Dobelle reached for the stars
"My job is to make dreams come true for coaches. I'm their coach."
— Evan Dobelle, April 5, 2001.
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist
For decades, occupants of Bachman Hall Room 202, the office of the president on the University of Hawai'i-Manoa campus, have come and gone with little fanfare from the athletic department.
Located just a few first-down spirals across Dole Street as the football flies, the athletic department might as well have been a world away for all the interaction and attachment the system's chief executive and his subjects there regularly shared.
What began to change in the final years of Kenneth Mortimer's (1993-2001) administration took a bold and brassy turn when Evan Dobelle arrived to replace him.
Dobelle immediately declared himself "UH's No. 1 Fan" of everything from athletics to zoology, pulled on a UH cap and renamed his fantasy league baseball team the "Rainbow Warriors."
A university president with a fantasy league team? Clearly, this wasn't your run-of-the-ivory tower president as coaches and athletes soon realized when he greeted them with a hearty: "How can I help you?"
As much as Dobelle could confound and turn off constituencies with coldness or arrogance, he often struck a warm, responsive chord in athletics. Athletes saw that somebody on high cared and coaches felt suddenly enfranchised by his presence and promises.
Never mind that some of the ideas he floated — like the 60,000-seat stadium in West O'ahu to bring Pac-10 membership and a Top 10 finish in the Directors' Cup — were more head-in-the-clouds than grounded in reality. Never mind that there remained the problem of money to fund them. Money he had promised to help raise.
Dobelle's attraction was in daring them to dream thoughts that others had said were ridiculous given the geographically-challenged, financially-pinched institution they operated at. He offered "an emphasis on hope, energy and enthusiasm," said one administrator.
Maybe that's why the day after Dobelle's abrupt dismissal, many still hadn't — or didn't want to —come to terms with the shock of it. Or why, despite a "gag order" yesterday, several coaches still talked of their disappointment.
Football coach June Jones told Advertiser reporter Stephen Tsai, "I'm an Evan Dobelle fan. His vision for the athletic department and football program was nothing but the best. This whole thing has shocked me. I think the most shocking thing was he wasn't told in person of this event. That, to me, no matter what the reason, is insufficient. There's no reason for that type of action, of not being told face to face."
Some talked of being sold out by politics. Others decried "losing a friend" the type of they'd never had before in Bachman Hall and might not see again.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.
