[mack]

Here is another from the paper today that is a good read:

Nancy Gay On the NFL Remembering Bill Walsh
A fond farewell
Memories of a 'man who cared' for people
Nancy Gay
Friday, August 10, 2007

Bill Walsh orchestrated so many exquisite plays, brilliant schemes and spectacular dreams throughout his rich lifetime, it was only fitting that his final script be just perfect.
And so it was.
Walsh's valiant battle against leukemia ended July 30, but he planned his exit strategy very meticulously. Very thoughtfully.
He wanted his family - his immediate one, his extended 49ers clan and the overflowing NFL and sports kin numbering more than 1,000 that gathered at Stanford Memorial Church on Thursday - to come together, to remember.
To rejoice, in one another.
This was not a funeral. That is not what Bill Walsh wanted.
Rather, he planned a magnificent family reunion as his final farewell, with the powerful voices of the Glide Ensemble filling the rotunda of the Stanford chapel with hymns of praise and comfort.
Walsh asked that his dear friend, Dr. Harry Edwards, lift up the mourners with a stirring eulogy that offered a message melding perspective, reflection and inspiration.
"Bill wanted to be remembered as a man who cared about people," Edwards said. "He believed that people are at their very best as individuals, when they are working with and for each other."
Teamwork. Walsh revered it so.
Before and after the service, amid the warm, sun-splashed gathering in Stanford's Serra Mall, the message of love and togetherness that Walsh hoped to foster at his memorial positively flowed.
Not through tears, or sadness. But through hugs and kisses and long embraces that reminded everyone there that they were all bound together, by a man whose commitment to perfection, to achievement and winning and sacrifice touched them so profoundly.
"I feel so much joy here today! This is my family! These are my people. And I love them. I truly do," exclaimed former 49ers wide receiver Freddie Solomon, who was one of countless Walsh charges to feel the exact same way.
Solomon - overwhelmed by the gathering of familiar faces before him - was absolutely jubilant. He hugged everyone's neck. So did a cavalcade of 49ers and NFL greats: Eddie DeBartolo, Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Ronnie Lott, Dwight Clark, Steve Young, Roger Craig, Keena Turner, Guy McIntyre, Harris Barton, Steve Wallace, Jesse Sapolu, Jamie Williams, Merton Hanks, Bill Romanowski, Chris Doleman.
Too many family members to list.
Walsh's indomitable spirit, and his influence, soared across the Stanford campus. It was a Hall of Fame caisson of eminence, the likes of which you rarely see.
Don Shula stood to the left, Mike Ditka to the right, Dusty Baker in the middle. John Madden and Dan Fouts. Dick Vermeil, George Seifert, Steve Mariucci, Pete Carroll, Ray Rhodes and Dennis Green. Russ Francis, in a Hawaiian shirt.
Mike Nolan, the current 49ers coach, was humbled and honored to deliver Walsh's favorite Bible passage, Psalm 23.
Mike Holmgren, standing quietly in the back of the chapel, dabbed his eyes one minute and smiled the next.
Where else would former San Francisco mayors Frank Jordan and Dianne Feinstein come together with Franklin Mieuli and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell?
It was Walsh, Sen. Feinstein said during the service, who helped a tortured San Francisco heal through a time of enormous upheaval.
When the murders of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk at the hands of one of her ex-colleagues, the Jonestown massacre and the frightening emergence of the AIDS epidemic all threatened to rip apart the Bay Area, Walsh's Super Bowl teams offered unity.
They provided light through the shadows.
"Hope came, to a city that had been in the dark for so many years," Feinstein said.
Walsh loved his family, near and far, so dearly that it was his final wish that they all cherish one another on one glorious day celebrating his life and legacy.
"Not one conversation with Bill that I ever had was wasted," DeBartolo said.
"He loved coaching quarterbacks," said Young, "and he was the master of the rhetorical question: 'How could you do that?'
" 'Can't you do it like Joe?' "
And Montana, perhaps the athlete Walsh admired and revered the most, struggled mightily to give his mentor due justice.
Montana stopped momentarily to gather his emotions. He spoke through tears. Then he smiled, because the memories are too wonderful to ignore.
There was a game, Montana told the assembly, when he threw two interceptions. On those occasions following mistakes, he always dreaded retreating to the sideline and facing Walsh's pointed stare.
On this day, Montana remembered, he felt particularly bold.
" 'What was that?' Bill asked me after the second interception," Montana recalled.
"That was an interception, coach," I said.
"Yes, and it was a darn good one. But let's not do it again," was Walsh's reply.
The church erupted in laughter.
That final script Walsh wrote? It was working.
Three days before Walsh died at the age of 75, Montana visited with him. Weak in body but clear in mind, Walsh asked Montana to deliver a specific message.
"He wanted to let all of you know that he loved you," Montana told the audience. "He loved all of you."
And that sentiment was returned, in volumes.
"Coach," Montana said in response, and in closing, "we love you, too."

Walsh service:

What: Bill Walsh memorial service
When: 11 a.m. today (gates open 10 a.m.)
Where: Candlestick
Admission/parking: Free
TV: {KRON}, KGO Plus, NFL Network
Radio: 680 AM
On the Web: cbs5.com
Transit: Muni has set up special service. See sfmuni.com.

[mack]

Another tribute to Coach Walsh in today's S.F. Chronicle:

A vision beyond football
by Richard Rapaport
Sunday, August 12, 2007

The morning Bill Walsh died, my editor, Owen Edwards, sent an e-mail titled "a bad day." We had both worked with Bill, and the thought of the world without his elegant, laconic presence made it a bad day, indeed. In Bill Walsh, the Bay Area lost a heroic, defining figure and we lost a mentor and friend.

The confluence of Bill Walsh's cerebral reshaping of professional football and the phenomenon known as "Silicon Valley" wasn't coincidental and it is correct to place Bill Walsh alongside Robert Noyce, Bill Hewlett, David Packard, Gordon Moore and those who invented the technology/business phenomenon of which the Bay Area is ground zero. That Bill Walsh's "thinking man's" football routed the dumbos from around the NFL gave us a cachet and a confidence integral in crowning the Bay Area as a capital of intellect and accomplishment.

I first met Bill at a 1984 press event, after a Sunday in which the 49ers dismembered the Los Angeles Rams, 33-0. It could have been 133-0, except that humiliation was not in the Walsh's playbook. Bill refused to hand an opponent any potential future psychological edge. It exemplified Walsh's propensity to think improbably far ahead; "We have to remind ourselves," he explained in our 1993 Harvard Business Review interview, "that it's not just a single game we are trying to win. It is a season and a series of seasons ..."

At that 1984 press conference, I asked Walsh to compare that week's Rams blowout with the first game against the Dallas Cowboys in the 1981 season. This had been an early season match-up in which Joe Montana wrecked the powerhouse Cowboys, passing for four touchdowns in the first half. When I asked the question, Walsh got that far-ahead look and replied that while the Ram's game was important, "that first Dallas game made this franchise ... and what's your name?"

Having hit the right note, I was invited to hang around the 49ers headquarters. Walsh was willing to make time. It was often late, with game day approaching, when he would call me into his office to talk not about football, but rather about history, war, business and economics, unexpected subjects considering the setting.

It became clear that Walsh was a qualitative great leap forward from the Vince Lombardi/George Halas, "three-yards-and-a-cloud of dust,'' school of coaching. His teams similarly varied from the NFL norm of a strong-arm organization built to outmuscle the opposition. In Walsh World, the difference was, "we asked more of our players intellectually than our opponents were asking of theirs."

Walsh's brainy approach worked. The 1984 49ers went 15-1 and won Super Bowl XIX. In the following two decades the 49ers won three more Super Bowls, and a remarkable number of Walsh's assistants went on to become head coaches. In 1992, he returned to Stanford to coach and the Harvard Business Review asked me to interview him about the theory and practice of coaching in modern management.
The subject intrigued Bill. It was no coincidence that he would later lease space in the Sand Hill Road Business Park, the iconic home of high-tech finance. Bill fit with executives and entrepreneurs who, like him, recognized that traditional management needed to rethink what was a new business model. In our Harvard Business Review piece and his Forbes ASAP column, Bill recast his Super Bowl-winning philosophy in corporate terms. He spoke of the end of an era in which "an organization would simply discard a player who did not fit a specific, predefined role."
Instead, he suggested his 49er model, which tailored the system to fit the strengths of the players. The 49ers with Joe Montana, was offensively different that it was with Steve Young. Walsh also advocated that organizations be run "like open forums in which everyone participates in the decision-making process." Achieving this organizational buy-in made for a powerful collective will to win. To do it, however, Walsh stressed that the organizational fear factor needed to be eliminated, any idea, foolish or brilliant, would be considered without retribution. In Walsh's organization, ego wasn't an option, even for him.

Ultimately, Bill Walsh's winning equanimity derived from his own professional struggles. While head coaches were typically chosen in their early 40s, Walsh didn't get his shot until Stanford hired him at 47. "I was in a subordinate role as an assistant coach for a longer period of time than most," he noted, "so I was forced to analyze, evaluate and learn to appreciate the roles that other people play more than I might have. In retrospect," he concluded with the modesty that always became him, "I was lucky."
We were the lucky ones.

This article appeared on page C - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle