Canzano: This dad planted more than coins
A column about the great Dave Carlo.
I asked for letters. I got a beauty on Sunday. It came from two daughters, Lynn Lunde and Mimi McCaslin, who wanted to tell me about their father.
It’s Father’s Day, after all.
Dave Carlo died a couple of summers ago. He was 92. His dad, Donato, was an Italian immigrant from Calabria. My grandmother’s side of the family is from that region, too. I’ve never visited, but I grew up hearing about it as a kid.
Anyway, Donato immigrated to the United States in 1906. He was 10. His family settled in an Italian community in Portland. He watched his first football game — an Oregon Ducks game — through a knothole in the fence at Multnomah Stadium. He sold newspapers as a boy. Later, he became a pressman at The Oregon Journal, whose publisher for a couple of decades was William W. Knight.
That’s Phil Knight’s dad.
Donato fell in love, got married, and had two children. He began taking his son, Dave, to Oregon football games in 1937 when he was 5.
By the time Dave died, he had been attending Oregon football games for 85 years. Wrap your mind around that. The school featured Dave during a game on the giant video screen at Autzen Stadium during the 2017 season.
Dave didn’t miss an Oregon home football game, except for one Saturday in October of 1990. Mimi’s wedding conflicted with a kickoff. Dave did what great dads do. He walked his daughter down the aisle, of course. He was discovered in the parking lot during the reception, however, listening to the Ducks finish out a 27-7 win over Arizona State on the radio.
Traditions are huge in Italian families. The family had Sunday dinners at their grandparents’ house. It was always pasta and white wine. The grandkids — Lynn and Mimi — learned to whisper “pass the cheese” when they wanted more Parmesan.
“It was expensive,” Lynn said.
I love that detail.
“We would sit at that dining room table, and the adults would laugh until they had tears coming down,” she said. “We were also always there for every holiday and family birthday. My grandpa was a really funny guy who loved people. My dad got that from him. They could talk with anyone.”
Oregon football was a tradition that was passed down to Dave, too. It makes sense that Dave would then give it to his daughters as well. They began going to games when they were toddlers. They crawled around the bleachers at Hayward Field. And when Autzen Stadium was being built in the late 1960s, Dave piled the two girls in the car and made the drive from Portland to Eugene.
He brought a pocket filled with coins.
A shovel, too.
I don’t know what cool facts you know about Autzen Stadium, but I learned on Sunday that there’s a penny, nickel, dime, and 50-cent piece buried, midfield. Dave and his two daughters put them there for good luck.
When the stadium was completed, Dave bought three season tickets in Section 29, Row 12. Seats 13, 14, and 15 are where the family and friends spent Saturdays in the fall.
The girls still own season tickets for seats No. 14 and 15.
“We grew up watching the Ducks go 3-8 and drop the football in the rain,” Mimi likes to say. The girls can hardly believe Don Essig, the stadium public-address announcer, is still calling games.
“The voice of our childhood,” Lynn said.
Lynn told me she used to fight her dad for the sports page when she was in junior high. They both loved reading about college football. Years later, she told me, they’d often discuss my columns at the breakfast table.
“Dad would occasionally get mad at you if he thought you were too hard on the Ducks,” Lynn said.
Mimi was a distance runner on the women’s track team in the late 1970s and early 1980s at Oregon. During that time, her father got to know UO football coach Rich Brooks a little. Brooks even let him observe some closed practices.
“Dad would ride his motorcycle to Eugene, watch my track practice, and then go watch the football team practice,” Mimi said.
I have three daughters. As I write this column, there’s so much on my mind. I’m thinking about the traditions we enjoy, the games we’ve watched, and how sports always seem to find their way to the center of the best daddy-daughter relationships.
Do you watch your kids play sports? Go to the park and bring a ball? Coach their teams? Take them to games? Watch their practices? It’s a shared experience, this sporting thing. It’s the life lesson that a father — the great Dave Carlo — is reminding us of today.
Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.”
I suppose there are big dangers in those sports. One misstep and you’re a goner. I get it. Hemingway wasn’t wrong about that. But I’d challenge anyone to talk with Lynn and Mimi about their father and not leave thinking that any sport a parent shares with a child is more than a game.
Dave’s little girls are all grown up. They have children of their own now. I asked the girls on Sunday morning to tell me something they learned from their father.
Lynn said, “He taught us to swim, water ski, and love the coast. To run. The three of us used to run together. To love the Ducks! To be fearless and love people.”
Mimi said, “There was simply no one like him. He made everyone feel so important. He was always laughing… God, I miss him. Lynn, Dad, and I were the three musketeers, through thick and thin.”
Dave battled Alzheimer’s to the end. His final UO football game came during the 2022 season. It was a sunny, cool day. I was at the stadium, too, that day. Oregon beat UCLA, 45-30. It was Chip Kelly’s return to Eugene. Bo Nix threw five touchdown passes. There was never a doubt for the Ducks. It was almost effortless.
Those two daughters told me all about their dad on Sunday. At one point, Mimi wondered if I should hold off writing about him so they could make sure they weren’t forgetting anything. They could probably tell stories about their dad for a week straight.
I reminded them that it’s Father’s Day.
No better time to celebrate the guy.
He planted more than a pocket of coins, didn’t he?
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My wish for every father today is that one day they get to see their grandchildren play sports! ❤️
Terrific story, John. Happy Father's Day!