It was 1957 and I was in the third grade when word circulated through Sandy Elementary School that a new kid was moving in from California. Even bigger news was that the kid's dad was a professional football player who'd just retired from the San Francisco 49ers.
Most amazing of all, given the nature of grade-school rumors, was that it all turned out to be true.
Shortly after that the new kid, Doug Berry, became my best friend — along with a bunch of other third-graders who likewise claimed him.
So I got to meet his dad, which remains the most unprofound profound experience of my life.
Rex Berry was everything you'd expect a pro athlete to be. He could play any sport and make it look easy, plus he had movie star looks and for good measure was a World War II vet.
But the greatest part is that you'd never have known it. Where he really excelled was self-effacement. He was a living example that the epitome of cool is never acting cool. To this day, I want to be like him, if I can just figure out how.
Doug tells the story about him and his dad throwing passes at the school playing field when Doug was 10. A young man about 21 came along and took it upon himself to give the father and son a few pointers on passing and catching. "I guess you can tell I've played a lot of football," he told them, explaining that he'd just finished a four-year college career in California.
"I was just busting inside, 'Tell him who you are,' " Doug remembers thinking. "Tell him you're a 49er."
But all Doug remembers his dad doing is agreeing. "Yes," he said. "You're a good athlete."
My twin brother, Dee, who spent as much time at the Berrys' house as I did, remembers going over there looking for Doug one day when a 49er game was on TV. Doug wasn't home but his dad was and invited Dee, 14 at the time, to come in and watch the game.
"He sat me down, got me something to drink and we watched the game," Dee remembers. "It was no big deal. He just said, 'Come on, watch the game with me.' "
I have a memory of being a young sports writer covering the Super Bowl in Detroit in 1982 between the 49ers and Cincinnati Bengals. Early in the week I was in my hotel room when I got a call from Rex Berry. He said if he could work it out with his schedule he wanted to come to Detroit to see the game and he wanted to take me to dinner. This was the first-ever Super Bowl for the NFL franchise he played for from 1951 through 1956. The 49ers owned Detroit that week. He had friends all over town. But when he talked to me, he didn't drop a single name (as it turned out, he wasn't able to make the trip).
He was the most regular, down-to-earth superhero I ever met. He made humble look easy. He never lost his competitiveness — from golf to cribbage and everything in between, he routinely gave it his all — but he never lost his grace at winning, either.
If he did talk about the glory days, it was typically sprinkled with humor. He'd joke about how he played on an undefeated football team at BYU — the 1949 squad that went 0-11. "We were undefeated," he'd say and then pause before adding, "we didn't defeat anybody." He never mentioned that the Skyline Conference named him all-league anyway. And how tough must that have been? All-conference on a team that went 0 for 1949?
I only found out the part about him being all-conference, by the way, last Friday afternoon when I started doing research for a sports-page obituary after Doug called me with the news, "My dad died."
Sad to say, like the pro football part and all the rest, that part is true, too.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.