George Solomon: Remembering Ray Schoenke, a Washington football great who stood by his beliefs

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One of my earliest memories of Ray Schoenke, who died March 8 of cancer and dementia at age 84, occurred in the locker room of the Washington football team in 1970. I was the team’s beat reporter for the now-defunct Washington Daily News and had written a critical piece on the club’s struggling defense.

“What garbage,” steamed the late defensive lineman Floyd Peters who, at 6 feet, 4 inches and 260 pounds, towered over this 5-foot-6 scribe.

“Hey, Floyd, calm down,” Schoenke interceded. “He wrote the truth.”

At 6-4, 250 pounds, Schoenke was a good man to have on your side. In those years, players read everything everyone wrote and reacted to each printed article.

Schoenke standing up on my behalf was typical. He knew the job of a sports writer and respected the business of journalism — even if his wife of 50-plus years, the late Nancy Box Schoenke, had different views from her husband’s of the role of a sports writer.

It was the time of George Allen and the controversy in 1971 over who should start at quarterback for his team — Hall of Famer Sonny Jurgensen or dependable Billy Kilmer. Yours truly had the bright idea to run a poll in the Daily News over which quarterback Allen should start. The readers chose Jurgensen; Allen chose Kilmer.

Nancy Schoenke believed my circulation-driven ploy would divide the locker room — and the city — noting her views in a four-page letter to me, followed by a one-hour conversation on the telephone. But over the next 50 years we made our peace and, with the help of my wife, became friends as couples, violating the journalistic practice of never getting too close to the people you cover.

But Nancy Schoenke never hid her views — not did her husband and their three children. Nancy and Ray Schoenke were always true to their views and hearts. Born in Hawaii several months before the start of World War II, Schoenke was the son of an Army lifer who moved his family to the mainland for the duration of the war. When the war ended, the family returned to Hawaii, where Schoenke attended the exclusive Punahou School on an athletic scholarship.

“It was a school for the island’s elites and us jocks,” Schoenke told me, always reminding that one of the school’s alums was Barack Obama. For his senior year of high school, the family moved to Weatherford, Texas, where he was recruited to play at SMU.

At SMU, Schoenke became an All-Southwest Conference lineman, made academic All-American and met his future wife. He was drafted in 1964 by the Dallas Cowboys in the 11th round to play offensive line.

But, after a solid rookie season, Schoenke asked coach Tom Landry to be moved to defense in 1965 because he did not get along with the offensive line coach. That didn’t work out, and a year later the Cowboys traded him to Green Bay, which traded him that summer to Cleveland.

At training camp with the Browns, Schoenke ignored a veteran’s admonishment at the team’s dining hall. “The white guys sit here; the Black guys sit there.” Schoenke responded: “I’m Polynesian. Where do I sit?” he remembered asking.

“Schoenke, you’re stealing money,” Browns owner Art Modell told Schoenke, who added Modell apologized years later after a game at RFK Stadium, saying “I was wrong about you.”

Nevertheless, after the 1966 training camp, Schoenke was out of a job, with a wife and new baby, calling Washington’s personnel director, Tim Temeriero, from a phone booth in Cleveland. Temeriero told him to drive overnight to the team’s office in downtown D.C. “If you’re half as good as you show in the films, you’ll make our team.”

Schoenke and his family drove all night so he could sign a contract. Two weeks later, he was starting at left guard for Otto Graham’s explosive offense, quarterbacked by Jurgensen, next to center Len Hauss. He had a job.

In those years he was active in the community, working in the Special Olympics, a regular at Ethel Kennedy’s Hickory Hill home and a supporter of 1972 unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. His views did not always sit well with other NFL players, including Baltimore quarterback Johnny Unitas. “Schoenke, you’re nothing but a commie,” Schoenke remembered Unitas telling him in a chance airport meeting.

When Allen became coach in 1971, he brought with him a number of players from his former Los Angeles Rams team, including guard John Wilbur. While Wilbur won the starting job, Schoenke remained a fixture on the team, at reserve guard and tackle, playing a key role in the team’s 1972 NFC championship game win. Washington advanced to Super Bowl VII, which it lost, 14-7, to the 17-0 Miami Dolphins.

That game galled Schoenke for years, because he was the only member of the team not to play in the Super Bowl. “I told Allen I would never be humiliated like that again,” Schoenke said. “I must have touched a nerve, because he gave me a no-cut contract for the next three years.”

Schoenke retired after the 1975 season, becoming more involved in his Montgomery County-based corporate insurance business, helping with his three children and six grandchildren, running unsuccessfully for governor of Maryland in 1998, and trying to help his wife deal with Parkinson’s disease. He also had five surgeries, two knee replacements and countless other injuries from his 145 NFL games. He earned the nickname “the Mummy” from all the tape required to keep him together, saying often he spent his whole professional life ramming into telephone poles.

In 1987 he was named to Washington’s all-time greatest team and in 2002 the top 100 players in the team’s history.

For years, we were doing a book together about our lives, until he decided to go solo, publishing “Fat Girl Sings,” while my effort sits on a shelf in my closet.

I saw Ray for the last time two months ago in the Brooklyn Deli in Potomac, where we would meet weekly when working on our book. The servers always hovered around him, obviously liking the way he looked.

I liked the way he was.

George Solomon was sports editor of The Washington Post from 1975-2003 and a member of the faculty of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland from 2003-20, as well as the founding director of the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism.