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Some Words for Jerry Rettig I lately attended the funeral reception for one of the heroes of my childhood, an athlete who was in every sense of the word, iconic. I was a struggling junior-high basketball player at Fairmount public school, and Fred Marsden, our coach, decided to take the whole team up to Wahpeton to see a college basketball game. Our team had some pretty good high school players in Al and Ozzie Meyer and an amazing guard named Skeeter Whitehead. But watching them from the bench in no way prepared me for my first view of Jerry Rettig in action.. The adjective that springs to mind first is “effortless” Jerry did everything with a grace and ease that was truly astonishing. He was only a little over six feet tall, so his son Bruce, informed me at the reception, but to my imagination he seemed at least six three. Ed Werre had him playing center where he seemed to be the tallest guy on the floor. He made long jump shots look like tap-ins and he could hang in the air way longer than it seemed possible. I wouldn't see that kind of athleticism again until a few years later as a bench-warmer in Lebanon Oregon. That coach took our whole team to watch Portland State College play. They had an amazing forward by the name of Elgin Baylor who went on to become one of the greatest L.A, Lakers ever to play the game. Watching him in that college game, I remember blurting out to myself, “My God that guy might even be better than Jerry Rettig! Maybe an exaggeration, but I noticed in the obituary of Jerry that he led his Marine Corpse team to the national championship. And those military teams often have pros playing for them. During summers back in the fifties, Fairmount kids often got bussed up to the Chahinkapa pool for swimming lessons. But the biggest highlight I can remember from those trips was our chance to watch some of the Wahpeton athletes dive. There were several good divers in the bunch, but none could hold a candle to Jerry Rettig. That pool had three diving boards-- a high 12 ft., a medium, 8ft. And a low, about four feet. Jerry would spring up from the high board, land on the medium board and then launch himself into any dive he wanted—gainers, jack knives, summer salts. He could do them all and always with that easy grace that only the great athletes have. There were so many ooohs and oohs coming out of those bleachers a guy could have sold tickets. Coming out of the reception I bumped into Bernie Meyer who was one of the seniors I remember playing on the Fairmount team back then. I asked him, “Bernie, did you ever see Jerry play?” He said, “I sure did, I played on his team. I got to watch him a lot from the bench. He was something else!” For some reason my path crossed Jerry's only a couple of times, but both times he was as down-to earth and approachable as any ordinary human. Somehow his greatness as an athlete never went to his head as it sometimes does with super stars. He was a just plain nice guy.
So it is truly sobering to see that even the great ones must sooner of
later surrender to “that fell sergeant death, so strict in his arrest.”
A.E. Houseman wrote a beautiful poem called “To an Athlete Dying Young”
That poem doesn't perfectly fit Jerry, for thankfully he was given a
long and rich life, but another Houseman poem perhaps captures death's
inevitability: It was written about the great service men and women who
didn't make it back: “By
brooks too broad for leaping So Jerry, I know we'll meet again. I know where/ Don't know when. Thanks for the great inspiration you have been, not just for me but for the countless other little kids. You gave us something to aspire to—someone to somehow someday be just like. Gene Pinkney - 10/17/19
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