Remembering the Sportsman of East Los Angeles

I hate it when I miss a story. I like to think I’m on top of the news, but there are times when a noteworthy event escapes my attention. Usually, I find out when an editor comes by and tells me the competition has it.

This time, no editor came by and informed me of my blunder. It came in the form of a videotape from Val Rodriguez, a teacher at Banning High School in Wilmington who has a sharp eye for news. From the moment I opened the package from Rodriguez, I knew I had missed a big story.

It was a 20-minute video of the graveside service last week for Garfield High School football coach Steve Robinson, who died Jan. 19 of an apparent heart attack at the age of 51.

Robinson wasn’t big news to many outside of East L.A. But to the thousands loyal to Garfield and to the greater Eastside, he was as big as calculus teacher Jaime Escalante or actor Edward James Olmos, who played Escalante in the movie “Stand and Deliver.”

That was evident on the videotape.

With the Chicano neighborhoods of Whittier and Pico Rivera off in the distance, you could see the big crowd, upward of 1,000 people, that gathered at Rose Hills Cemetery to pay their respects.

Virtually all who came were Latinos. To them, it didn’t matter that Robinson, an intensely private man who grew up in Pico Rivera and lived alone in Montebello, was an Anglo. It also didn’t matter that he was part of the sprawling bureaucracy known as the L.A. Unified School District.

To them, he was more than just a football coach. He was one of them. He was from the Eastside. He understood them. He talked like them. They even appreciated Robinson’s penchant for wearing guayaberas , the embroidered open-collar shirts popular in Latin America.

And, he was involved in East L.A.’s biggest football game. A fixture at Garfield since 1973, he coached the varsity team in the last six of its annual battles with archrival Roosevelt High of Boyle Heights, which draws more than 20,000 spectators each year to East L.A. College stadium.

The Garfield-Roosevelt rivalry is fierce and unforgiving, but it was clear from Rodriguez’s videotape that partisans of both schools came to Rose Hills.

On the tape, amid the somber faces of the mourners, the Garfield band played the school fight song. The varsity football team, wearing their “Garfield blue” jerseys, held hands as Robinson’s casket was carried up the hillside facing East L.A.

There was crying. There were hugs.

The players filed past the coach’s casket, each placing a rose on it. They also rubbed a white Garfield football helmet placed on top of the coffin.

It was left to Ted Davis, who retired last June after teaching at Garfield for 35 years, to make some sense of Robinson’s sudden passing and the loss to East L.A.

Davis said Robinson was a warm individual who, despite his hermit-like lifestyle, “wanted to help a kid in East L.A.” He recalled how Robinson took special pleasure in the accomplishments of all Garfield students, not just his football players.

When Garfield upset perennial city power Banning, 7-6, in the playoffs last November, Davis said Robinson thought his kids from East L.A. may have been overlooked by the mighty Pilots. “They won’t take Garfield lightly anymore,” Robinson said after the win.

Davis then recited the final lines of “Ulysses,” the classic poem by Tennyson, telling those present that the prose captured the essence of Robinson.

Though much is taken, much abides; and

though

We are not now that strength which in old

days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are,

we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in

will

To strike, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Rodriguez said he videotaped the service because he hadn’t gone to the Banning-Garfield game, assuming that his school would easily conquer the Bulldogs. He thought the tape would make up for having never congratulated Robinson on the upset and his work on the Eastside.

I never got the chance to congratulate him on last October’s 14-0 win over Roosevelt, which I did attend. I also should have thanked him because there’s a special feeling every time a Bulldog screams, “Orale Garfield! Orale East L.A.!”