“Chaffey High’s Ernie Payne
mourned”
(Article taken from The Daily Bulletin, Inland Valley, A3, Friday,
July 27, 2001
By Mike Rapport, Staff Writer, who can be reached by email at
m_rappaport@dailybulletin.com
or by phone at (909) 483-8556) |
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Former track athlete spent 38
years as an educator
ONTARIO – A story Kim Wingert of Ontario tells about her
grandfather, Ernie Payne, who died last Friday, goes a long way toward
explaining the type of man he was.
“I was 14 when I
came home from high school one day and said my P.E. teacher was trying to kill
me,” Wingert said. “I thought she was
working me too hard.” My grandfather
just looked at me and quietly said, “She’s a fine woman.”
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Ernie Payne's picture in Chaffey's 1925 FASTI
Yearbook |
“It completely
changed my opinion of her; it made me think of her as a person and se her with
respect. He was very subtle like that,
but he always made a big impression.”
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Mr. Payne, who
died at age 94, made a lifetime of big impressions as a teacher, administrator
and principal at Chaffey High School from 1931-67.
He was born in Los Angeles,
but lived the final 92 years of his life in Ontario after his family
moved here in 1909. He attended Euclid School,
Chaffey High and Chaffey College before going on for both bachelor’s and
master’s degrees from USC.
It was at USC
that he gained his greatest fame, lettering and captaining the 1931 national
championship track and field team. He
established an intercollegiate record in the 200-yard low hurdles in Philadelphia
that spring, and would have won an NCAA championship in the next meet in
Chicago if not for a strange mishap.
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“He was leading
the field by two yards and was on track for a world record,” said son Kenneth
Payne of San Diego. “A photographer ran out onto
the track to get his picture. It
distracted him and he fell on the last hurdle.”
Mr. Payne said
his father carried cinders from the track embedded in his knee of the rest of
his life.
“That race was
probably his biggest disappointment,” Mr. Payne said.
He had another
big disappointment a year later, while training for the 400-yard low hurdles
for the 1932 Olympics held in Los Angeles.
“He had run the
fastest time in the world in 1931,” his son said. “But because he was coaching the Chaffey High
track team, they said he was a professional and disqualified him from
competing.”
Mr. Payne worked
as a ticket taker at the Coliseum during the Olympics.
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MOURNED: Former Chaffey High and USC athlete
Ernie Payne gained his greatest fame by lettering and captaining the 1931
national championship track and field team. He also spent 38 years as a
teacher, administrator and principal at Chaffey High. |
But
if there were disappointments, there was far more happiness. He was married to Ella Mary
Parks for 65 years until her death in March 2000.
His 38 years in
education and 32 years of active retirement made
Mr. Payne a beloved figure in
the community. Chaffey’s baseball field
bears his name.
Daughter Barbara Cheatley
of Ontario attended Chaffey while her father was principal, and she said he was
very popular with the students.
“One year on his
birthday, I got all my friends to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him in an assembly,”
she said. “He was mortified, but I think
he enjoyed it. And because we sang,
“Happy Birthday, dear daddy,’ instead of ‘dear Ernie,’ for a while after that
all my friends were calling him daddy.”
Some of them
apparently remembered him as if he had been a family member.
“Traveling with
him was almost a joke,” his son said. “Wherever we went, whether it was Rome or San Francisco,
someone would recognize him. They’d come
up to him and say, ‘I was in your 1937 biology class’
or something like that.”
Even after
retiring as an assistant superintendent in 1969, Mr. Payne stayed
involved. He served as part of the
evaluation and accreditation team for the Western Association of Colleges and
Schools and was on the boards of numerous local organizations. He was active in the First Methodist Church
and maintained more than half a century of perfect attendance at Kiwanis
meetings.
Mr. Payne was a
member of Chaffey College’s Hall of Fame selection committee, and was a member of the college’s
Hall of Fame himself. He was active with
the Salvation Army, the West End Congress of Christians and Jews, the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden
and the YMCA.
A memorial
service will be held at the First United Methodist Church, 918 N. Euclid
Ave., Ontario,
on Saturday at 9:30
a.m.
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(Article taken from The Daily Bulletin, Inland Valley, A3, Friday, July 27, 2001
By Mike Rapport, Staff Writer, who
can be reached by email at
m_rappaport@dailybulletin.com
or by phone at (909) 483-8556)
(Article taken from The Daily Bulletin, Inland Valley, A3, Friday, July 27,
2001
By Mike Rapport, Staff Writer, who
can be reached by email at
m_rappaport@dailybulletin.com
or by phone at (909) 483-8556)
|
