For 85 years, he’s been a Beaver believer

Tualatin resident Bud Ossey joined the Beaver Club in 1946, but he’s followed the school’s athletics since age 5

By Kerry Eggers

The Times, Nov 19, 2009

L.E. Baskow / Pamplin Media Group

Bud Ossey of Tualatin, 90, has been following Oregon State since 1924.

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Bud Ossey turned 90 earlier this month. He and his wife of 67 years, Maxine, celebrated in the Bay Area, watching Oregon State beat California.

How else?

“That’s what we do,” says Ossey, a Beaver Club member for 63 years.

The Portland native and Tualatin resident has been watching Oregon State games since 1924, when, as a 5-year-old, he and his mother would ride the Oregon Electric train to Corvallis to visit his father, who was attending college there.

In those days, of course, it wasn’t Oregon State, it was Oregon Agricultural College. They weren’t known as the Beavers, they were the Aggies or Orangemen. In his first year as football coach was Paul Schissler, later to coach the NFL Chicago Cardinals. The basketball coach was Bob Hager, whose captain was a senior guard named Slats Gill.

It was a very different world back then, but Ossey’s love for his school’s athletic teams has lasted generation after generation after generation. He has held season tickets to Oregon State football and basketball since 1946.

“It’s been my whole life, except for my family and my profession,” Ossey says.

Ossey has known every football coach since then, and has liked all but one. He is past president of the Beaver Club and Beaver Athletic Student Foundation, and remains a member of the BASF advisory board.

A lifelong odyssey

Born Bernard Osipovich in Odessa, Russia, in 1919, Ossey — an only child — fled the next year to Portland with his mother, Nadia, after the Russian Revolution. His father, Abraham, followed two years later. In 1924, Nadia and her son stayed at their home in Southeast Portland while Abraham worked toward an engineering degree at OAC, which he got in 1927.

In the meantime, there were sporting events to watch. Thus began a near lifelong Ossey odyssey that makes him among the oldest active living Beaver believers.

In those days, football games were played at Bell Field.

“I remember sitting up there in the wooden stands with my parents,” Ossey says.

Ossey and his mother would take the train down to football games at least once a year. They’d sometimes come and watch Hager’s basketball team play, too, at Langdon Hall, then known as the Men’s Gym.

The family would go to OAC football games in Portland, too. Ossey still has programs from 1927 games played against Stanford and Carnegie Tech in Corvallis.

After Abraham’s graduation, he returned to Portland and found employment. The Osipovich family (Bud changed his surname to Ossey during his college years) moved to the Irvington neighborhood in Northeast Portland. Bud attending Failing and Irvington elementary schools and graduated from Benson Tech. Ossey played basketball and baseball against the great Johnny Pesky during his prep years.

During the Depression years, Ossey earned nickels selling programs at ballgames. As a 14-year-old in 1933, he worked the fabled “Ironmen” game in which OSC coach Lon Stiner used only 11 players in a 0-0 tie against two-time defending national champion Southern Cal.

“When the game started, I happened to be right behind the USC bench,” Ossey recalls. “I sat down on the bench, and nobody kicked me off. Several of the players came up and patted me on the head. Cotton Warburton, the All-America quarterback, came up and said hello.

“After the game, the yardstick was lying there in front of the USC bench. Nobody was going to pick it up, so I rolled up the chain and brought it home. I had it for years and lost it during a move. I’d give anything to have that yardstick now.”

Transplanted Rose Bowl

Ossey enrolled at Oregon State in 1937 and played freshman basketball under Rook coach “Wild Bill” McKalip. Ossey quit school after one year, moved back to Portland and did engineering work for four years for the Bonneville Power Administration. He spent time with the Army Corps of Engineers during World War II and was stationed in Corvallis, where he continued his education at OSC as part of the school’s ROTC program. He graduated in 1943, the year after he and Maxine wed.

“We were one of only four married couples on campus that year,” Ossey says.

At OSC, Ossey lived a part of college football history. The Beavers were part of the only Rose Bowl game ever played away from Pasadena, Calif. Concerns about a Japanese attack moved the game to Durham, N.C., where coach Lon Stiner’s Beavers beat Duke 20-16 in the transplanted Rose Bowl. The move to the East Coast disappointed Ossey, who had tickets and was planning to drive to Pasadena for the game.

“I felt so bad, I threw them away,” Ossey says. “Would I give anything to have those now.”

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