training for two years to make another Olympic team. Why did you decide to play baseball and do you ever wonder what may have happened if you made another choice?

Because of the money that was involved and thinking of my future life, I chose baseball. But I didn’t do well in baseball. There was a guy who I played against in basketball when I played my second year with Coach Wooden for the Pacific Coast Championship. We played Washington State and his name was Gene Conley. He was a great basketball player and was the enforcer. He went on and played for the Boston Celtics, but he couldn’t make a living just playing basketball, so he went into pro baseball and was playing both. Jackie Jensen played on my team with the Oakland Oaks and he went into pro baseball and did real well. He ended up marrying one of my Olympic swimming teammates – I had my eye on her – not really (laughing). Jackie was afraid of flying so even in the big leagues he had to take trains and busses to the next city. The owner of the Oakland team was an independent owner. He would pick college guys, try to develop them, get them to do well, and then sell their contract to the big league teams. There were no major league teams out west then and our league was considered to be the third major league at that time. If I had to do it over again I probably would have gone into pro basketball. Baseball just didn’t work out or me. I tried for about three years and the hitters got to me. I saw the handwriting on the wall. The direction I took in pro ball didn’t go the way I had hoped.

GCR:	For many years you worked in education and coaching. How satisfying was your career and what sums up this part of your life?
GS	God bless me that I had my education and my teaching credential and I got into high school teaching and coaching and from there went on to community college. I had a beautiful life in both high school and community college because I was helping other kids develop.

GCR:

You were named to the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame in 1985 along with your collegiate and Olympic teammate Craig Dixon. How rewarding and humbling is this honor and is it extra special to be inducted together with Craig Dixon?

That was a special time and it was a beautiful time. The ceremony was there at the college. We were just young men when we were teammates. You may not know this, but at the Olympics I was at Craig’s race. I had my little camera and photographed the scoreboard with the list of all of the runners. I stood at about the middle of the field and I ran to the finish line when he ran his race. He was leading halfway through and ended up getting beat by half a yard. His time was the same as Clyde Scott who got the Silver Medal, but Craig got the Bronze. Craig also had his ninetieth birthday party a little while ago and we had a great time celebrating on the beach.

GCR:

Your athleticism has been passed down to your children and grandchildren. What are some exciting facts about their sports feats in high school and college?

Let me say this – education is number one always. The one thing that my wife and I are extremely proud about is that are three children are all UCLA grads and that’s not easy. My five grandchildren are also college grads. We also have one great-grandchild and she is only five years old. But getting back to the question, the sporting part of life was never emphasized at home. I didn’t want them to be like their dad. We wanted them to take their own path. We didn’t want them to be something that maybe they couldn’t be or didn’t want to be. I never had anything on display as far as trophies or medals. They were to be their own self and they are three beautiful individuals and they all have their own lives and they are all helping us now in our later life on the weekends. God bless them all as they are three beautiful kids. My oldest son was a great team player who never grew tall. He got cut by the UCLA baseball team so he played a lot of intramural sports. My youngest son came close to making the 1988 Olympics in the 800 meters. He was a 400 meter and 800 meter runner. He really did well. They had the 1988 Olympic Trials in Indianapolis and we were all there – our whole family. He made the semifinals, but he didn’t make the finals. He did run for UCLA on the mile relay when they won the NCAA Championship a year or two earlier. He did it with two Olympians on the team, Danny Everett who was a medalist and Kevin Young who still holds the World Record and Olympic Record in the 400 meter hurdles.

GCR:

Didn’t two of your granddaughters teams compete against each other since on was at UCLA and the other was at USC?

My two granddaughters were at a track meet at UCLA. My youngest was competing in the discus for UCLA and my oldest was competing in the 400 meter hurdles and the high hurdles for USC. There is a very interesting story about former UCLA Olympians who attended the meet. Craig Dixon and Kevin Young were the honorees at the track meet and they gave them both the top stick of a hurdle emblazed with their name. A lot of other Olympians were also introduced. My father-in-law was sitting low, but he went up to the public address announcer and said, ‘you introduced everyone who was an Olympian, but not my father-in-law. How come?’ The announcer asked about me and hadn’t heard of me. But there was an old-timer up there who knew all about me and he got on the microphone and gave some information. I was sitting with my wife, who was in her wheelchair, by the scoreboard and this guy announced that I was sitting over by the scoreboard with my wife. Every time there was a distance race and the runners went by we ended up on television which we saw later. The neat thing was that everybody in the stadium who knew us stopped by and visited with us before they went home. Guess who came? Kevin Young, who was my son’s teammate and he asked me to sign an autograph for him. Craig Dixon came by and so did about a dozen other friends. My granddaughter that ran hurdles went all the way to the state championships in Sacramento and we followed all of her meets up to her placing sixth in the state in the hurdles.

GCR:

At age 89 you have mentioned that you are in the twilight of your life, but how is your current health and do you get much exercise or do some walking to keep you active?

I’m still walking and my wife is after me to use a cane or a walker which I don’t do. I probably should use a walker. I get in the pool and on the bike. I don’t do as much as I’d like to because I’m helping out at home, but I do work out. My orthopedic doctor says I have one of the worst backs he has seen. On the bike I will do 400 revolutions to warm up, 400 revolutions where I really pump the bike and then a warm down of 400 revolutions. The pool is one of the best things for me. I have an eight foot long and five inch wide noodle that I use in the pool for various exercises to work my legs. I don’t have good circulation any more in my legs as I’ve got neuropathy.

GCR:	As you mentioned, your parents were immigrants from Yugoslavia in the area that is presently the country of Croatia. Have you had a chance to visit that country?
GS	I did spend some time there after I taught at a community college for about twenty years and I got a sabbatical for a year in Croatia. So my young family spent about a year over there and I coached a club basketball team basketball team that won the national championship. We also got to see our relatives.

GCR:

Since you participated in so many sports as a youth, what advice you would give to children and who wish to succeed in athletics, reach their potential and have physical activity as a lifetime pursuit?

The more activity they can be involved with and enjoy and have as a part of their lifestyle, both in nutrition and in physicality, the better. It can be swimming or walking or whatever they can do and that they enjoy that can last for their lifetime. Now with the computers and television and on and on, the younger children are not getting as much of the muscle workouts as they should. This affects their body and health.

GCR:

What are the major lessons you have learned during your long life that influenced you such as the sadness of losing your dad and being raised by your mom, living through the Depression and World War II years, all of the things you learned in athletics, the wonderful raising of children and grandchildren, and your work an educator that forms the ‘George Stanich Philosophy of Life’ wrap up points that you would like to share with my readers?

There are no short cuts in life. There are a lot of times that you can get off the path and do things for pleasure and joy and not correctly or level-headed. There is one story I’ve told my grandchildren that was a little bit of nothing, but it meant everything to me. This story is a little long to tell, but I’ll mention the main points. When I was getting close to a teenager we lived in a mostly Italian neighborhood in Sacramento and an Italian guy used to go buy in a truck at about five miles an hour. He was an old Italian guy who could barely speak English and he was a fruit driver. He came around once a week and he’d toot his horn. Everyone knew where he would stop at certain places. I saw these peaches on the back of his truck and I had to have one of those peaches. I had the perfect crime as he rounded the corner of our house. There were hedges and he could only go real slowly. I knew he couldn’t see me so I got behind the truck, reached up with a hand and got one of the nicest peaches there. I was able to fall down from the truck and I knew just where I was going to fall where he wouldn’t see me. I ate that peach and that was the sweetest peach I’d ever had. But it wasn’t right to do what I did. Lo and behold, maybe about five or six o’clock that night this man came back tooting his horn. He got out and rang our doorbell and I thought, ‘Oh, shoot – maybe he saw me commit my crime.’ I thought I had the perfect crime and a tasty one. He was talking to my mom who had never learned English well. They were conversing and I was hiding under the bed or in the bedroom or wherever I could because I knew what was coming. Both of them talked to me. He said, ‘If you ever want anything or need anything, I will give you whatever you like on my truck. But don’t start getting into a habit of stealing or taking things.’ When he left, my mom told me, ‘If there is anything you need, I will get it for you, but always get it the right way.’ Here I got love from these two people that were elderly and older and wiser. Especially from my mom this really hit me between the eyes. Here she was in a different country, without a husband, and I saw her go through h-e-l-l to get food. She stuck with us all the way. I knew from that point on I was never going to stray from any path and I wouldn’t do any wrong things. I thought that if she was going to love me like that and this man who didn’t know me was going to love me like that, I’m not going to stray. There were times when I went away to college and I hadn’t had a dad where I had a lot of freedom and I could do a lot of things that weren’t too good. There were times when I started to wiggle off the path, but I never did stray. I’ve told that little nothing story to my grandchildren and I do it with love and emotion because it meant so much to me. My point is that you don’t embarrass your parents. They are doing everything they can to have you become the best you can become, so that is the story I tell from my early life with my mom.

	Inside Stuff
Hobbies/Interests	I never played an instrument, but we did buy a piano and we tried to get all our children interested in piano and music. I was all wrapped up in sports and work. I thought I would never be able to ski because of the money involved or play tennis or golf because they weren’t recreation-related. They were both more club-related. But that has all changed now and these sports are pretty much open to all levels of skill and incomes and to both boys and girls which is beautiful to see. I have also been involved with special needs kids with Rafer Johnson a lot helping out the kids
Favorite movies	I was always so centered on sports, so my favorites were always sports movies. I did grow up in Sacramento and the baseball team was a St. Louis Cards farm club. I knew about Pepper Martin, who became the manager there of the St. Louis team that had Dizzy and Daffy Dean. I got a chance to be a stand-in double in ‘The Pride of St. Louis,’ the story of Dizzy Dean’s life. I was the stand-in double for Dan Dailey who was playing Dizzy Dean. This was my first year after I had pitched at UCLA and I fit the profile for Dizzy Dean. Dan Dailey was a dancer and he couldn’t throw a baseball
Favorite TV shows	The television shows started in the 1950s and during my last year of college and they were really popular in Los Angeles. The televisions were the little screens shaped like an oval. Sports were big. Every place I went people remembered seeing me on TV playing basketball in the early fifties. I always felt like acting and singing were a lot like sports because you have to practice hard and then when you’re on stage or on a show you’ve got to produce and show your stuff. And a lot of times your career is short in those businesses so you’ve got to save up for the rest of your life
Favorite music	Now my wife is listening to music with Alexa and I am listening to a lot of music through her. It’s a lot of the old-timers like Perry Como, Bing Crosby and Doris Day. There are some beautiful older songs. I’ve kind of always liked cowboy music too
Favorite books	They are all sports books. The one that I really treasure the most is the biography of Bill Bowerman called ‘Bowerman and the Men of Oregon’ that was written by Kenny Moore, who was a track runner of his. Kenny really had the inside track on the information. I enjoyed that book more than any others. It was more than just an athletic book. It spent time on his family and how they came over on wagons to Oregon and how they settled Oregon. That was one of my history projects in high school so their story was in the first few chapters. ‘Unbroken’ about Louis Zamperini is another favorite. He was an Olympian in the 1936 Olympics and I got to know him. What a story when he was shot down in the War and spent about fifty days at sea before getting captured and tortured. I’ve read all of the books by John Wooden and like the book by Emil Zatopek. I like to read the life stories of the athletes
First car	I was never able to even have a bicycle when I was young. When I signed a baseball contract with the Oakland Oaks it was a pretty good contract for that day. So I bought a new car and I couldn’t even drive it. I was kidded a lot by my teammates and friends because here I had a new car and I didn’t even know how to drive it. I was always taking the bus or street car even to go to the college in Sacramento which was an hour-and-a-half getting to school. I was dating my wife and we tease that she kind of took over the car because I couldn’t drive. It was a 1950 Chevy Bel-Aire and I’ll never forget it because it was new and pretty. As time went on and we had our family we had a lot of station wagons and then we ended up with a pop-up VW van
First Jobs	My brother and I worked digging cesspools as young kids. We had a lawn route and cut lawns. Everything was just survival mode to have enough food on the table and we went nearly hungry at times
Family	My mom was Millie, or Mila. Our great-granddaughter is named Mila too. My father’s name was George. My wife and I will be married sixty-seven years on August 23rd and her name is Valerie Ann. Before we married her last name was Beatty. She was a hard working girl at UCLA in the co-op and was working her way through school. She had about three different jobs and I never could even talk to her because she would run from one job in the library to the book store and the P.E. office and on and on. I saw this work quality in her and I knew if I could ever trick her and we could become a couple that she would be good if we ever had any kids. We did the best we could to make our kids the best they could be and, as I mentioned, all three are UCLA graduates and our five grandchildren are college grads. My oldest child is Diana and she has been a teacher at a community college for thirty years called College of the Canyons. My middle son, James, is a lawyer who has his own law firm. Our youngest is John and he was the track athlete. He has been working for American Airlines for about thirty years in multiple capacities. My brother is John. My brother is still alive and is in Houston, Texas and we talk every week. He went on to play for the Phillips 66 AAU team as the pros were just starting. In the 1948 Olympics they picked the AAU champion five guys and five guys from the college winners, which was Kentucky coached by Adolph Rupp, and then one guy at large. When they subbed they would sub all five, not just one. So that is how they picked Olympic basketball teams in my day
Pets	I had a dog as a child named Terry. That was my favorite dog. One time I got lost out by the river which was about two miles from our home. They found me because my dog was barking by me. He saved my life there. I did learn to swim there in the river because I never could swim worth a darn
Special Childhood Food	We used to have these old apricot trees all around our home on land where they were going to build new homes. Our area was rural, but it was staring to fill in. I would go to the trees and the best apricots were up high. They weren’t watered or irrigated. I would take the apricots to my mom and she would make this great jam out of apricots with a lot of sugar. When I would come home she would have a sandwich or two of these apricots she had made into jam ready for me. We just got the necessities and until this day I’ll never forget that apricot jam
Favorite breakfast	Just eggs, though I have about three egg whites and just one yolk because of the cholesterol. I don’t care for bacon, but I do like a real thin piece of ham with my eggs. I have one cup of coffee and drink no more throughout the day. I like to have something hot and I’ll have a something dry with it like a dry piece of toast
Favorite meal	Since I am a Croatian, lamb is a special favorite of mine. Lamb was a favorite of my mom and my dad when he was still alive. We lived a year in Croatia too. Their favorite was a lot of fish so I used to get picked on by the players on the team I was coaching as they thought it was terrible having meat so much instead of fish. I enjoy fish but don’t eat it as much as I should
Favorite beverages	I drink quite a bit of water. I don’t drink iced tea or soft drinks at all. I do drink one percent milk and I like it cold
First running memory	The first thing I remember is at the Sacramento parks we would have a track meet at the end of the summer. I tried to get into as many events as I could so I was able to find out my potential as to where I had some talent
Athletic heroes	One was the UCLA guy, Jackie Robinson, who broke the color line in baseball as well as being a tough competitor. He started out in his athletic life a little later and, when I played basketball my second year at UCLA at Madison Square Garden, he came to our game. He was playing baseball nearby in Brooklyn with the Dodgers. I have a picture of our starting five with Jackie Robinson in the middle, so he did come to the old Madison Square Garden to see our game there. I used to watch the boxing fights a lot and we had two fighters from Sacramento who fought for the World Championship, Buddy and Max Baer. They never did win the championship, but I followed them. In basketball, Hank Luisetti was one of the guys who played at Stanford and I think he started out as one of the early guys with the jump shot there. I followed the Cal and Stanford teams because I heard their games on the radio. I didn’t know too much about UCLA because it was a young school then
Greatest athletic moments	I think I got more pleasure from my team winning and team success. I had three years at UCLA after one year at Sacramento Community College. The last two years were with Coach Wooden. If I look back, some of the games we won were against our cross-town rival, USC, and Bill Sharman was playing on those teams. Then when we played Stanford, George Yardley was playing on those teams. All three years I played, USC, Stanford and Cal had some good players. Some of those games we won, and they were very close games against hard teams. In our first two years under Coach Wooden we won the Southern Division Championship and then we played the Northern Division champions. We lost the first year in the Pacific Coast Championship to Oregon State. The next year when we played Washington State, who had a strong, good team, we beat them and we went on to the NCAA tournament. One teammate, who now lives in Las Vegas, wore bifocals and was a sub, but he hit a half-court shot to beat Washington State. They had Gene Conley who was about six foot and six or seven inches tall and ended up pitching for the Boston Red Sox and playing basketball for the Boston Celtics. He had to pay both sports because he was married and had to keep his family going because sports didn’t pay much in those days. The team wins we had there were memorable. We are going to have a get-together soon. As an individual, making the Olympic team was kind of unreal. To be one of the best three high jumpers in 48 states and being able to qualify like I did coming out of nowhere was great. We also talked about that baseball game I pitched when we beat USC who were the national champions. I was able to do well against them as an 18 year old. Those all come together as great moments, but in the teams sports you have to help each other
Worst athletic moment	We were disappointed in not winning the NCAA basketball championship my last year. All of us were disappointed because we felt we were the best team in the country. CCNY won both the National Invitation Tournament and the NCAA Championship, but we had beaten them earlier in the season so we knew we were at their level. The way the NCAA tournament was set up then is that they had four teams in the west that played in Kansas City and four teams in the east. If your team was the second best in the country, you still stayed in your part of the country for the tournament. Then the top two faced off in Madison Square Garden. We played Bradley in the first game. We had a lead on them, not a big lead, but enough of a lead where we started sitting on the ball a bit and being too cautious. We weren’t playing our game and they ended up beating us by a few points. Then we played in the third place game and lost to BYU. Bradley ended up going on to play CCNY and they got beat. That loss to Bradley and not being able to move on to the finals in the west was the saddest moment as far as my team goes that I ever had. Years later, after UCLA won our first NCAA basketball title, Coach Wooden confided in me that this is one of the three teams that that he thought had the potential to win the NCAA Championships that didn’t win. His teams didn’t win any NCAA Championship his first fifteen years, but then won ten times in his last twelve years of coaching
Childhood dreams	As a child we lived on that ten acre farm and we worked hard. I had a nice dog and a nice older sister who was beautiful and my older brother who is five years older than me. My goal was to play basketball with my brother at UCLA. We did play together for one year at UCLA before Coach Wooden came. We played together on the first team and then he went on to play with the Phillips 66 team and the A.W. Anderson team and became an All-American with the AAU
Farm memories	My brother lost his fingers in the farm accident I told you about when we were kids but there is a story I had never heard that I heard not too long ago. My uncle went with him to the emergency room when he lost his fingers and all of his severed fingers were in a bag. His index finger was just hanging on and the emergency doctor was going to cut it off. My uncle knew if my brother lost that finger that he would really be an invalid all his life. So the story is that he told the doctor, ‘If you take that finger off, I’m going to go back and get a gun and shoot you!’ The index finger was twice the size of a normal finger, but my brother could use the thumb and index finger and his other hand to grip a bat or to shoot the basketball. He was quick as a cat and pretty short. I was about six feet, three inches and my brother was about five feet, eight inches. We played in Philadelphia and I have a picture of us there. Philadelphia has five Catholic colleges and that is the hot bed of basketball. We played there several times against LaSalle and St. Joseph and Villanova and Temple
Funny memories	Like I said, my father’s name was George, even though I wasn’t a ‘George, Junior.’ My name is ‘George Anthony’ and I hated Anthony. I thought it was a sissy name so I kind of renamed me ‘Tony.’ I thought ‘Tony’ was a tougher name. When I started work when I was about twelve or thirteen years old I had to get my social security card. I took out my social security card with ‘George T. Stanich’
Traveling memories	We toured about a dozen countries with our VW van and the United States with our family from Houston and New Orleans across to Florida and all the way up to Boston and New England. We would do that for two or three months in the summer touring our country without once getting a motel. We camped out in the U.S. and we camped out all through Europe too. Later on one of my sons worked for an airline, so without real financial means my wife and I saw quite a bit of the world. We were going to go to South America but my wife fell ill and that is one area we didn’t make. We had relatives in Chile and in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but we didn’t get there. We also made it to Australia so we did quite a bit of travelling
George's kind final comments	Thank you for all of your questions and for taking an interest in me. I enjoyed talking with you and my wife encouraged me to talk with you. You seem like you’re a special human being, so keep up your good work and your wife keep up her good work. I’ve got to get back to my girl, so all my best to you