Showing Their Stripes

PORTLAND, Ore. —  It was looking like one of the bad days for Vern Marshall. The day before had been one of the good ones, when he felt well enough to take a long walk. Now his pancreatic cancer was taking the upper hand again, forcing him to stop on his way in to Lincoln High and throw up.

He kept going, because he was about to do what he always did: referee a football game. This was his work for almost 50 years, including 13 years in the NFL.

“It’s the only thing I ever did,” Marshall, 67, said. “This has been a lifelong deal for me.”

The vomiting had been going on for more than a month. At first he thought he was simply sick. So did the doctors. But the vomiting didn’t stop. The doctors did exploratory surgery and made a devastating discovery: Marshall had a baseball-sized tumor in his stomach, and his life expectancy was one to 12 months.

Since then, so many things have been going wrong with his body that he probably thought he was hallucinating when he saw a familiar face walk into the officials’ dressing room Friday afternoon as he prepared for the start of the Roosevelt-Madison game.

That looked like Red Cashion, his former crew chief in the NFL. And that guy behind him looked like Terry Gierke, another former NFL crewmate. And wasn’t that Jack Barger, the man who spent 25 years as a Pacific 10 Conference official, the person who taught Marshall the ropes?

Then Cashion assured him it was reality, with that unmistakable Texas twang: “We thought you could use a little help.”

Two more former NFL buddies, John Alderton and Nate Jones, came through the door and suddenly there was 96 years of NFL officiating experience in the room, preparing to work a game between two high school teams with one victory between them.

“I was really shocked,” Marshall said a short while later. “I didn’t expect anything like this.

“Just goes to show you how close the group is. There’s nothing closer than an officiating crew.”

*

You probably don’t pay much attention to football officials. If you do, it’s to boo them, yell at them, maybe even throw things at them.

You don’t think of them as people who get together and tell stories, just like the rest of us. You never realize their ranks include the likes of Vern Marshall, as dedicated, caring and courageous as anyone who ever stepped on a football field.

You can’t count the number of kids he has helped as a high school counselor and physical education coach, and it’s just as hard to put a figure on the number of young officials he has tutored.

“He’s an inspiration,” said Tom Rinella, who officiates Portland high school games.

“I’ve known him for 30 years,” said Bob Wellnitz, the commissioner of the Portland Officials’ Assn. “I’ve never heard him say anything negative about anybody.”

Perhaps that trait wasn’t the most helpful to Wellnitz when he tried to evaluate officials. As he said, if Marshall came across a bad teacher he’d probably say she had good bulletin boards.

But there’s no one Wellnitz would rather have working for him.

“How many guys do you know that would work for the NFL and come back to high school for an $1,100-a-game pay cut?” Wellnitz said.

Marshall was a standout athlete in football, basketball and baseball at Portland’s Roosevelt High. Like most officials, he picked up a whistle to stay involved in sports after his athletic ability had taken him to its last stop.

“He loves kids,” said his wife, Tina Henderson. “He never really wanted to coach, he wanted to officiate. That’s always been his passion, to give back to the community. He loves to start new guys out and work with them. Just giving them the information that he knows, that he can share.”

His No. 1 pupil has been his son, Vern Jr., 45.

“Every time I worked with him, I learned something new,” Vern Jr. said.

Although Vern Sr. has worked a Super Bowl, his officiating dream is to work a high school playoff game with his son.

Friday, he got to work with a crew that included four retired NFL referees. Cashion flew in from College Station, Texas, and Alderton, a Portland native, came up from his home in Scottsdale, Ariz.

It was a surprise for Marshall. Wellnitz even went so far as to assign a fake crew for the game, with members calling to check with Marshall in the preceding days and sitting in the locker room up to the minute the old-timers -- all retired, and ranging in age from the 50s to the 70s -- walked in.

Gierke and Alderton came up with the idea soon after they learned of Marshall’s condition.

“I tried to think of some way we could show him how we felt about him,” Gierke said.

They called Cashion, whose distinctive call of “First dowwwwn!” made him one of the most recognizable referees, because they thought it would be nice to have someone of his stature. When Alderton asked him to be a part of it, Cashion responded with three words: “Count me in.”

“All of us wanted to say, ‘Vern, you’re special,’ ” Cashion said. “Any of the NFL officials would have said the same thing.”

Before the game they met up at Nick’s Famous Coney Island, where the walls are covered with sports pictures (heavy on the New York Yankees) and the hot dogs are covered with chili (heavy on the onions). It seemed as if everyone who entered or left the restaurant stopped by to say hello to the guys.

The refs called each other by colorful names, most unfit to print.

They know they get calls wrong sometimes. (As Cashion said, “If you’re talking about an ‘Oh, ... !’ call, I’ve got a bunch of those.”) Jones thought Barger blew it when Barger officiated a game in which Jones was a field-goal kicker and Barger called an attempt no good.

“I still think you might have missed that,” Jones said.

They can joke about it now, but they take their duties very seriously.

“You’re out there as a crew,” Barger said. “The last thing anybody wants to do is make an error. You form a bond within that group, because it’s like you’re going to war, so to speak. It’s you, in a way, against the teams.”

“The third team,” Cashion interjected.

“We’re a team unto ourselves,” Gierke said. “That’s where the bond comes from.”

There’s an extra touch of pride among the Portland-area officials. A city with no NFL team somehow managed to put four officials into the league. Marshall was the first.

“He carried the torch,” Alderton said.

They were willing to do anything to honor him, even if it meant taking a test. They had to be certified to work the game, and that meant passing the 100-question quiz on high school rules.

So they went into the closets and pulled out the old stripes. They still fit. And they brought out Marshall’s NFL-issue No. 94 line judge uniform as well.

On the way out to the field, another surprise awaited Marshall: About 100 local officials, all wearing their black-and-white stripes, lined the entrance to the field and applauded him every step of the way.

“I think he was very surprised,” said Vern Jr., who worked the game with his dad. “And I think he appreciated every moment of it. The tears really welled up in his eyes.”

There were only 30 people in the stands, meaning this might have been the first sporting event in which more people were on hand to see the officials than the players.

And it would be hard to call any of the players’ performances more impressive than Marshall’s. Even though he was weak, even though he had a tube sticking out of his body and a pouch tucked under his clothes to collect fluids from surgery the week before.

Marshall lasted only one series. But he got to call a penalty, and got to raise his arms above his head to signal a touchdown. He came to the sideline, where his son Joe wrapped a blanket around him, then left the stadium after the first quarter when the chilly November air became too much for him.

He turned and waved his cap one last time.

The rest of his buddies stuck around in the cold and finished the game. Madison won, ending an 18-game losing streak.

That would have been the story on any other day. But this day was about the officials.

So how was it for the “star” referee to work his first high school game since 1971?

“It was kinda like two Super Bowls rolled into one,” Cashion said. “It was an awesome experience.

“But I still think walking onto the field and seeing all of [Marshall’s] fellow officials pay that tribute to him and clapping and patting him on the back was just a very, very special thing. And that means the people that have worked with him and know him locally and all of the things that he’s done really appreciate the things he’s done. That’s what football officiating is all about.”

J.A. Adande can be reached at [email protected].