Last to play for Cal on Rose Bowl winner
Bob Wilhelm, who was the last surviving member of Cal’s 1938 Rose Bowl-winning team, has died, family members said Tuesday. He was 100.
“Unfortunately, my dad contracted pneumonia shortly after the weekend of his birthday” Nov. 11, said Mr. Wilhelm’s son, Jim. “He has fought through several bouts of it over the past five years. We will miss him a great deal, but we know Mom and he are with us.”
Mr. Wilhelm’s wife, Doris, died in 2012. They had been married 72 years. Mr. Wilhelm continued to live in the seniorliving apartment they had shared in San Rafael.
A native of St. Paul, Minn., Mr. Wilhelm grew up as an ice-hockey player but switched to football when the family moved to Alhambra, outside Los Angeles. He attended Alhambra High and played on the Cal varsity for three years (193739) after a season on the freshman team. At a time when it was rare to see collegiate players weighing more than 200 pounds, Mr. Wilhelm was a 6-foot, 170-pound end who played both ways.
That 1937 season marked the last time Cal won the Rose Bowl (in the Bears’ most recent appearance, after the 1958 season, they lost to Iowa). Featuring such stars as halfbacks Vic Bottari and Sam Chapman, quarterback Johnny Meek and center Bob Herwig, the team sailed through an unbeaten season with a single blemish (a 0-0 tie against Washington) before beating Alabama 13-0 in Pasadena on New Year’s Day in 1938. In those days, the Associated Press poll was concluded after the regular season, before the bowl games, and Pittsburgh (9-0-1) was voted No. 1, with Cal second. “We never believed that,” Mr. Wilhelm told The Chronicle this month. “Nobody could tell us we weren’t the best in the country.”