Oral History Interview with Dick Soergel
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Oral History Interview with Dick Soergel Interview Conducted by Jerry Gill March 24, 2009 O-STATE Stories Oral History Project Special Collections & University Archives Edmon Low Library ● Oklahoma State University © 2009 O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library Interview History Interviewer: Jerry Gill Transcriber: Samantha Siebert Editors: Jacob Sherman, Latasha Wilson, Tanya Finchum The recording and transcript of this interview were processed at the Oklahoma State University Library in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Project Detail The purpose of O-STATE Stories Oral History Project is to gather and preserve memories revolving around Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (OAMC) and Oklahoma State University (OSU). This project was approved by the Oklahoma State University Institutional Review Board on October 5, 2006. Legal Status Scholarly use of the recordings and transcripts of the interview with Dick Soergel is unrestricted. The interview agreement was signed on March 24, 2009. 2 O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library About Dick Soergel… For more than a half century, the Oklahoma State University baseball program has been nationally competitive, having made several trips to the College World Series, but only the 1959 Cowboy team has won an NCAA Championship. In April 2009, members of that team, including Richard W. “Dick” Soergel, returned to the OSU campus for a reunion and to celebrate the 50-year anniversary of their championship. Soergel grew up in Oklahoma City and was an outstanding athlete at Capitol Hill High School, where he played on state championship teams. He also participated in the historic football game between Oklahoma City Douglass and Capitol Hill, the first game in Oklahoma between segregated black and white schools. He enrolled at OSU in 1956. Dick , a member of the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame, has a special place in the history of Oklahoma State University sports. He was the last three-sport athlete at OSU. He quarterbacked the 1958 Blue Grass Bowl championship team, played and lettered under legendary basketball coach Henry Iba and was member of the 1959 NCAA National Champion baseball team. Dick was one of three starting pitchers on that team, and he was the winning pitcher in the championship game against Arizona. The 1960 OSU baseball team won the Big 8 Championship, finished third in the NCAA Tournament and Dick was named First Team All-American. He is a member of the OSU Baseball Hall of Fame and the OSU Sports Hall of Fame. In 1960 Soergel signed a contract with the Boston Patriots American Football League team and played through the entire pre-season before he was released. He returned to Oklahoma State in 1962 and was Associate Athletic Director and Business Manager until 1981. For the next 17 years he had a highly successful career in banking with Liberty National Bank, later purchased by Bank One, culminating in his position as Senior Vice President and Director of Trust Investments. Dick and his wife, Gwen, live in Oklahoma City. They have two children, Rick (deceased) and Sandi. 3 O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library Dick Soergel Oral History Interview Interviewed by Jerry Gill March 24, 2009 Stillwater, Oklahoma Gill My name is Jerry Gill. Today is March 24, 2009. I’m visiting with Dick Soergel here in the [Angie] Debo Room of the OSU library on the campus of Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma. This interview is part of the O-STATE Stories Project which is part of the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program. Dick, we’re delighted to have you with us today. Glad you could take time from Oklahoma City to come down and visit. Soergel Thank you. It’s always a pleasure to be here on the campus. Gill Dick, could you start off with where you grew up and tell us about your family and early life? Soergel Be glad to, Jerry. I grew up in Oklahoma City. My father was on the Oklahoma City Fire Department and we lived in several different places in Oklahoma City. We moved around quite a bit. I had two brothers, both of them are older. My oldest brother was six years older than I am. He was seriously afflicted with cerebral palsy and he lived quite a life, and passed away. He must’ve been about 63 or 64 years old, which was very old for his affliction. He also was able to earn both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from, I hate to say it, from the University of Oklahoma, and I was quite proud of my brother, Johnny. My other brother I am also quite proud of, he’s four years older than I am. His name is Don and Don ended up coming to Oklahoma State and participated in athletics here, but he had a little different route than I had. When Don finished high school he was an outstanding athlete and had a baseball and basketball scholarship to Oklahoma University. He started attending college there and went out for the basketball team. He decided he didn’t like school very much so he left and joined the Navy. He was in the Navy for four years, played sports in the Navy and when he got ready to get out I was in school here at Oklahoma State. He was 4 determined to join me here and he came here on a football and baseball scholarship. He was always a semester behind me in school so he became my little brother. But that was kind of our family. Then, as I was growing up, sports were always very important to us. My dad had been an outstanding athlete. He’d been a three sport athlete at Oklahoma City Central High School. He’d been All-State in all three sports, and upon graduating from high school, he attended Oklahoma A&M College for a brief time. He was on a football scholarship here at Oklahoma A&M and I’d say he probably was here maybe six weeks and as he said, he didn’t like the smell of ink, and he was also in love with my mother so he returned to Oklahoma City. Upon returning to Oklahoma City, OCU had an outstanding athletic program at that time. Part of OCU’s methodology was that they’d find athletes that would play in the sports program, but they’d also get a job on the Oklahoma City Fire Department. So that’s how my dad became a fireman. He loved the fire department and stayed with it for 35 years, before retiring. He attended OCU briefly and was on the OCU football and basketball teams, but again, the ink didn’t agree with him so he left and became a full-time Oklahoma City fireman. But his influence in athletics was very significant in our family and Don was an outstanding athlete, my brother Johnny helped coach some of the athletic teams in high school and in college. We attended Capitol Hill High School in Oklahoma City, which at that time was one of the strongest sports programs in the state and had an outstanding record and reputation in sports, so that’s where we attended high school. My brother Don played football, basketball, and baseball and was an All-State baseball player. Then I came along and I played football, basketball, and baseball there. I was an All-State and All-American high school basketball player and I determined that I definitely wanted to go to college and continue my education. At that time I felt like the thing I wanted to do was to go to Oklahoma A&M and play basketball for Mr. Iba and then following basketball, go to work for Phillips 66 and try to play basketball for the [amateur basketball team] 66ers. That was my goal when I started to think about going to college. I was recruited by several other universities, but I had my eye on Oklahoma A&M, primarily because of Mr. Iba. Gill Do you recall some of the other schools that were recruiting you at the time? Soergel Well, OCU had tried to recruit me. I had letters from Kansas and Pennsylvania. There were a number of schools that had contacted me. Probably the most serious was OU. At OU Bud Wilkinson had me down to Norman and they romanced me a little bit about the football program, 5 but Doyle Parrack had just taken over the basketball coaching job and he was a lot more interested in me coming there and playing basketball. Of course, OCU also tried to recruit me. Abe Lemons was coaching there and tried to recruit me to OCU to play basketball. But Iba’s background, he had known my dad, and in fact he coached Classen High School in Oklahoma City when my dad was at Central High School. Then, later Mr. Iba played sandlot baseball and my dad played on some of the same teams, and so they had known each other and that relationship was there. Plus, the first college basketball game I ever saw, I was at the All- College tournament in Oklahoma City at the old municipal auditorium and watched the Oklahoma Aggies play and I also used to listen to them on the radio. Curt Gowdy was the voice of the Aggies at one time, and then Bob Murphy came along afterwards. I just kind of fell in love with Oklahoma A&M. I still hadn’t really committed to anything, and Cliff Speegle got the head football coaching job here the year before I was planning to attend.