Canzano: Closing the loop on a Rose Bowl memory

A memory 60 years in the making.

The Rose Bowl waits for Oregon vs. Ohio State.

George Pasero wrote a sports column for The Oregon Journal that ran six days a week. He also served as sports editor, managing a staff of 14. He hosted a radio program on KPOJ, too. But it’s his work as a father I want to tell you about today.

Part of that business is making memories.

Pasero covered 37 consecutive Rose Bowls in his capacity as a columnist. One of them was unlike the others. Because on Jan. 1, 1965, Pasero gathered his wife, Jeanne, and their four children. They piled into the family car and drove to Pasadena.

Oregon State was playing Michigan.

Jim Pasero, one of the kids, told me: “It was a big deal.”

The family spent two weeks in Southern California. The Pasero family went with the team to Disneyland. Jim, 7 at the time, remembers being afraid to ride the Matterhorn rollercoaster. Beavers’ football coach, Tommy Prothro, took him by the hand and rode the bobsled with him.

“I’ll never forget that,” said Jim, now 67. “I had Prothro in front of me and an OSU cheerleader behind me.”

Oregon will play Ohio State on Wednesday in the Rose Bowl. It’s a quarterfinal of the College Football Playoff. The stakes feel high. Jim made the trip — his first return to the stadium in 60 years — and plans to be there with friends. He’s a UO grad but also a guy looking to close a loop and give a nod to his late father as he passes through the stadium gates.

“That Rose Bowl was the trip of a lifetime for me,” he said.

I’ve written a couple of times about my grandfather’s connection with the Rose Bowl. He was the son of Italian immigrants and grew up in a tiny steel town in Pennslyvania. My grandfather rooted for Pitt. The Panthers were playing USC in the 1930 Rose Bowl. And so my grandfather, age 19, stowed away on a train with friends, hopping from box car to box car, headed west in late December.

They slept wherever they could.

They ate what they could find.

They made it to Pasadena.

A day late.

I’ve covered more than a dozen Rose Bowl games. I drive up to the stadium, park, walk through the gates with glassy eyes, and whisper, “Made it, gramps.” It’s a ritual. The “Grandaddy of Them All” literally with a grandad connection for me.

My grandfather missed the kickoff of the 1930 game, but his trip wasn’t a waste. He saw blossoms on cherry trees and vowed that one day he’d return when he had a family of his own. Six years later, he was married with children. He packed up in the winter and moved my grandmother and their kids to California.

Decades later, my father met my mother.

As my grandpa liked to tell me: “You might say… you wouldn’t have been born if it weren’t for the Rose Bowl.”

Jim Pasero remembers falling asleep to the sound of his father’s typewriter. He recalls cozy post-game parties in the homes of coaches at Oregon and Oregon State. He recalls his father, traveling for work and covering too many games to count. But most of all, Jim remembers the Rose Bowl game his whole family attended.

The Pasero family in front of the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, 1965.

“It was coach Tommy Prothro’s last game at OSU,” Jim told me. “Tommy was leaving after nine years. He was a legend. Did you know Tommy was a master bridge player? He regularly took hundreds of dollars from writers who covered the team. Dad stopped playing him for that reason.”

Michigan was an 11-point favorite in the 1965 Rose Bowl. Prothro’s possible departure to UCLA hung over the pre-game scene. But Oregon State took a 7-0 lead early in the second quarter when Beavers’ quarterback Paul Brothers hit Doug McDougal with a TD pass.

“I jumped out of my seat in the stadium and went crazy,” Jim said.

A Michigan fan sitting behind Jim tapped him on the shoulder and said: “Sit down, kid. It’s going to be a long day.”

Said Jim: “The guy was right.”

The Wolverines scored 34 unanswered points.

George Pasero was a legend in print. He connected deeply with his audience, set the tone for public discourse, and loved his job. Long-time Oregon newspaperman Jeff Wohler ‘managed’ Pasero in later years. Wohler told me on Tuesday: “Nobody told George what to write. He’d earned that privilege. And I think he had a little twinkle knowing his stature and what he was doing. He’d been THE columnist for so long.

“Readers absolutely loved George.”

Pasero retired as a full-time columnist in 1986. He didn’t stop working, though. Pasero wrote once a week after that until his death. His final game column, Jim remembers, was off the Oregon-Washington matchup in 1994 that featured Kenny Wheaton’s historic interception return for a TD.

“Dad called me a couple of hours before that game,” Jim said. “He forgot his computer at home. I got it and drove it to Wilsonville and handed the computer off to Ken Goe, who brought it to Dad at the stadium.”

Goe, a fellow sportswriter, always delivered, didn’t he?

George Pasero poured himself into the column until the spring of 1997 when he died from a stroke. His final column was about Oregon basketball coach Ernie Kent.

“It was a good piece,” Jim said.

George was 79.

On Wednesday, his son will make the trip to the Rose Bowl and root for the Ducks to beat Ohio State. Jim Pasero plans to attend the UO alumni tailgate and sit with friends. I could hear the spark in his voice as he told me about the only other Rose Bowl he’d seen in person.

Core memories do that to a kid.

Jim said: “I can’t believe it’s been 60 years.”

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