"Gary Wright is such a great person who will do anything for anybody and is so adept at dealing with a lot of different issues." Chuck Knox, former NFL head coach.
For the first time in 20 years, Gary Wright, a former Long Beach State sports information director as well as a former St. John Bosco High history teacher, varsity football assistant and junior varsity basketball head coach, won't be in charge of the Super Bowl media headquarters.
Instead, Wright, who has worked for the Seattle Seahawks since they were formed in 1976 and is listed in the team's media guide as vice-president/administration, will be in charge this week of coordinating the chartered air flights, the lodging and the ticket accommodations of his organization's 800-person contingent that is descending on Detroit.
"We're bringing all the people who work for the Seahawks and their families," says Wright, 61, an affable, bright fellow with a keen wit and disarming smile. "There will be plenty to do, but there is nothing I'd rather be doing "
You must understand that Gary Wright has endured his share of frustrations across the seasons as one of the three remaining original employees video director Thom Fermstad and community outreach director Sandy Gregory are the others of a Seahawk franchise that will be making its first Super Bowl appearance Sunday against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Oh, the Seahawks have had periods of success, especially during the early part of Chuck Knox's stay, but there also have been dark times as they went into this postseason not having won a playoff game since 1984.
Still, there have been moments of joy for Wright with the Seahawks, especially that July afternoon in 1995 in Canton, Ohio, when he gave the Hall of Fame introductory speech for receiver Steve Largent, a rare honor for a public relations man.
Of course, Gary Wright isn't exactly your garden variety PR guy, as he graphically displayed during his brief tenure at Long Beach State between January 1969 and the summer of 1972.
He ghost-wrote Jerry Tarkanian's weekly basketball column that appeared in the Press-Telegram in those days, and it was the content in one of those articles that is credited with instigating Tarkanian's troubles with the NCAA.
"Jerry Tarkanian always told me what he wanted written, and this one time he told me he wanted to take some shots at the NCAA for putting Southwestern Louisiana on probation," relates Wright. "I told him, 'Are you sure you want to go in this direction?" And he replied, 'Yes." And so I wrote the column, and the NCAA had an investigator on the Long Beach State campus the next week."
Gary Wright also was the person who came up with the idea of that famous Leon Burns photo the 49er running back star is shown bare-chested displaying his muscular anatomy by hoisting a teammate, fullback Hans Albrecht, overhead that created widespread attention.
"We used that picture on the cover of our media guide, and it was picked up by papers across the country," says Wright. "Our intent was to get national publicity for Leon, and it worked. He gained All-American honors. The picture was shot by Jim McCormack (currently a senior editor at the Press-Telegram)."
Wright worked during a memorable athletic era at Long Beach State, when the football, basketball, swimming and track teams were all doing exceptionally well.
"That was an unbelievable time in my life," says Wright. "Just look at the people I was working with Jim Stangeland in football, Jerry Tarkanian in basketball, Ted Banks and Jack Rose in track, Don Gambril and Skip Kenney in swimming. All these guys were great coaches and fun to work with. What great memories."
But Gary Wright was young and restless and had this yearning inside him to be, of all things, a football coach, which he had done at the Pop Warner League level in Lawndale and which he did as a student assistant when attending Glendale College.
"Coaching football was just something I always wanted to do," says Wright, a 5-foot-6, 145-pound reserve running back his senior year at Glendale Hoover, one of three area high schools he attended (Washington and Serra were the others). "When I went out for the team at Glendale College, our offensive coordinator, Jim Hanifan, who would go on to be a long-time NFL coach, took me aside and told me I had no chance to play and that I could help the team in other ways. So I got a clipboard and started doing odds and ends for the team."
Gary Wright departed Long Beach State, became an American history teacher at St. John Bosco. Wright became a popular figure at St. John Bosco, and he's still fondly remembered by those who played under him.
"Gary was the best coach I ever had," says John Ritter, a 1975 St. John Bosco graduate who played basketball and football at the school. "And he also was a tremendous teacher."
Wright left St. John Bosco in 1974 to become PR director of the Southern California Sun of the fledgling World Football League.
The league folded the following summer, and Wright also during that period had gigs with the Los Angeles Aztecs, the International Volleyball Association and the Phoenix Rackets of World Team Tennis.
"I literally was going from one job to another in those days," he says. "I remember once when I was at Bosco a head football coaching position opened at Glendale High, and I applied for it. I didn't get it, but if I had, I might have stayed in coaching."
But Gary Wright's itinerant days soon ended as the PR director of the newly formed Seahawks, Don Andersen, who got Wright the job with the Sun, was looking for an assistant.
"I had gone back to teach during the spring semester of 1976 at Bosco, and Don called to ask me if I could come up to Seattle and work on the team's draft," relates Wright. "Well, the draft happened to come at the same time I was on spring break from Bosco, so I was able to go up and help out in Seattle. When I got back, the Seahawk general manager, John Thompson, called and told me he wanted me to come to work for the Seahawks. I told him I couldn't until the school year was over in June. And he said fine. And now I've been at the same job for 30 years."
And what a compelling 30 years it has been for Gary Wright, who never will forget the time Steve Largent came into his office and asked him who he thought should speak for him at the Hall of Fame ceremony.
"I told Steve it could be Jim Zorn, or Dave Krieg, or Chuck Knox," says Wright. "And he kept shaking his head and finally, he said to me, 'I want you to do it." I about fell off my chair."
But Gary Wright did it with typical competence, giving a stirring three-minute speech detailing Largent's virtues.
"A great guy and a great ballplayer," says Wright.
Before getting into PR, Gary Wright was a sportswriter at the old L.A. Herald Examiner when he was in his early teens he worked for that paper's Scholastic Sports Association with other young writers like Allan Malamud, Mitch Chortkoff and Steve Bisheff and also did weekend desk chores at the Press-Telegram when he was at Long Beach State.
He and his wife Ann, who have two sons, Larry, 37, and Steve, 36, took their first European vacation in 1996, but Wright came back a week early.
"I just got nervous being away from my job," he says. "The longest vacation I ever took before that was maybe a week. Here I was away for two weeks, and I needed to get home."
But Gary Wright has since mellowed in that regard.
He now every other year spends a month at a friend's villa just south of Valencia in Spain and has become a passionate soccer aficionado.
"I've been to a lot of matches over there," he says.
It is a reflection of Gary Wright's steadiness and reliability that he has remained employed with the Seahawks under three ownership regimes those of John Nordstrom, Ken Behring and Paul Allen.
And he still retains a deep affection for football.
"The atmosphere at our stadium when we beat Carolina for the NFC title was electric," he says. "It was like when I was at Bosco and we beat Pius X. Or at least when we beat a Servite team that had Turk Schonert on it. Just a lot more people in the stands "