On the record ... with Pete Johnson

He probably won’t admit it, but Pete Johnson has been a legend longer than many people have been alive.

His list of achievements are as long and impressive as they are varied and important.

Born and raised in Sycamore, right across the street from the old high school, Johnson rose from a kid manager of the Spartans' football team to a hall of fame coach who was once voted one of the best coaches in the country.

In 17 seasons with the Spartans, from 1951 to 1967, Johnson accumulated a record of 114-23-5 (.820), including 10 conference titles, eight undefeated seasons (four of them consecutive) and a 33-game winning streak.

An Army veteran of World War II, Johnson was also Sycamore's first student teacher, an industrial arts teacher, a high school principal, helped establish the state's current football playoff system, started the first GED program in the area, was an adjunct teacher for 30 years for the University of Illinois, and served on an advisory committee on vocation and education to former Gov. Jim Thompson, among others.

Arguably, his most important contribution may have come in 1953 when he helped develop the Diversified Occupations program, which has been copied throughout the United States.

"There are people in Springfield who probably don't know he coached football," SHS Principal Tim Carlson said, adding that they do know him through the vocational coop program for which he wrote the state syllabus.
Johnson and his high school sweetheart, Rhoda (who died in 1993), produced three children: Jill Rahn, Becky Feasler and Peter N. Johnson, all of whom are successful in their own right. He also has six grandchildren with "three more on the way."

For the past 10 years, Johnson has been married to his current wife, Char.
At 6:30 p.m. Friday, before the varsity football game against Rochelle, SHS will host a special ceremony to unveil the life-like statue of Johnson – which was designed by Renee Bemis – that will be placed just north of the football field. Following the ceremony, a reception will be held at the Stratford Inn.
Johnson – who will turn 88 in November – found a few minutes to go on the record with MidWeek reporter Doug Oleson and discuss his career and the statue.

MidWeek: How did you become a kid manager?

Pete Johnson: I used to hang around the coaches and varsity when I was in grade school, and occaassionally some of the players would put me on the bus. Coach probably knew I was on the bus. He would give me a little lecture about me being there and then he would go: "OK, carry the medicine kit in, you are now our manager." The players kind of counted on me to be there.

MW: Did you play sports when you were a kid?

PJ: I probably played everything that the school district, as well as the community, offered. I grew up across the street from what was the old Sycamore High School. It's now the Browns' store. Some people say you never really got very far, you just went across the street (chuckles). That's one of the greatest things: there was a softball diamond and a track, a football field and so. It leant us something to do. You get an old baseball and a bat and you get a game going. There was no Little League or things like that. There were many people in Sycamore who were interested in helping kids. I have to give a lot of credit to Coach Leland Strombom, who was very influential in my life, getting me into college and getting me a job when I was in college.

MW: What position did you play in football?

PJ: We had lightweights and heavyweights in those days. I think I probably weighed 125 pounds. I was a quarterback on the lightweights and played some end on the heavyweights. I guess my playing time was rather limited. I was not a regular on the heavyweights, but I was on the lightweights. We played both games a lot of times. We beat DeKalb twice my junior and senior years, 7-6 and 13-12. They were our big rivals. Now. we're all one community.

MW: Was football your favorite sport?

PJ: Basketball was probably my favorite sport. I started three years on the varsity, even though I was quite small. On the track, I was a distance runner. It was an out for us.

MW: When did you start teaching?

PJ: I started teaching at Sycamore High School in 1946. I was going to Northern and I didn't have a teaching certificate, but they needed an industrial arts teacher and coach, so they hired me. I also taught geography and math. I got $1,800 a year for my first year of teaching.

My second year there, we started grade school football, which turned out to be a valuable program (for SHS). The high school hadn't won many games over the years. The big thing was when you played Naperville or Dundee, they had grade school programs.

MW: How did you get into coaching?

PJ: I was always interested in athletics. You have role models and my role model – along with my scout master – was my coach, Strombom, at the high school. He was a mentor to a lot of people. He was a Sycamore boy who was Mr. Everything at Northern when Northern was very small, just a teacher's college. I majored in industrial arts because that's what my coach was, and  being of Scandinavian descent, they were carpenters. I also minored in physical education. Coaching really came about by my participation (in sports).

MW: Were you successful right away?

PJ: I became the head coach in 1951. Sycamore hadn't won many games. But with my experience with the same kids, and the fact that I had two kids who later went on to play in college, we had a start. I ended up coaching some of the kids from seventh grade through their senior years.

The first kid who went on to play for Iowa was a kid named Roger Swedberg. He was the horse for us. I only had 19 kids come out the first year for the varsity. We built interest to the point in the 1960s we had 65 on the varsity and 83 on the fresh-soph. We became the in-thing. We had all seven doctors at our games. I never coached a game without a doctor on the bench, and it got to the point that they were signing up for the games, both home and away.

MW: Were you disappointed there weren't any playoffs to see how far some of those teams could go?

PJ: I was on the committee to start that. You know, the rating was all paper. They didn't go by classes. We were rated by some newspapers in the top 10 in the state after going undefeated. We were beating the Napervilles and the Wheatons, that's why we got high ratings at the time.

So I guess about 10 of us got together, all former coaches. I think there were a couple of other coaches who had undefeated teams. I was principal by then.

We weren't well accepted by the IHSA – "It takes too much away from the kids; makes for too long a season" – but now it's become a big thing. Now kids are playing for the championship of the state, not the conference so much. The conference is important, but the big thing is to win five games. In some cases you see schools lighten their schedules to play Podunk U. just to get six wins.

MW: What was your best team ever?

PJ: Well, the first team to go undefeated was the '55 team. Two of the players went on to play for Northwestern. Half of their backfield was from Sycamore, the quarterback and the running back, that was under Ara Parseghian and Bo Schembechler and Alex Agase. They recruited both of these kids and had the quarterback not gotten hurt, he probably would have started all three years, as well as for basketball. He was equally good at basketball. That was Bert Freadrick. Mark Johnston was the running back and he went to play pro ball for the Oilers. But there are so many other kids who went on. We had a kid by the name of Billy Smith who was very outstanding. Started for Wisconsin all three years. He was the Big 10 indoor sprint champion.

MW: That's amazing.

PJ: The first year I was coaching the varsity, we only had one loss and the town bought tickets for all of us to go see the Chicago Bears. I'm a Bears fan. For a dollar we could go in and sit anywhere at Wrigley Field. That was a big Sunday entertainment. We'd play Friday nights or a lot of games on Saturday because there were only lights in a few schools. I've been invited by the McCaskeys a couple of times to sit in their box. I joked with Viriginia McCaskey once that we could sit anywhere we wanted for a dollar and she said you can't do that anymore.

Because of our evolving record, other Big 10 teams would give us tickets to see a Big ten game and afterwards we'd go down on the field and I'd say, 'Look, you can be on that field.' We had the motivation of watching our kids play. We had starters at Northwestern, Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois. Two of our quarterbacks started for Big Ten over the years – both got hurt.

MW: What's the key to successful coaching?

PJ: I think the thing about any high school program is discipline and fundamentals. I think young coaches coming out today worry too much about plays and defensive sets and everything. Teach them how to block and tackle and work together as a team – that's the answer.

Ray Elliott always wanted me to take big jobs in the burbs, but I had a family and family was as important to me as football. If you go into the big schools it's not a community thing like we've got here. We used to have 10 deep all over the field. We didn't have a lot of seats in those days. We won because of Sycamore and the community attitude.

My first year, we had to shovel six inches of snow off the field for the Little Seven championship game against Wheaton. The game was played here. Sycamore is just a great community. You ask for something and you get it. We built the new field with no tax dollars, that's a story by itself. (chuckles) We probably should have left the snow; we lost the game.

MW: Why did you quit coaching?

PJ: I like challenges. When I left coaching, we had like 21 (wins) in a row again, and I had some undefeated freshmen and sophomore teams coming. I was asked to be the principal of the high school, but I had to give up coaching. It was a very difficult decision because I was having fun. And I started that adult education program, too, and that added up to 500 people coming in at night. I got the first GED program started in the area. We had 45 people come in for that. It took a lot of time, and I was still athletic director at the time. Football is blocking and tackling and fundamentals, but so is education.

MW: What led to the vocational program you developed in 1953?

PJ: A superintendent came from a school district that was trying to start that up. He called me in one day and said we'd like to do this here. "I think Sycamore needs this type of program." So I studied what this was all about, took classes to get more of it, and started this program with 17 kids. It was what they call cooperative career education in those days. It just kind of mushroomed. Some kids came in and stayed with the careers, others came in and learned how to work and others came in because they needed the finances. They got paid the minimum wage to do this. Some followed through. The biggest implement dealer around here, he started in our co-op program and was a great football player on our '55 team. He could have started at the University of Iowa, he was that good.

Many of those tradesmen over the years stayed with it and became contractors and workers in all areas. It became a career and a vocational program, which wasn't offered at the school. So this opened the door for a lot of kids who weren't interested in going on to college, although a lot did.
MW: Was this the first one in the state?

PJ: No, one of the first. But I ended up writing a couple of books with a friend of mine from Northern on how to start a cooperative. That was my field. The University of Illinois, in 1965, asked me to develop a syllabus and I ended up teaching that class. I taught on the campus during the summer. For 30 years, I was an adjunct for them, from 1965 to '95.

In 1980, the state came along and they had an opening for an executive director for the adult vocational technical education for the state with an advisory counsel. We had 13 people that the governor (Jim Thompson) appointed, but we didn't have to listen to anybody. We were an autonomous group that had some big people on that committee.

MW: What does the statue mean to you?

PJ: It's an extreme honor that you never dream will happen to you. I was over there (at Art Castings, in Oregon) where they were doing this statue. There's one of Gerald Ford and here they did Michael Jordan (for the United Center in Chicago). Why me? I have no clue. I hope it's not just because of the wins and losses.

I've had so many letters from former students on the influence I had on their lives. One hundred years from now, if that statue is still standing, no one's going to remember the wins or losses unless they put it on the plaque. But maybe the generation I've influenced will influence others. It's a domino effect that teachers and coaches have.

MW: Do you know what you're going to say in your speech?

PJ: No, but I've been thinking about it. Where do you start? Start with your God, with your family, your mentors, all those people who've helped you. You can't identify names, it would go on all night. I am honored that my three kids will be there.