Former UW Tackle Meyers Dies

John Meyers, an all-conference tackle for the University of Washington in 1961, died Thursday at UCLA Medical Center as he was waiting for a heart transplant. He was 58.

Meyers also was an outstanding athlete at Columbia High School in Richland, where he was all-state in basketball and football. He led his team to the big-school state basketball championship in 1958.

Known as "Big John," Meyers - who weighed 242 pounds during his collegiate career - played on Jim Owens' victorious Rose Bowl teams in 1960 and 1961. He was the only sophomore who started on the 1960 Rose Bowl team.

As a sophomore in 1960 he was a key player in the UW's run to the 1961 Rose Bowl game, which altered the course of West Coast football when the Huskies beat Wisconsin 44-8.

"We were just a young bunch of guys who liked to play football . . . who liked to knock people down," Meyers said in a 1975 interview. "We weren't going to fool anybody . . . we were going to beat them in the fourth quarter."

Drafted in the third round in 1962 by the Los Angeles Rams, Meyers played six years in the NFL for Dallas and Philadelphia.

Born in Forest City, Iowa, Meyers was president of Meyers Distributing in Kirkland and had served as the vice president and on the board of directors for Husky Fever, a booster organization.

Services will be at 2 p.m. Wednesday at University Presbyterian Church, followed by a reception at the Don James Center at Husky

Stadium.