His loving wife Lucy is now back continuing the fight against the ALS disease that claimed his life a little over four-years ago
Despite the fact life his story was made into an Emmy-winning PBS documentary “One More Season,” as well as the CBS movie "Quiet Victory: The Charlie Wedemeyer Story," not a lot of young people or even some older ones, and even people in the South Bay where he’s a legend, remember who Charlie Wedemeyer really was.
More often than not, when people think of ALS they associate the disease with its most famous victim, New York Yankees fabled Hall-of-Famer Lou Gehrig, or in the Bay Area with Oakland Athletics Hall of Fame pitcher Jim “Catfish” Hunter.
Now, with the “Ice-Bucket Challenge” (#IceBucketChallange) fad going viral in an effort to promote awareness and raise funds for ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), the time has come to re-tell the story of Charlie and his loving and dedicated wife and widow Lucy Wedemeyer, and her current campaign of keeping her husband’s legacy alive through awareness of the ALS disease that killed him.
Wedemeyer was born in 1946 in Honolulu as the youngest of nine children. He attended Punahou High, the same school President Barack Obama would later attend. His older brother Herman Wedemeyer was also an outstanding football player and later an actor on the original cast of the TV show Hawaii Five-O
Charlie became one of the greatest athletes in Hawaiian history. He was a standout quarterback, baseball and basketball player, and was named the Hawaii Prep Athlete of the 1960’s.
After graduating in 1965, Wedemeyer attended Michigan State and played for the legendary Duffy Daugherty, where at 5-foot-7, 164-pounds he was too small to be a quarterback but excelled as a wide receiver and blocking back despite his diminutive stature.
He earned degrees from Michigan State and Central Michigan before he and his Punahou sweetheart Lucy settled in the South Bay in 1970.
In 1977 he took over as head coach of a football team at Los Gatos that hadn’t made any noise in years. Wedemeyer changed that.
Shortly after taking the coaching and teaching positions at Los Gatos, Wedemeyer began having difficulty writing on the chalkboard of his classroom. One year later, and at age 30, Charlie learned he had ALS, a neurodegenerative disease that usually attacks both upper and lower motor neurons and causes degeneration throughout the brain and spinal cord as it slowly eats away at a person’s muscle control. He was given 1-2 years to live.
Despite a worsening condition, and always with the support of his adoring Lucy, Wedemeyer pressed on and refused to give up coaching, and perennially had one of the top programs in CIF Central Coast Section.
When it got to a point where he had lost the use of his legs and needed to be on a ventilator, he sat in a wheelchair with Lucy on the sidelines with him in a golf cart.
In the 1985 CCS championship game, and with Lucy in the golf cart reading Charlie’s lips and relaying the plays and instructions to the assistants, the Cats won the game 14-12 over two-time defending champion St. Francis of Mountain View. The result was a legend was etched into Bay Area high school football history.
After Wedemeyer stepped down in 1986 he was still there on the sidelines with Lucy at the games, and continued to attend practices despite his deteriorating physical condition.
“Charlie kept coaching with us even after he stepped down, and then when he got worse he was still coaching the JVs and frosh. Charlie coached at Los Gatos until the day he died,” said retired Los Gatos head coach, Butch Cattolico, Charlie’s top assistant on the 1985 team.
Before Charlie retired and afterward as well, coaching with someone in Wedemeyer’s condition was a challenge for Cattolico.
“Organization was the biggest thing I learned from Charlie,” said Cattolico, who according to the Cal-Hi Sports Record Book had 229 career coaching victories from 1986-2008, all at the Wildcats helm. “A few years before he retired I would spend Sundays at his house watching film and working on plays and game plans. With his situation we had to be really organized to have the success we had.”
Charlie even inspired current Marin Catholic head coach Mazi Moayed.
“Back when I was coaching at Novato I was invited to a Forty-Niners practice when Mariucci was coach, and Charlie was there. Seeing him in a wheelchair and the loving people around him, and knowing his story was an inspiration,” said Moayed, a cancer survivor.
Long before Charlie passed away from ALS in June of 2010 the family got involved in raising money for families coping with the disease. Charlie even had public speaking engagements with Lucy acting as the voice of his words.
The Rotary Club of Almaden Valley, sponsor of the San Jose-area North versus South All-Star Game the past 40-years, re-named the affair in the late 1980’s the Charlie Wedemeyer High School All-Star Football Game.
When Charlie died Cattolico saw to it that the scoreboard at Los Gatos was named in his honor. The bench where Lucy sits with some of her 10 grandchildren at games when she’s not out of town is named in Charlie’s honor
After focusing on her career as a real estate broker in the Los Gatos area the past four years, and taking time to get used to the loss of her beloved Charlie, Lucy recently made a decision it was time to get back involved.
“I recently made a decision to dive back in and was appointed an advisory trustee of the ALS Association Golden West Chapter (serving California and Hawaii). “I was still involved with helping families but this is the first year I’ve been involved publicly since Charlie passed,” said Lucy in mid-September from Hawaii where she was involved with the association’s Hawaii Walk to Defeat ALS. The fundraising event held at Kapiolani Park near Honolulu’s famous Diamond Head brought back fond memories for Lucy.
“It was at Kapiolani Park that my dear husband taught me how to juke between the palm trees.”
While in Hawaii Lucy also spoke to the Kamehameha football team coached by a South Bay star around Charlie’s time and former Dallas Cowboy Doug Cosbie.
“Kamehameha and Punahou – back in the 60’s they were our arch rivals but it was good to tell them Charlie’s story and to never give up.”
Lucy also got to speak to the players at this years 40th annual Charlie Wedemeyer High School All-Star Football Game, and gave the players copies of the 1993 book she and Charlie wrote together titled “Charlie’s Victory.”
Lucy also proudly reports that when the Los Gatos Fisher Middle School boys basketball team found out a team mom had ALS, they reached our for help from the Santa Clara men’s team and the boys did a fundraiser that raised $10,000.”
“I love it when young people are involved,” Lucy told Prep2Prep.
While the Ice Bucket Challenge continues, its young and old that are involved. For Ice Bucket Challenge information go to the ALS Association Golden West Chapter web site at http://www.als-icebucketchallenge.org/
According to Lucy people that want to purchase a copy of the “Courage to Live” compilation of the original documentary, the TV movie and updated video to 2004, you can do so by going to CourageToLive.com.
“Thank you for keeping Charlie’s legacy alive. God bless you. Aloha ke Akua ia oe. Mahalo,” Lucy said.
The real thanks for making the world a better place go to people like Lucy Wedemeyer.
Watch the Los Gatos Wildcats complete the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge here:
