John Medaris part of the defensive line of the late 1960s died February 20. John was a ferocious Cal football player. He was intensely loyal and intensely kind. He was one of Dutton's men.
John was a railroad engineer. And yes, he had a knee injury that slow him down. He was a little undersized. He was a state wrestling champion, and wrestled at Cal and boxer. Very tough.sp4149 said:
AS I recall John was an Engineering major. You didn't see many athletes on that side of Campus. I also remember John has having lost a step from a knee injury and the resulting surgery. I have been thankful that my knee surgeries occurred later in life when the surgery was not as debilitating as back then. Injured athletes back then had to work so much harder to get back on the field, the fans in the stands never knew...
What railroad? I had an opportunity to hire on with the Southern Pacific my junior year. My cousin dropped out of UC Riverside at that time to become a Southern Pacific brakeman. and five years later he was a fireman and then a year later he was promoted to locomotive engineer while I was working as an engineer with the Navy. I never made as much money as he did and he had a tax free RR retirement. When I graduated and I was be-quested with a 1A deferment jobs were scarce for engineers, I applied to twenty Class 1 railroads, got one sniff. If I had worked even a couple of years as a brakeman I would have been hired. The key was getting into the locomotive cab, instead of working as a brakeman/conductor your whole career, a far more physical job.2701RidgeRoad said:John was a railroad engineer. And yes, he had a knee injury that slow him down. He was a little undersized. He was a state wrestling champion, and wrestled at Cal and boxer. Very tough.sp4149 said:
AS I recall John was an Engineering major. You didn't see many athletes on that side of Campus. I also remember John has having lost a step from a knee injury and the resulting surgery. I have been thankful that my knee surgeries occurred later in life when the surgery was not as debilitating as back then. Injured athletes back then had to work so much harder to get back on the field, the fans in the stands never knew...