In The Beginning There Was Wally
Despite his father working hard from dawn to dark on the plantation, and being promoted to a variety of better jobs, life remained hard, and putting food on the table for a growing family a challenge. The family was so hard up, Wally recalled later, “my parents couldn’t afford to buy us a stick of candy.”
Likewise, there were no toys. So he and his brother Akira ran around, literally. Akira, two years older, was the fastest kid on the plantation, and Wally was right behind. Akira’s Maui record for the 40-yard dash stood for decades.
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Herman Wedemeyer
Herman Wedemeyer never would have made it in today's NFL.
In a league where specialization has become the norm with third-down backs and nickel packages, where a superstar like running back Adrian Peterson asks to also run back punts and gets laughed out of the building, there is no room in such a league for the original Flyin' Hawaiian.
In 1945, he was an unanimous All-American for his St. Mary's team, filling a stat sheet in a way that the modern player could never understand: third in total offense, fourth in punting, fourth in passing - and all while being the starting safety for the team.
But how does one become an all-around football player like this, a decathlete with pads?
It started with his roots, playing football on his native Big Island, a rudimentary version of the game where there sometimes would be 30 guys aside. It was during his small-kid times, having to dodge more than two dozen defenders, that he learned the moves that would later earn him his litany of nicknames: Squirmin' Herman, The Hawaiian Centipede and The HulaHipped Hawaiian.
His diversity developed from necessity. When he enrolled at St. Mary's in 1943 after starring at Saint Louis, the team had 20 players, 17 of whom headed off to war in the fall. So the coach created a team of 17-year-olds - too young for the draft. While the results were not stellar, young Wedemeyer became a star.
He spent a year in the merchant marines in 1944, but his return to school in '45, which had a total enrollment of 142 men because of World War II, marked a historic year in Gael football as Wedemeyer led them to a 7-0 start, with wins over such powerhouses as USC and Cal. This caused local papers to proclaim Wedemeyer as "the most sensational discovery to come over the horizon since the Santa Maria."
He finished fourth in the Heisman vote that year, and but for a crushing 13-7 loss to UCLA in the final game of the season, had his team vying for a national championship.
That season earned him a spot in the College Football Hall of Fame and a spot as the first round draft choice of the Los Angeles Dons of the AAFL.
But the pro game didn't attract him with the variety of positions that he had in the college game, and after a season with the Dons and then a season with the Baltimore Colts, he called it quits to come home to the Islands.
He kept up the diversification of his life, entering the political arena and serving on the City Council and in the state Legislature in the late '60s and early '70s. He also starred on the original Hawaii 5-0 as Ed Lukela from 1971 to 1980.
Wedemeyer died Jan. 25, 1999, but every generation of local gridiron greats owes a debt to him and the trail he blazed from the middle of the Pacific to the Hall of Fame.
His nephew Blane Gaison is also a member of this class of Hawaii NFL Legends.
-Chad Pata
Honolulu Star-Advertiser photo
The authoritative 2008 book Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball by Robert K. Fitts (University of Nebraska Press) includes an anecdote about the hungry, adventurous Yonamine boys stealing a watermelon, despite getting fired at by a shotgun-toting farmer. They soon gravitated to sports, whatever the season was.
“He was a rascal,” Jane says. “Nothing really bad. Mostly, Wally was so busy with sports, he didn’t want to do school-work.”
That is how, out of seven siblings, he was the only non-Buddhist.
“His uncle took him to the Catholic church to straighten him out,” Jane says.
His faith stayed with him, which is one reason he and Jane bought a unit at Kahala Nui retirement center, so he could walk to morning mass every day at adjacent Star of the Sea church.
In his book, Fitts writes “the Yonamine brothers played softball, volleyball, soccer and Wally’s particular favorite, football. Since they didn’t have enough money to buy a football, they took an (empty) can of Carnation creamed corn, wrapped it in newspapers, and used that instead.” And because there were few teen boys in the area, the Yonamine brothers joined men’s games.
A radio was Wally’s first window into a world beyond plantation life, and he especially enjoyed listening to games of the semi-pro Hawaii Baseball League and ILH football games from Honolulu Stadium. Listening to games, often with his grandmother, he began to dream of playing in the big city.
As a teen he worked summer days on the plantation, cutting sugar cane.
“I used to really hate that job,” Wally told Fitts. “I got paid only 25 cents a day, but it was the only job I could find. I told myself I never wanted to work in the cane fields again. That’s where my drive to always try my best and never give up came from.”
Wally boarded at Lahainaluna High School for his freshman year, and with other boarders worked three hours on the school farm before classes. His job was to personally bring in 100 pounds of grass a day for the farm’s cows. He went out for the football team in that autumn of 1941 and was named to the second team. But in the first game – against Roosevelt of Honolulu – a Lunas running back broke his thumb, and the coach put in Wally. On his first play, after taking a lateral pitch, Wally threw a 35-yard touchdown pass. He later ran 11 yards for another TD and scored again on a 70-yard interception return.
The Lunas went 6-0 on Maui and hosted Oahu champions Saint Louis in the Haleakala Bowl, which drew 4,000 spectators to the Kahului Fairgrounds. The star for Saint Louis was “Squirmin’ Herman” Wedemeyer – as it happens another inaugural inductee into the Hawaii NFL Legends. The city boys prevailed with two late scores, 13-0.
Wally again worked the sugar fields the following summer and returned for his sophomore season at Lahainaluna. With him running and passing out of the single-wing formation, and kicking, punting and returning kicks, the Lunas again won the Maui title, going 5-0-1. In the deciding final game, Wally scored all 19 points in a 19-6 win over St. Anthony.
On Maui, he was the best player on any field stepped, but he couldn’t get the dream of playing in Honolulu Stadium out of his head. So he asked his father if he could move to Oahu. Having himself left Okinawa at 17, Matsusai said, “If you want to go, you go.”
He went, moving in with an older sporting friend from Olowalu, Mac Flores, now a stevedore.
Wally could have attended Saint Louis – just picture him in the same backfield with Squirmin’ Herman – but instead enrolled at Farrington in the fall of 1943. It was there Kaname adopted the name Wally – after the school’s namesake, Gov. Wallace Rider Farrington. It was frustrating having to sit out his junior year after transferring, and he was never sure where his next meal would come from, but he worked out regularly with Farrington equipment manager Arthur Arnold (who’d also suggested the name change as a way of fitting in) and was ready for his senior season.
Imagine his thoughts and emotions as he ran onto the field for his first game at Honolulu Stadium, which at capacity held 26,000 spectators, his boyhood dream about to come true. Kamehameha was the foe, and wearing a white No. 37 Govs jersey Wally kicked a field goal to open the scoring, later prevented a Kamehameha score with an interception, scored on a run early in the third quarter and added the extra-point kick, giving Farrington a 10-7 win. As in his final game on Maui, in Wally’s first game on Oahu he tallied all the winning points. He would repeat that feat several times during the season, and was named the Honolulu Advertiser‘s league MVP.
Wally turned 20 the following summer and was drafted into the U.S. Army. But the war in Europe was over and Japan would surrender six weeks after he started basic training at Schofield Barracks. It was there he caught the eye of Pittsburgh Steelers coach Jock Sutherland, who had played college ball at Pitt under the legendary Pop Warner. Sutherland offered Wally a contract with the Steelers, but he declined, saying he wanted to attend college – he had scholarship offers from USC, Ohio State and St. Mary’s (where Wedemeyer was starring).
