Friends remember former Washington State running back Duke Washington as gentleman, scholar

“Duke was Duke, and his name fit him well,” is how Albert “Red” Golden remembers Duke Washington, a teammate of Golden’s on Washington State’s football teams in the early 1950s but also a scholar and a gentleman.

Washington died on Feb. 16 at age 84 after weeks battling pneumonia. His WSU teammates remember him as a courageous man and philosopher.

“He was an excellent player and he was a good friend. He was quiet, but he was just a nice guy,” said Bob Iverson, the quarterback who would hand the ball off to Washington, a fullback, and who remembered a time Washington had loaned Iverson his jacket when the quarterback had lost his own.

Washington, who grew up in Pasco, is known for being the first African-American to play at the University of Texas’ Memorial Stadium on Oct. 2, 1954.

He was only the third African-American to play football for WSU, joining Bill Holmes and Howard McCants, whom coach Forest Evashevski recruited in 1950, one year before Washington arrived on campus.

Though the Cougars were only recently integrated themselves, the WSU administration rallied around Washington when the UT Board of Regents tried to prevent the two-way star from playing.

Then-Washington State College President C. Clement French insisted that the Cougars would come with Washington, or not at all. UT president Logan Wilson acquiesced but fell back on a state law prohibiting the public university for paying for the common housing of different races.

So other housing arrangements had to be made for Washington. While an African-American family in Austin was found to host WSC’s star player, there was still the matter of playing the game against the Longhorns.

“We worried about Duke being injured in the game, but the Texas players were very respectful,” said teammate Skip Pixley, a North Central High graduate who spent the summers cutting lumber with Washington at Kaiser Aluminum in Spokane Valley. “They played hard – and they got a lot of water and we didn’t.”

And though the Longhorns easily won on that sweltering October day, 40-14, the game’s most memorable moment belonged to Washington.

He put the Cougars on the board with a 73-yard touchdown run right at the end-zone section where Texas had seated the African-American fans.

According to local newspapers, the touchdown drew the game’s loudest cheer.

“The beautiful thing about it was, they were all down there in that section and everybody was cheering for Duke,” Pixley said. “He handled it so well.”

Washington is one of the most decorated Cougars to play, and is member of both the WSU and WIAA Halls of Fame. Longtime WSU sports information director Dick Fry recalls that Washington was inducted alongside former WSU coach Jim Walden, and wonders if Jim Sterk, the athletic director at the time, might have imposed speaking limits on two of the most famously talkative Cougars around.

As a senior running back at Pasco High he was named the Inland Player of the Year.

As a senior at WSU he was named an honorable mention All-American.

“In the field of sports we were all equal, and he was great,” Golden said. “He was smart and he was one hell of an athlete.”

Football took Washington to Columbus, Ohio; Stillwater, Oklahoma; and Waco, Texas. It took him to a couple of pro teams – the Philadelphia Eagles and the British Columbia Lions. Then, a couple of military teams: Fort Ord and the 87th Infantry in Germany.

After his playing days, Washington settled in Seattle as an art teacher, eventually becoming a vice principal at Franklin High and then Assistant Dean of Students at the University of Washington.

He wrote a letter that he would give to graduating seniors at Franklin, imploring them to value their education and to not let a lack of education be the reason they did not go on to do great things with their lives.

“He had a lot of dignity and he was a well-learned person,” Pixley said.

“One thing about Duke was he really believed in education.”