EDITOR’S NOTE: The start of football season is a perfect time to remember Del Bjork and John Warren, two local sporting legends who were the subjects of this profile in our 1973 centennial edition.
Astoria High School old grad Del Bjork played college and professional football and he owes it all to John Warren, the most successful Fishermen coach in history of the school.
“He was a major turning point for me,” Bjork says of Warren. Bjork, who is a retired, highly decorated Army Colonel, teaches and coaches at Clatsop Community College.
Bjork is probably the greatest football player produced at Astoria High. He played three years under Warren, picked up a football scholarship from the University of Oregon where he was an All-American and was drafted by the Chicago Bears.
A lineman in high school, college and the pros, Bjork was named all-pro as a tackle in 1938 after an equally outstanding 1937 season under Chicago coach Poppa Bear George Halas.
Smallest pro tackle
“I was the smallest tackle in professional football. I never weighed more than 220 pounds as a regular right tackle on offense and defense.” Bjork said. He weighed even less as a tackle and guard at Oregon and never weighed more than 190 as an Astoria High tackle. But back in the early 1930s, when Warren produced some of his greatest grid talent, a 200-pound lineman was considered a monster. At age 58, Bjork today probably weighs no more than during his pro days.
Bjork says Warren was a “no-nonsense” coach who demanded the most from his athletes. “He was also a football fundamentalist. So was George Halas and that’s why I was able to get along fine with the Bears and play the Halas brand of football, which was rough and tough and devastating. I learned it all first under Warren, who was the greatest perfectionist I have known,” Bjork said.
How Warren, just 22 as a first-year coach at Astoria, dealt so successfully with some athletes near his own age is another “plus” for him, according to Bjork. “Remember it was the depression. Times were really hard and a dime went a long way. Many boys quit at end of the eighth or ninth grade to go to work to help their parents. A few would return to school a year or two later. You could continue to play sports up to age 21 as long as you were in high school,” Bjork explained.
1931 Astoria team
Bjork believes it was the 1931 football season which his Fishermen staked a “championship” claim to because Astoria’s challenge was conveniently ducked by one of the teams in the Valley. “We considered ourselves as state champions because last-minute playoff plans for us fell through,” Bjork said. The 1931 Fishermen team was undefeated.
As Warren’s coaching record grew, so did his reputation. Some of the earlier dropouts returned to high school just for sports, forgetting that Warren also taught history, health and physical education. “Oddly enough there were practically no discipline problems with his athletes,” Bjork said of Warren.
“But, as today, there were boys who were good athletes who didn’t turn out for sports. There was this Astoria Junior High boy named Uno Koskelo, 14, who weighed 220 pounds and could have been Warren’s greatest athlete. He was written up in the New York newspaper as one of the outstanding junior high athletes in the nation for track and field. He set records in the shotput, discus and high jump. But he never entered high school. He went to work instead. He’s dead now,” reminisced Bjork.
Bjork recalls some of his outstanding teammates as Albin Nordquist, a tough center; Howard “Nig” Tihila, a great fullback, who played freshman football at Oregon State, then transferred to George Washington University, Washington, D.C.; Teddy Elias and Edmond Elliott, both guards; Elmer Koskelo, who was also a state track star; a pair of ends named Charles Messenger and James Mackey, and an Ed Makela, who was a good kicker and tough blocker, and Robert Ek and Elliott Becken, a Little All-American.
“Some of them still live around here. Messenger runs the Twin Spruce and Koskelo operates the Union Steam Baths,” Bjork pointed out.
Teacher, soldier
Bjork quit pro football to get into teaching because professional gridders didn’t make enough to get by during the depression. He taught at Pendleton Junior High School and helped coach football, but not for too long. In 1940, he enlisted in the Army. He had joined the National Guard while a teen-ager in Astoria and this prior service, plus college education, led to a reserve officer’s rank.
He was a first lieutenant and acting company commander his first day of actual Army service with the 7th Infantry Division at Ft. Ord. He later led his company in combat against the Japanese in the Aleutians. It was the assault of Attu that earned Bjork the Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest battlefield decoration possible. He was also promoted to major.
After the Aleutians, Bjork’s division was sent to Hawaii to train for an amphibious assault on Japan, but it got into two major Pacific campaigns before war’s end, the invasion of the Philippines and the assault of Okinawa where Bjork received five Bronze Star awards. He later served with the occupation forces in Japan and in Korea before returning to the United States to begin a series of Army Command and Staff tours as an instructor at Ft. Leavenworth, the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Penn., and four years with the Pentagon. In between these tours was a year with the Australian Staff College and a year at Ft. Sam Houston, Texas.
While at the Pentagon, Bjork took airborne jump training and completed eight jumps. “This was hard physical training,” he said. Another service highlight was his assignment in Helsinki, Finland, as U.S. Army attache. This was followed by his final three years of duty as senior advisor to the 90th infantry Divsion, Austin, Tex. In 1963, he retired as a full colonel with 34 years of service. His promotion to colonel came in 1954.
At Clatsop College, Bjork teaches political science, health and physical education and coaches wrestling and track. He and his wife, the former Anne Pavola of Naselle, are parents of two sons and a daughter.