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TI: But tell me about how your dad sort of ran Collins. So he was in charge, and how big of a program...

DB: Well, they had, he was the athletic director. There was a woman in the program, too, for women's athletics and community action, and so they had other, they had sports, they had arts and crafts, they had (plays). We never saw any of these, because I think that era kind of left, but there were pictures of people that were in plays, classic Shakespearean plays. (...) If you went up on the stage, the end of the basketball court, which was a small condensed court, if you went behind there there was a lot of dropdowns for various scenes and whatnot, and they were (from) an era that... and I think the Jewish community was really more into those kind of artistic activities than others.

But the sports followed the seasons, so you played baseball and softball in the spring. Summer was the track, okay (...). Of course, kids went to the beach as much as they could during that time. Then basketball, football, tag football -- the Seattle department never got into tackle because of equipment. They had touch football and basketball. Basketball was the big theme, every neighborhood had basketball teams. Now, the way they ran those was there a segregation of kids based on size, and the determinate was weight. So they had ninety pounders, you could be, like I say, seven foot tall, and some of 'em were, and still ninety pounds. But that was the determinate thing, and then the kids would develop in normal ways later on. And there was 90, 110, then 120, and then I think there was a junior men's league, which would have been high school kids that maybe didn't make the high school team, or as some of the coaches did, sent their kids down to the field house to improve their skills.

TI: Almost like a JV or something.

DB: Yeah, like a double-A or triple-A. And then there was the senior men's, and of course, the senior men's were the ones we talked about already that went on to semi-pro play, basically. So basketball was the big thing. Now, Collins Field House was a small gym. So the half court was too small to play basketball, so the half court line was always set back to the other foul ring. You had to take it out only a quarter of the way down the court. Now (my dad) taught fundamentals... I believe my father could teach anybody that would pay a little bit of attention how to become a good basketball player. I have no doubt, (...) I will stand behind it. Because he took real stumblebums and got them to play, got them to dribble, got them to pass into the post, got them to cut off the post, stay between them and the basket on defense. So he taught these fundamentals to little toddlers. Because I was young and I was toddling along anyhow, they actually developed a group of people below the ninety weight level, and somebody came up with the term "pickleweights." So I was a Green Lake Pickleweight, and there was Collins Pickleweights. And like Marietta said earlier, we used to go, probably not at that level, but soon after that, we were taking the city bus from Collins to Green Lake, and it was perfectly safe. You'd have a little note there, you're supposed to transfer at Montlake or wherever it is, but it was perfectly safe.

Now what Dad would do -- and these were things, (when) I got into surgery and then I got into organization of trauma centers and trauma systems, and got into the government doing the same thing. And the one thing I've learned from him and all the things I did later is (that) everybody plays. Everybody plays off the bench. Dad would be in a competitive game, and he would still take Tommy Ikeda or whoever it was...

TI: At the end of the bench.

DB: Off the end of the bench, and he would play. And he would play responsibly. He may not score, but he would hold his own or whatever. This was... and I knew it was the right thing to do then, but then I realized how creative and how bonding that mechanism is. So there's not just the superstars, but there's the guys out there grunting it out every practice, but every kid played.

TI: That's fascinating, because I did quite a bit of coaching, too, and so I coached the soccer team. And that was my rule, too, and I told the boys that. Because I said in terms of the team improving, what's the best thing we could do? And the boys quickly realized if they helped the weaker players, that would improve the team much faster than anything else.

DB: Well, these kids become coaches, too. I mean, Dad now had a coaching staff. Because these kids wanted Joe Klutz to be better. Says, "No, no, you're shooting off the wrong foot." So everybody's a teacher. So I picked upon that instinctively or intellectually or whatever, and I said, "That's a winning principle in everything you do." And for me later on, to organize a very complicated trauma, emergency medical services system -- I'm getting a little wordy now -- but I would make sure everybody played. It brings people into the program. It's all those corny little things, you're part of the team and everything, but it really works. It really works.

TI: So you saw that in practice.

DB: I saw it in practice, yeah. And the other thing on the beach, you know, you, we were talking earlier, I may have taught you how to swim at Mount Baker when I was back there. But he could teach any kid to swim. And he took this on as a moral responsibility. Everybody in our family learned to swim. You couldn't be in the boat, you couldn't go out fishing, unless you learned to swim. So we all learned to swim as you did down at Mount Baker.

TI: Well, I actually learned at the Y, because I was a more of a pool swimmer than a beach swimmer. [Laughs]

DB: I had a group of Japanese kids that came down there with their mothers on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

TI: No, they tried to do that, but the water was just too cold.

DB: Oh, I know. Well, these women would say, "No, you get Mr. Boyd. Mr. Boyd say he'd (teach you)..." my feet were freezing cold. These kids were shaking, but they'd learn to swim. So anyhow, swimming and lifeguarding and teaching other kids to swim was a major theme with him (...). Now there was... he would actually, like I say with my brother and I, he would teach my brother, who was capable of this kind of coaching, more advanced and more sophisticated. But I learned coaching and I learned teaching from him. And I've used this, I think a lot of our kids in our family have done this. We really respect and honor him, not because of some accomplishments, but his ability to teach. We're all teachers in that family, and this is the highest honor that we could (achieve).

TI: Well, as I'm listening to this, I recognize the influence he's had on the Japanese American community for generations. Because sports, and in particular, basketball, is a big thing in the Japanese American... I mean, there are still sports leagues.

DB: Well, it's his story, too. I mean, the metaphor of that man helping him into the Y was... most in America, in the good old U.S. of A, with blemishes and historical events, one of the themes was underclass boys initially, but now women, girls, could make it, get out, could get visibility, and could get a scholarship or get exposed or associate with a different group of people through sports, okay? This is my dad's story. You go through the great sports, the kids now, the Caribbean, look at the Caribbean ballplayers that come here and play baseball, they get here by sports. And they then can branch off into other things: they go into medicine, they go into this (or that). But they got that lift up in America, into a totally democratic system, which is run by a set of rules, and played fairly, everybody has, on the same playing field and you just compete, and that was his thing.

When we would come down from Green Lake, I then played on the Green Lake squads, pickleweights, ninety pounds and (up). Dad would referee, the home park person would referee the games, (...) and hopefully they're true to the spirit, which Dad was, and I think the others were as well. But he would then come over and coach us. He'd go coach his people, "Look, you got to be at the post or whatever we're doing, then he'd come over and tell us what we were doing wrong.

TI: So the team that he was actually coaching against, he would help them?

DB: Right, he'd come over and help out. He did that not only (for) the Green Lake kids, I know he did that with every group that came through there. Because they couldn't send their coach with them, maybe they had a parent that comes with them. So these kids are now there, they're by themselves, they have no coach, so he would go over and coach the other team basically against himself. But his philosophy wasn't against himself, it was for them so they could perform well. He was a universal humanitarian person that I think is...

TI: Well, the other story I've heard of your father, so yeah, the sports kind of permeates it, but it was more than sports. Because when I talk to people in the Japanese American community, they would say that your father knew them personally, like by name. It wasn't like a team and organizing teams to play against other ones, it was like this personal connection.

DB: No, he wasn't the kind of coach just trying to turn out ballplayers that will make big teams and refer back to him. He was a people developer; he developed people and he brought them in. And so once he got them on the ball team, which every, like I say, every Japanese kid, I guess came, because they were told to come here and not be out in the street, "You be with Mr. Boyd. Don't go in the street, come here every day." So they were here, like we were gym rats, we were here all week long. But he was very interested in the people. So the basketball was just the mechanism, the arrangement of our social relationships, and then he was interested... because he would come and tell us about, oh, individual stories or culture, we knew more (...) about the Japanese American culture than probably any kids in Seattle, because we were told, we came down. He was interested in everybody as an individual, as a cultural group.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.