Don James' Secretary Cleo Blackstone was as Organized as the Coach
Cleo Blackstone saw a flier for a job that sounded interesting enough.
To her family's great surprise, she landed it — in 1979, Blackstone became Don James' secretary.
It wasn't that she didn't have the right qualifications for this position. To the contrary, Cleo was as organized to the last detail as the legendary University of Washington football coach. She was a perfect fit.
For six exciting years, Blackstone acted as a conduit between James and coaches such as Paul "Bear" Bryant and broadcasters the likes of NBC-TV's Curt Gowdy, setting up meetings and passing along messages.
Blackstone, who left behind a treasure trove of autographed photos, letters and other correspondence for her sons to pore over in great fascination, died on April 7. She was eulogized in a small service this past week. She was 84.
Coming home for dinner one night, Blackstone, who had worked elsewhere on the UW campus, informed her family members that she had taken a new job, to their great amazement.
"She said, 'I got the job and I'm going to be Coach James' secretary,' " her son Marty recalled. "It kind of blew us away because we had no idea what she was doing."
Blackstone liked to tell her sons how James continued to impress her by winning all of those championships and becoming more and more famous as the UW football coach, yet he did so without any pretense or a need to bask in any of the glory.
They worked together and shared in a Sun Bowl, two Rose Bowls, two Aloha Bowls, an Orange Bowl and a Freedom Bowl. She always had a portable office set up at the corresponding bowl site.
Blackstone became a mother figure to all the players along the way and created an impressive collage of photos in her office showing all of the Huskies who went on to play in the NFL.
She got to know numerous NFL scouts as well as all of those famous coaches and broadcasters. If they wanted to get to James, they had to go through her. Cleo's sons found a letter to her from Bill Belichick.
Blackstone even received some national attention herself from Gowdy. The broadcasting giant mentioned her by name on a national broadcast, paying tribute to Cleo as the best football coach's secretary in the college game, bringing her a flood of calls the following Monday from all of those scouts and coaches she knew.
She left the job after concluding that she had won plenty of championships, with the Huskies just missing on a national title in 1985 following the Orange Bowl. It was time for her and her husband to travel.
Her son Marty, shown in the accompanying video, made sure Blackstone was buried in her casket wearing a pin that said, "It's great to be a Husky."
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