After everybody was long gone from Wednesday’s Bremerton
Athletic Roundtable meeting, Bob Fredericks shared an interesting
tale.
Fredericks, a former Bremerton High and University of Washington
grad, is an interesting guy. He worked closely as an engineer at
PSNS with Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover — the “Father of the Nuclear
Navy.” As the ASB president at Bremerton High, he led the drive
that got Memorial Stadium built. He was among the seven founding
members of the Bremerton Tennis and Athletic Club.
Fredericks is, and has been for years, the backbone of the
non-profit BAR, which supports youth and amateur athletics in the
region.
He once held the single-game Bremerton City League scoring record
in basketball (I believe it was 52, but I might be off).
Anyway, let’s get back to Wednesday night’s story. Bob has been
going to Husky football games since 1947 and buying tickets since
1952. But he’s been gimping around on bad knees for some time, and
the walk up the twisting concourse at aging Husky Stadium is a tad
daunting these days. So he was thinking that this might be the year
to give up his tickets.
Bob tells this story a lot better than I’m writing it, but he said
he was sitting at his desk at home recently, pondering whether he
should write the check for his Tyee Club tickets when the phone
rang: “Hello, this is Jake Locker of the Huskies. Bob, we really
appreciate all of your support over the years. We hope you will
renew your tickets because we think we’re going to get this thing
turned around.” (that quote’s not exact, but you get the idea).
Bob said, “That’s great, but when are you going to get some
defensive backs.”
When the Husky quarterback didn’t answer at the other end, Bob
figured out it was a recording.
Still, the university’s marketing ploy worked. Bob wrote a check
for his Husky season tickets.
