Published: June 28, 2008 08:35 pm            

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Legendary former Wiley football coach Ted Fehring dies

TERRE HAUTE — On June 9, 2008, Theodore Thompson “Ted” Fehring, one of the most successful high school coaches in Vigo County annals, died in Carmel, Calif.

Born April 8, 1914 in Columbus, Ind., he was 94 years old.

Ted and his older brother William Paul “Dutch” Fehring were outstanding athletes at Columbus High School and Purdue University.

Their father, Lynn Fehring, became manager of Terre Haute Heavy Hardware Co., Inc., a wholesale hardware house in the early 1920s. A few years later, he and his wife, Ivy Rae, acquired the business, which ultimately located at 940 Chestnut St.

Until 1931, the Fehrings remained in Columbus so their sons — Ray, Dutch and Ted — could finish high school. For much of that time, Lynn resided at 301 S. Fifth St. in Terre Haute during the week and commuted to Columbus by interurban on weekends.

The name of the business was changed to Hardware Supply Co. and the Fehrings maintained a residence at 338 S. 22nd St. in Terre Haute Ina Rae died in December of 1965 and Lynn died a year later. The boys sold the business in 1967.

The Fehring boys attended Purdue. Dutch is ranked among the finest athletes in Boilermaker history, earning nine letters in three sports: football, basketball and baseball.

In basketball, Dutch was a starting center on the 1932 team chosen by the Helms Foundation in 1943 as the mythical national champion. His travel roommate was John Wooden, who became a lifelong friend. In football, Dutch was 1933 team captain and, in baseball, was the 1934 Big Ten MVP and recipient of the Big Ten Medal of Honor.

Upon graduation, Dutch signed a pro baseball contract as a catcher with the Chicago White Sox. He had a cup of coffee in the major leagues in 1934.

White Dutch was playing baseball, Ted assumed his brother’s job for two years as starting right tackle on the Boilermakers’ football team. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1936 and, while spending a year on the Purdue athletic staff, worked on a Masters. He received his M.S. in 1939.

Dutch returned to Purdue in 1936 as head baseball coach and assistant football coach but departed in 1942 to serve in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

Ted became head football coach at Terre Haute Wiley High School in 1937. At the time, the Red Streaks had never beaten city rivals Garfield and Gerstmeyer in the same season, a feat necessary to be declared the undisputed “city champion.”

Fehring changed that. During eight years at the southside school, Ted never lost a football game to a Terre Haute opponent. His 8-0 season in 1943 was the first undefeated-untied team in Wiley history.

A number of outstanding athletes played for him including Eddie McGovern, Dr. Ed Wilkerson (who scored six touchdowns against Garfield in the 1938 Thanksgiving Day game), Bill Kipple, Earl and Bob Harmas, Bob O’Leary, Don Wegrich, Jim Jackson, Jim Cox, Mose Kassis, Don Faubion, Bob and Jim Jensen, Wade Anshutz and Harold Bowsher.

As a basketball assistant, Fehring coached Wiley legends E.V. “Curly” Halt and George Tipton, among others.

Ted wed Marie Grote, a native of Vancouver, British Columbia, June 29, 1938, and the couple visited Carmel, Calif., on their honeymoon. In 1944, Garfield basketball coach Willard Kehrt told Fehring about an opening to coach Carmel High School in 1945-46.

Thinking the Pebble Beach area would be a pleasant place to spend a year, Ted applied. Indiana University basketball coach Everett Dean also recommended him.

Ted got the job and the Fehring family, including daughters Janet, Jean and Joy — all Terre Haute natives — headed west, expecting to return when the tenured Carmel coach finished his World War II military stint. Fehring was successful. Carmel High achieved its first conference basketball title. When it was time for Ted to return to Indiana, the Fehrings decided to stay. Ted got a job with a title insurance company.

After the war, Dutch became assistant football coach at Oklahoma under Coach Bob Wilkinson and then at UCLA, where he recommended John Wooden, the head coach at Indiana State, for the basketball job. The rest is history.

In 1949, Dutch relocated to Stanford University as an assistant coach in baseball and football. He was coaching in 1952 — the year he earned a Ph.D. in Education — when Stanford played Illinois in the Rose Bowl and was head baseball coach from 1956 to 1967, taking the 1967 team to the College World Series. He stayed at Stanford 11 more years as director of intramural and club sports.

Past president of the American Baseball Coaches Association, World Amateur Baseball Federation and the U.S. Baseball Federation, Dutch was chairman of the U.S. Olympic Games Baseball Committee, which was instrumental in convincing the international community to add the sport to the Olympic Games.

Dutch has been inducted into six athletic halls of fame, including the Indiana Baseball Hall of Fame. He died in Menlo Park, Calif., on April 13, 2006 at age 93.

Ted entered the savings and loan industry in 1958 and was vice president and director of Monterrey Savings & Loan Association until he retired in 1977. Later he co-founded Cypress Mortgage Co. and was a real estate professional.

Though he did not coach, he maintained his lifelong interest in sports, becoming a football official in the Pac-8, now Pac-10, and refereed hundreds of games, including the Rose Bowl, East-West Shrine game and the Sun Bowl.

For several years he was president of the Carmel School board of trustees and served on boards of the Carmel Cultural & Planning Commission. and the Sunset Commission. He was an honored Pillar of the Carmel Community Foundation and compiled 60 consecutive years of perfect attendance with the Carmel Host Lions Club, attending his last meeting only a week before his death.

Marie Fehring, who met Ted on a Catalina Island ferry, died in 2002. The couple were founding members of the Community Church of the Monterrey Peninsula.

Ted is survived by his five daughters and their husbands: Janet and Peter Schober, Jeannie and Merrill Hall, Joy and Gordon Roberts, Julie and Jeff Almquist and JoAnn and Mark Holbrook, 13 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. Daughters Julie and JoAnn were born after the family located in California.

A Celebration of Ted Fehring’s life will be conducted Nov. 29, 2008 in Carmel.

        

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