Headline: Joe Huston Succumbs
(Joseph Karl Huston)
Source:
Oregon Statesman daily morning newspaper,
Salem, Ore., March 23, 1975
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Born in Colfax, Wash., and grew up in Los Angeles, Joe Huston is a member of the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame. His "fame" bio:
"Joe Huston played his college football at the University of Oregon in the 1930’s and his love of the game led to a distinguished coaching career. His career consisted of 21 total years of high school and college coaching. He coached football at Bend, Roosevelt, and Grant High Schools before moving on to Lewis & Clark College in 1947. His 1946 Grant team won the State Football Championship.
"In 18 seasons as head coach at Lewis & Clark, his teams had a record of 100-52-7. The 1950 and 1963 teams were both undefeated. He was twice named NAIA District Two Coach of the Year. He was runner-up for the NAIA Football Coach of the Year in 1963. After stepping down from coaching in 1964, Joe was the Athletic Director until his retirement in 1972."
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Joe Huston graduated from Glendale High School in Los Angeles. He matriculated at the University of Oregon in Eugene: 1935-1938. He stayed at the UO an extra year to earn his degree, graduating in the spring of 1939.
He was a guard and placekicker on Coach Prink Callison's University of Oregon Duck 1936-1938 football teams.
In his first coaching job that fall, he led Bend High School in central Oregon to the first Oregon prep football championship. The team Bend Lava Bears defeated for the 1940 title? The Medford Black Tornado, a perennial prep powerhouse in those days.
Bend won the game, 20-6, in Medford. Coach of the Black Tornado that year? Bill Bowerman, better known later as University of Oregon track & field coach.
Huston left Bend for Portland, where he became head coach, in 1941, of the Roosevelt High School football team.
A story in the Oregon Journal of March 22, 1942, said he enlisted in the military. He served as a naval gunnery officer on Navy transports in the Pacific. He spent 28 months in “action-infested waters,” said another Journal article.
After leaving the service in 1945, he became head football coach of Portland’s Grant High School.
The state title with Bend and another (in 1946) with Grant (10-0) gave him two state prep titles in three years of coaching before he moved to Palatine Hill in 1947 as head football coach of Lewis and Clark College.
At L&C, Huston produced a legendary 1950 9-0 Pioneer team just four years later.
