LA QUINTA – The oldest living Ram is Jim Hardy. He’s been too busy living to notice.
Every week Hardy drives two hours to watch USC practice. He quarterbacked two Rose Bowl victories for the Trojans, in 1944 and 1945. He and his wife, Henrietta, whom he calls Hank, don’t miss USC home games either.
He is 93. He drives, without glasses. He takes not one single pill. “My blood pressure is real low,” he said.
He can sit in his handsome house at the La Quinta Golf Estates, and pull up obscure names from more than 60 years ago, as he did Wednesday. As the former general manager of the Coliseum Commission, he’s glad the Rams are back there.
And he seems determined to stick around until USC wins another national championship.
“I guess it’s sad that a guy my age hasn’t gotten over being a freshman,” Hardy said.
So he goes to a health club in the desert, nearly every day, and he lifts weights with a purpose.
“Sweets are my long suit,” he said, as Henrietta nodded. “Ice cream and cake. But you just have to be sensible. Hank is the same way. We met at USC and got married in 1945. She just turned 92.”
“Oh, come on,” Henrietta said, but she, too, looks like a child of the 40s. They’ve kept up with each other.
Hardy joined the Rams after he served in the Navy at the end of World War II, on the battleship Maryland. By then Bob Waterfield was the Rams’ quarterback, a league MVP as a rookie. But Waterfield had also been UCLA’s quarterback. Hardy’s Trojans blew out the Bruins, 40-13, to get to the Rose Bowl.
“Bob and I didn’t get along, although he was a great guy,” Hardy said. “We had a clash of personalities. He was already there because he got discharged from the service with a bad knee. I had been drafted by Washington (and was paid $10,000), and I got them to trade me to L.A. It was the dumbest thing I ever did because I had to sit behind Waterfield, and it galled me something terrible.”
Clark Shaughnessy became coach in 1948 and pledged to play both quarterbacks, on a hot-hand basis. Hardy and Waterfield both threw 14 touchdowns, but Waterfield had 11 more interceptions.
After three years with the Cardinals, Hardy backed up Bobby Layne for the Lions, who won the NFL title in ’52. The only problem was keeping up with Layne after sundown.
“I’d never seen anybody like Bobby,” Hardy said. “He’d stay out all night and play great the next day. We had a great team, too We had a great receiver, Cloyce Box, and our coach was Buddy Parker. Box was so fast, Buddy threatened to fine you if you underthrew him. Because you couldn’t overthrow him.”
Parker begged Hardy to return in ’53 because Layne had bursitis.
“I flew to Detroit and then I rented a Piper Cub,” Hardy said. “I’d bought a gross of jockstraps, and I wrote these notes on each of them, like ‘Never fear, Hardy’s here,’ stuff like that. Then I flew the plane low over their practice field and dumped all the jockstraps out. They loved it. As the Greeks say, those were halcyon days.”
Hardy left anyway. He had a chance to play for San Francisco, but couldn’t make himself leave the house. “I’ve lost my feeling for the game,” he told Henrietta, and that was it.
“You can’t play unless you love it,” Hardy said. “Now you got this rock you put on your head, and this mask. We didn’t even have a face bar. Sure, you’d lose your dishes (teeth) or break your nose as I did, but you’d get over that. You wouldn’t have your brains scrambled or forget the names of your kids. I’d probably play again, but I’d have to think about it.”
If Hardy could play it would be to the accompaniment of “Fight On”. His dad, Russell, worked the Western Union machines in the press box, and he saw his first USC game at age 8. “They had the original Thundering Herd and they beat Georgia (60-0),” he said. “I loved it.”
Much later, Hardy and Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley hatched a plan to put an AFL expansion franchise in Dodger Stadium. Hardy called Rams owner Dan Reeves and told him a rivalry was born.
“It’s not gonna happen, Jim,” Reeves said. “The NFL and AFL are merging.”
The Rams then stayed until 1994 and left for 22 seasons. Fortunately, they returned while Jim Hardy was still young.
Contact the writer: mwhicker@scng.com
