The obituary for Andy Tolson published in the Star on June 11, 1981, was modest and brief. Maybe 2Β½ inches long.
It did not mention his remarkable coaching career at Tucson High School, nor his star-level baseball days playing for Pop McKale at Arizona. It simply listed Tolsonβs survivors and the time and date of his funeral service.
It didnβt mention that the Tolson Elementary School on Tucsonβs west side was named after the former Tucson High School principal, who also became president of the Arizona Interscholastic Association and president of the Arizona School Administrators committee.
That was Andy Tolson. It wasnβt about him. It was about those that he coached and taught.
One day 10 or 15 years ago, I walked into the McDonaldβs across the street from Park Place Mall and bumped into Gilbert Carrillo, who had played on Tolsonβs 1941 state championship baseball team at Tucson High.
Carrillo and his morning coffee group invited me to join them. I asked about the β41 Badgers.
βWe were expected to win the state championship,β said Carrillo, a sophomore that year who would go on to coach Rincon High School to three state championship games in the 1960s. βWe went 20-0, and that included games against the UA freshman team, the San Diego Marines and several semi pro teams with men in their 20s.β
The β41 Badgers routed Tempe High 8-2 in the state championship game played on the UA baseball field when pitcher Al Banuelos struck out 13 and hit a three-run triple. The team was loaded with some of Tucsonβs leading baseball players of any era: second baseman Bud Grainger, catcher Frank Kempf, pitcher Joe Valenzuela, shortstop Carl Meyer and Carrillo.
βWe didnβt lose to a high school team for three years,β said Carrillo, who died in 2016. βI remember very well that at the banquet honoring our β41 team, coach Tolson announced he was resigning as baseball coach. He was becoming the assistant principal. It was stunning. No one could believe it.β
Bud Grainger was part of the powerful Tucson High program that won the state title in 1941. The Badgers won 15 championships in 23 years overall.
Tolson, who grew up in Globe before enrolling at the UA in 1921, coached Tucson High to state baseball championships in 1930, 1932, 1935, 1937, 1939, 1940 and 1941. He established such a dynasty that when he retired, his assistant coach, Hank Slagle, coached the Badgers to state championships in 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1948, 1951 and 1952. That was 15 state championships in 23 years.
By that time Tolson was the THS principal, a school of about 5,000 students. His impact went far beyond baseball.
When my late father-in-law Robert H. Keil, a 1941 Tucson High grad, returned from four years of overseas Naval service in World War II, he drove to the UA campus to enroll for the 1946 school year.
But the enrollment administrator said his high school credits were incomplete and he would have to return to THS for a year to become qualified to attend the UA. He was devastated. He had spent four years in the Pacific Theater during World War II, surviving four months in an Australian hospital after the Japanese sunk his battleship, the USS Astoria, killing 234 of his shipmates.
He told me that the one man he thought would help him get admitted to the UA was Andy Tolson, his former civics teacher at Tucson High.
Even though my father-in-law did not play baseball on any of Tolsonβs state championship teams, he walked the short distance to THS and asked one of the office administrators if he could talk to Tolson.
She summoned Tolson from his office. Tolson remembered my father-in-law from his civics class of 1941, listened to his story, reviewed his GI Bill documents and his high school transcripts. Tolson instructed my father-in-law to get in his car. They drove to the enrollment office at the UA.
βIβll get this straightened out,β Tolson vowed.
An hour later, UA officials registered my father-in-law into the school. He graduated four years later, worked as an assistant for Pop McKale as a graduate manager for the UA athletic department, and began a successful career both at Lockheed Aviation in Los Angeles and as a real estate official in Silver City, N.M.
When Tolson died in 1981, my father-in-law drove from Los Angeles to Tucson for his funeral. He hadnβt played a minute of baseball for his Class of β41 state champions, but he remembered Tolson as the most influential man of his high school days.
It was not and will never reflect on Tolsonβs coaching record, but the day Tolson drove my father to the UA admissionβs office went far beyond any state championship.
Contact sports columnist Greg Hansen at 520-573-4362 or ghansen@tucson.com. On Twitter: @ghansen711
