Werner `Neudy' Neudorf, 78, Inspired Many Young People

Werner "Neudy" Neudorf believed in young people.

For years he coached football at Foster High School in Tukwila, leaving behind hundreds of young men and women like Doug Ringenbach, who played quarterback on Foster's 1956-58 teams.

It was Mr. Neudorf's example that inspired Ringenbach to become a coach and teacher.

"It was because of his inspiration and I admired him so much as a young man playing for him," said Ringenbach, who went on to become an assistant football coach at Evergreen High and then head coach at Mount Rainier High in the Highline District.

Mr. Neudorf, 78, who coached football at Foster from 1951 to 1963, and continued to coach track there into the 1970s, died Monday. He had been ill for several years after a series of strokes.

"He really loved kids," said Mr. Neudorf's daughter, Patricia Winston. "I think more than anything Dad believed in the youth of this country," and that it was his responsibility to build solid lives through athletics, she added.

In appreciation of his hands-on work, the football field at Foster High was renamed the Werner L. Neudorf Memorial Field in 1976.

Winston remembers her father arranging for some of the materials for the football field, much of it built with volunteer labor. "It was a hand-made project," she said.

Persistence was another of Mr. Neudorf's characteristics which helped the South Central School District get some free publicity for a bond issue in the 1960s.

He asked the managers of Southcenter to put a "Vote Schools" sign on their marquee, but was turned down because it would set a precedent. He kept going back until the managers finally relented, Winston recalled.

Mr. Neudorf compiled a lifetime football coaching record of 86 wins, 60 losses and 7 ties, with some of his winning plays coming from his creative mind, sometimes on the spur of the moment.

Bob Ritter, a longtime friend and former state senator, said Mr. Neudorf was the object of many practical jokes because he was so serious. Once, while with a group of friends smelting in the Chehalis River, Mr. Neudorf fell in.

He wanted to change clothes but there was nowhere to do it out of sight of the Interstate-5 traffic that was whizzing by. So the friends formed a circle while he undressed. But when he got down to his shorts, all the friends stepped away, Ritter recalled with a laugh.

For his coaching efforts Mr. Neudorf was inducted into the Washington State Coaches Hall of Fame, and in 1976 he received a special award from Frank Brouillet, then state superintendent of public instruction.

He also received the Golden Acorn Award, was voted the Senior Citizen of the Year Award in 1989 from the Southwest King County Chamber of Commerce and he was involved in American Legion youth activities.

Besides his daughter, survivors include his wife, Ruth of Tukwila; a son, Charles Neudorf of Gig Harbor; two sisters, Elfrieda Schreiber of Westwood, Mass., and Marie Morgan of Muldraugh, Ky.

Funeral services are scheduled for tomorrow at 3 p.m. at St. Thomas Church, 4415 S. 140th St. Remembrances are suggested to the American Legion Post No. 235, 18627 48th Place S., SeaTac, WA 98188.