Golden Bear Football Champions

Dan Straka (#2 jersey) with his football teammates

by Mark and Sue Straka

The 2000 Upper Arlington Golden Bear football team started the season with high expectations and hopes.  As the season unfolded it began to yield a bountiful number of fond memories on and off the field.

Perhaps one of the more memorable times of forging camaraderie would be the post-game gathering of players and coaches to feast on food, watch local television's show, "Football Friday Night", and view a parent's sideline highlight film.  These gatherings often went past midnight. 

The hosting duties alternated between two team member's homes where family room furniture could be arranged for the eagerly awaited "highlights."  Food was also an integral part of the post-game bash. As the campaign stretched into November an early Thanksgiving theme emerged for the Friday night gathering.  Three 20-pound turkeys, 60 pounds of mashed potatoes, six boxes of Costco stuffing and 7 pumpkin pies all met their match with the huge appetites of the Golden Bear coaches and players.  

The UA team thrilled their fans as they finished 15-0 and became the first central Ohio team to win the large school state title since play-offs began, and the first team to go 15-0 in the state of Ohio Division I.  

The greatest memories for the players and parents, however, were these "Football Friday Night" post-game gatherings where food, film and fellowship produced an enduring legacy of brotherhood, UA spirit, and commitment to excellence. 

The Men, the Myths, the Legends

                                                George Haddad, left, with Woody Hayes

by Connie Haddad Frecker, Diane Haddad, and Carolyn Haddad Dougherty


Here is another side of our father and Woody Hayes that most people don't know.  Woody and Anne Hayes were good friends with our parents, George and Lilyan Haddad.  Everyone knows Woody as a colorful personality, but Anne would also light up the room.  She had a lot of energy and enthusiasm and loved to swim in our pool.  As our mother's health started to deteriorate as a result of multiple sclerosis, her eyesight became extremely compromised.  Woody would often come over to visit and he would kneel down by her wheelchair and read to her.

People might think that Woody, the football coach, and our father, the concert pianist, had nothing in common, but that couldn't be further from the truth.  They would talk for hours about the importance of relationships, whether it was the coach and his players or the professor and his students.  Not only did they talk, but they demonstrated this in the way that they chose to live their lives.  Woody and Dad enjoyed their children and grandchildren and shared their adoration for them.

James Thurber's UA Connection

James Thurber, left, with Ted Gardiner

By Fred Hadley

Throughout the decade of the 1930’s, my grandparents, Ted & Julia Gardiner, would often host their good friend James Thurber, the renowned humorist and cartoonist, at their home on Devon Road. It became customary that Ted and James (who had been Phi Psi fraternity brothers) and frequently other gentlemen joining them for the evening would adjourn to the Gardiners’ attic to share libations and trade stories of days gone by and other worldly tales long into the night. When the conversations turned to mundane chatter about social life in Columbus, Mr. Thurber would combat his boredom by drawing sketches on the attic wall of characters often depicted in many of his now legendary cartoons. One of the regular participants in this late night tradition was local real estate developer and UA neighbor, Don Casto, to whom Thurber referred as suffering from an “Edifice Complex”.

Many years later, the subsequent owners of the residence, the Robert Setterlin family, discovered the connection of the Gardiners to James Thurber and realized they had something of significance up in their attic. They had the attic wall preserved and donated it to The Ohio State University, which today maintains the world’s largest collection of original Thurber memorabilia and manuscripts (including the Gardiners’ attic wall). If only this wall could talk, many colorful stories of those nighttime gatherings in the attic could be told.