Beaver sports a way of life for auction winner Al Nyman

Al Nyman

Al Nyman and Oregon State athletics go way back.

“My dad (Karl) was a coach who got a masters degree from Oregon State,” says Nyman, whose $250 bid earned him a copy of “Civil War Rivalry: Oregon vs. Oregon State” autographed by 20 former Beaver and Duck football greats. (One hundred percent of proceeds go to the Willamette Humane Society of Salem.) “My mom got her masters degree there, too. A lot of my family went to OSU.”

Al Nyman, 80, graduated from OSU in 1964.

“I just missed the Rose Bowl year (1965),” says Nyman, who had season tickets for Beaver football and basketball for many years. “I had graduated and gone to work for Price Waterhouse in Portland and going to the Rose Bowl didn’t seem like such a big deal. I’d gone (to Pasadena) in ’57 when I was a senior in high school (in Jefferson, Ore.) I watched Joe Francis and all those great players through those years. I was the same class as Terry Baker.”

Nyman was a high school kid at Jefferson when he watched USF and Bill Russell edge Oregon State and 7-3 Swede Halbrook 57-56 in the NCAA West Regional final in 1955. The Dons went on to claim the NCAA title.

“The Beavers would have won the national championship had they won that game,” says Nyman, who owns “Last US Bag Company,” which sells industrial and recreational bags out of Vancouver. “Swede wasn’t a physical specimen, but he was a skilled player with great hands.”

Ironically, Nyman’s sister, Pat Nyman Biggs, worked for my father, John Eggers, as a student intern in the OSU sports information department.

“They didn’t have a journalism school at Oregon State,” Al says, “but she decided to get a journalism degree at Wisconsin because she liked your dad so much. Truly, she’ll tell you that your dad was the determining force in her getting a masters degree in journalism.”

Nyman’s son, Mark, is an ’87 graduate of OSU. He saw some so-so football but some great basketball while in school.

“I’m giving this book to Mark for Christmas,” says Nyman, who lives in the house in Jefferson his wife’s parents owned many years ago. “He bleeds orange. One of my friends is (ex-Beaver All-America defensive tackle) Jon Sandstrom. I’ll have him sign the book, too.”

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