Former players remember Dean and his impact

When news that former Central Valley football coach Charlie Dean had died got out, phone calls and e-mails from players of another era starting coming in.

One, Randy Cornwell, transcends past and present. He has coached the Colville Indians to the State 2A football playoffs six times in the last seven years. Much of his philosophy, he said, was instilled when he played for Dean.

Dean coached the Bears from 1964 through 1974. Cornwell quarterbacked his next-to-last unbeaten team in ’73.

“I have a guy who works our sideline, Kermit Olson, who played for Charlie,” said Cornwell, who called to reminisce. “Just this year, on the team bus, he said I sounded just like Charlie Dean. I took that as a tremendous compliment.”

Dean, he said, impacted youngsters for the rest of their lives.

“I’m 53 and the ramifications have lasted my life,” said Cornwell. “That’s the power of his influence and how much respect and regard you held him in. Outside of my dad and father-in-law, there’s no one I wanted to please more.”

Another ex-player – Rand Hatch, ’71 – called to say he’d spearhead a gathering of former players at a later time to “talk Charlie stories.”

Bob Payne, who covered the Idaho Vandals for 15 years when he was writing sports at The Spokesman- Review, e-mailed a reminiscence of Charlie. The coach raced down the line along with ex-Bear Rick Seefried who was sprinting from his quarterback’s spot on a long TD run that ended a long Montana winning streak. The coach greeted him at the end zone.

“It is one of the most vivid memories I have, but more important, it was the quintessential example of how much Charlie Dean was devoted to his job, devoted to his kids, devoted to the sport,” wrote Payne.

Dean was shrewd and used psychology. A couple years ago he was featured in a “Where Are They Now” story in the Lawton (Okla.) Constitution. He told the writer, Herb Jacobs, that “I sold ’em (the players) a bill of goods and they bought in.”

When Dean spoke he did so with such assurance, said Cornwell, that you believed what he spoke was the truth and when he told you something you knew it was right.

“You always stood a little straighter when he was around, behaved a little better when he was around,” Cornwell said.

Cornwell went on to play small-college football and became a successful coach both in Montana and now in Colville.

“He was very organized and did not waste one minute,” said Cornwell. “His stuff has served me well.”

In 2004 I wrote a column about how, during breakfast with Dean, I learned much about the man 30 years removed from his last game as coach. He came to Spokane, where his wife, Tiny, had family, took graduate classes at Eastern Washington University. He met CV’s late principal, Bill Ames, who enticed him to become the Bears’ coach.

He would tell me how his dad worked at Fort Lawton, how he worked to make money and was one of two high school students who owned a car. Jacobs’ story repeated what he oft told me – he never graduated from high school. He joined the Navy midway through his junior year in high school serving as a gunner on merchant vessels during World War II.

When he returned to play football at Cameron Junior College he originally wasn’t allowed to enroll without the high school diploma, he said, but pointed out, unbeknownst to the administration, that he had taken summer school classes at Cameron and made the honor roll. He was granted an exception.

He played in the Junior Rose Bowl in California and later helped coach a Junior Rose Bowl champion while line coach at Cameron from 1955-63. A conditioning regimen that included long runs ending up a 100-yard hill, was emulated when he arrived at CV.

Hatch, whose uncle, Jim, coached at Cheney and in February had a school gym dedicated in his name, said that if you were going to put in all those hills at the end of practice, you weren’t about to lose a football game.

“Coaches like them don’t come around very often,” Hatch said.

There have been great football coaches, state championship football coaches in the area after Dean retired. His era ended long before people now affiliated with the sport were either born or who are too young to remember.

Those who do, remember Charlie Dean as one of a kind.