Blue White Illustrated

Pennsylvania, while Ridge stayed at Penn State and became the manager of the Student Union and graduate manager of Student Publications. When Jim returned to Penn State in 1942 to work in the infor- mation section of the Division of Contin- uing Education, Ridge was into his ninth year as the director of sports information. A year later, the Alumni Association hired Ridge as assistant executive secretary and editor of all alumni publications. His suc- cessor in sports information was Jim Coogan, who remained in that job until he was promoted to run the school's en- tire public relations department in 1958. By that time, Ridge was executive secre- tary and treasurer of the Alumni Associa- tion, having taken over in 1947. He remained in that position, with a title change to executive director the year be- fore his retirement in 1970. I was as shocked by Jim's death in April 1962 as I was when Ridge died. The cir- cumstances were eerily similar to Ridge's passing two decades later, and Ridge was there to see it. Jim was the featured speaker at the Southern New Jersey Penn State Alumni Club dinner in Haddon- field, N.J. In an Associated Press report of Jim's death, Riley said: "He seemed perfectly relaxed. He gave no evidence during his talk that he was ill. He was within two or three minutes of finishing when he slumped over." Jim had suffered a heart attack, and he died before the ambulance reached the hospital. Aside from his family, no one still alive was as close to Ridge as John Black, who also has been a friend of mine since we were on the Collegian sports staff in 1958- 59. John went on to serve as the paper's editor-in-chief for two years. In his senior year of 1961-62, he frequently met with Ridge to talk about student matters, often alone and sometimes jointly with Ross Lehman, then the assistant executive sec- retary of the Alumni Association. "They made it known that [student leaders] could come in at any time and talk about student concerns, problems on campus or just personal things," John re- membered. "There were times I would stop in when students wanted to raise an issue with the administration or to help rally support for an administration [posi- tion]. Sometimes when the students had issues that were not totally supported by the administration, Ridge and Ross were a sounding board. They were sympa- thetic, they were understanding and at times made suggestions on how students should go about resolving issues. They worked with the students in a way that the president of the university really couldn't do. They had influence with [the school's] senior officers and made them understand the students' viewpoint. "As a student and a young alumnus, I thought of Ridge Riley – as did so many other loyal alumni – as 'Mr. Penn State.' He was Penn State personified. He cared deeply about students and alumni and personally represented them and their views in the Penn State hierarchy. He also was one of the nicest and friendliest people I ever met." When Ross Lehman succeeded Ridge as executive director, John was working Like Ridge Riley, Jim Coogan was well-regarded by people inside and outside the Penn State community. As the director of sports informa- tion from 1943 to '58, Jim was the point man as Penn State football rose to Eastern and national prominence in the post-World War II years and the Rip Engle coaching era. Ridge credited Jim with designing the three-level Beaver Field press box, which was built in late 1940s and is still part of the expanded structure at Beaver Sta- dium. Unlike Ridge, there is just one thing named for Jim, and it isn't the press box. That honor goes to his protégé Jim Tarman, who eventually became the school's athletic director. When Jim died unexpectedly in the spring of 1962, a Pittsburgh group called the Curbstone Coaches created an award in his honor. The Curbstone Coaches sponsored a weekly football luncheon during the fall, and Jim often appeared before the group, figu- ratively singing the Nittany Lions' praises to an audience dominated by fans of their biggest rival, Pitt. From 1962 until 2000, the James H. Coogan Memorial Award was pre- sented to the outstanding player of the Pitt-Penn State football game. Penn State quarterback Pete Liske won the award the first year, and in 2000, Pitt quarterback Rod Ruther- ford was the recipient. However, the award was not given in the past two years when the Pitt-Penn State series resumed temporarily. That was not intentional. It was simply overlooked. E.J. Borghetti, Pitt's executive asso- ciate athletic director for media rela- tions, is familiar with Jim and the award because his father, Ernie Borghetti, was a first-team All-Amer- ica tackle for Pitt in 1963. "I don't have a satisfactory answer as to why it was not resumed for the current four- game series," Borghetti said. "And I cannot recall if I had any conversa- tions with Jeff [Nelson] prior to the 2016 game about whether we would pick this tradition back up." "The award hasn't been eliminated," said Jeff Nelson, Penn State's associ- ate athletic director for strategic com- munications. "We will discuss it with Pitt prior to this year's game." The award probably was forgotten after 2000 because no one in the orig- inal Curbstone Coaches cared any- more. The organization foundered for years and finally went out of business in the early 1990s. –L.P. Coogan was key figure in football program's postwar growth

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