Dobelle has left lasting mark at previous stops

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Writer

George Rush was coaching football practice at City College of San Francisco one day in the 1990s when a stranger strode to the field.

"I looked up and here was this guy in a three-piece suit dressed like a million bucks," Rush said.

The guy was Evan S. Dobelle, the new school president and, it would turn out, the answer to a long-time prayer.

"He introduced himself and the first thing he said — I still remember the words — was, "How can I help you?" Rush recalled.

That was how the school came to get its ramshackle, ages-old football facility, 5,000-seat Rams Stadium, refurbished.

"The place was old, rundown and falling apart, but getting anything done about it was a real political hot potato," Rush said. "But, even with all the other issues he had, (Dobelle) found time to also take on the challenge and get it done."

From California to his current address, Trinity College in Connecticut, the word on the University of Hawai'i's next president is that he is a doer, as dynamic in his approach to athletics as he is to the other departments on campus.

Dobelle, who takes over his greatest challenge of his 55 years as UH's 12th president July 1, comes billed as a president who seeks excellence from athletics in the same way he does from biology or theater arts.

Which is promising for UH, a school that faces a critical crossroads in several areas, including athletics. What the school does athletically in the next few years and how it chooses to embrace the future will go a long way to determining if the state's only Division I-A program remains on that level.

There are the issues of conference membership and becoming competitive enough to succeed wherever it lands. There is a need to come into compliance with Title IX, and the big question: How to finance all of it?

With those concerns as a backdrop, people who have worked with Dobelle at Division III Trinity say he is the ideal president to follow Kenneth Mortimer, the most sports-involved president Manoa has had.

"Our loss is definitely Hawai'i's gain," said Stan Ogrodnik, Trinity's basketball coach. "He's raised the bar everywhere while he's been here, including athletics."

"He's become involved in all areas of campus life and wants to see everything be first rate," said Eugene Leach, a Trinity history professor.

"There have to be about seven Dobelles because he seems to be in so many different places," said Paul Assaiante, chairman of the Trinity physical education department as well as its tennis and squash coach.

There is, for example, the president who sits in the students' section during basketball games, the one who sits with alumni during football games, the one who pokes his head in at women's lacrosse practices, the one who helps raise funds, the one who helped the squash team to win three consecutive national intercollegiate titles, the one who ...

Assaiante says the school's three national championships in squash are attributable to Dobelle. "He wants to know what he can do to help you do your job. He had the vision and the commitment to give me the things I needed to do my job. His imprint is all over this program."

"I have a good friend who coaches at Yale and when he sees President Dobelle at our events, he reminds me how lucky we have been to have him," said one Trinity coach. "My friend said the coaches there (at Yale) wouldn't know their president if they bumped into him in the grocery store."

If the scouting report on Dobelle holds up, that won't be a problem at UH.