By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

Football players at Kamehameha Schools used to tell stories about their absent-minded coach/teacher/dorm master/surrogate father Tom Mountain.

In the early '40s, he could finally afford to buy a used car. Before that, he rode the bus. So when he had the car, he drove downtown and went shopping. Then he forgot he owned a car, got on the bus and went home.

Only a few players like Larry Mehau, Don Ho and Tom Hugo remember Mountain's championship teams. It is befitting, therefore, that we refurbish his legend because he died at age 92 on Oct. 7 at home in Kahalu'u in the arms of his son, Tom Jr.

Picture Honolulu's premier sporting event of 1945, the season-opener football game between Kamehameha and Saint Louis at old Honolulu Stadium, better known as the Termite Palace. Twenty-eight thousand fans are screaming their heads off. It is Mountain's first year as head coach at Kamehameha, although he coached the junior varsity forever.

With 2 1/5 minutes to go in the game, the score is tied. Referee Ernie Chan, a notorious Saint Louis partisan, calls pass interference on Kamehameha at the 3-yard line, an obvious miscall. Even so, it takes Saint Louis three downs to cross the goal line and win the game.

Fast-forward to the epic 1945 Turkey Day game, the season closer. Saint Louis, as predicted, has won the championship. Underdog Kamehameha, to everyone's surprise, is the runner-up.

The two top teams will end the season. Result: Kamehameha 27, Saint Louis 0.

Those were the days when University of Hawai'i games were stuck on the back pages. Mountain's Kamehameha teams made banner headlines when they won the championship in 1946 and again in 1948 with the single wing formation and a fullback named Don Ho handling the ball.

Who was this Tom Mountain, the Knute Rockne of Honolulu? He was a gangly kid with an open face and a square jaw who picked apples and tended mules in Oregon to support his family during the Great Depression. He was a brilliant student who worked his way through college to a Phi Beta Kappa key.

He was the young, 1938 faculty member of the Kamehameha School for Boys who arrived via steerage with a tennis racket in one hand and a battered suitcase in the other. He was the underpaid idealist who taught every subject except music and art. He was father figure to young men who were with him from breakfast through football practice in the evening.

He was the teacher who never snitched on a student, who had them studying on his living room floor Sunday morning to make up work.

And he was a coach who could take a bunch of kids from the taro patches and inspire them to play football like champions. His services will be held at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 28 in the Kamehameha Schools chapel.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.