Harvey Lanman Gave Thousands Of Young Athletes Their Chance

Thousands of young athletes have played at Seattle's Memorial Stadium without realizing they owed a debt of gratitude to Harvey Lanman.

As director of athletics for Seattle and Metro League high schools for a decade, Mr. Lanman was responsible for the installation in the mid-1960s of what is believed to be the first artificial turf on an outdoor football field.

"He had to convince the King County Medical Association that it was safe, the (Seattle) School Board that it was cost-effective, and the coaches that it was superior to turf," said his wife of 57 years, Audrey.

She suspects her husband might have considered the artificial turf at Memorial Stadium one of his prize contributions. But there were many in his long career as a coach and athletic administrator.

Mr. Lanman, who also had coached football at the University of Washington during the late 1930s, died Sunday (Oct. 31) of congestive heart failure. He was 88.

Since his retirement in 1971, he and his wife had made their home in Sequim, Clallam County.

Raised in Lincoln, Neb., he earned a business degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., in 1937, and played quarterback on the school's 1936 Big Ten Championship football team.

He and Audrey met in the summer of 1938, while she was in graduate school at the UW and he was visiting Seattle on a business trip for his employer, Procter & Gamble. "He was a young, handsome man, full of charisma," she recalled.

While here, he talked with UW athletic department officials, and they talked him into taking a job as an assistant football coach under Jim Phelan. A year later, he left the UW and took on the job of coaching football and baseball at Seattle's Franklin High School.

During World War II, he served as an officer in the Navy preflight program and later as catapult and flight-deck officer on the USS Hancock and USS Shangri-La in the South Pacific. His military stint ended with a medical discharge in 1945 after he was injured in a flight-deck accident.

He returned to Franklin, and his 1952 Quaker football team won the Metro League title, as did his baseball teams in 1955, 1956 and 1957.

He was the school district's director of athletics from 1961 to 1971, and during those years, his wife said, he expanded the athletic program to include cross country, wrestling, soccer and gymnastics for boys, and volleyball, golf, tennis and track for girls.

Memorial Stadium's artificial turf was installed without school money, according to his wife. "He set it up to be financed through proceeds from a stadium parking lot nearby," she said.

"He was an amazing person," said his daughter Bonnie Tinker of Larkspur, Colo. "He had a zest for life. To him, every day was a sunny day, even if it was raining."

Mr. Lanman was a charter member of the Washington State Coaches Association. He was named to the Pacific Northwest Football Hall of Fame and was a life member of Pac-10 Football Officials, 101 Club and Sigma Chi fraternity.

In Sequim, he was a member of the SunLand Golf Club, the Rotary and Ducks Unlimited.

"He remained active, and we had 28 years of retirement, which has just been beautiful," said his wife.

Other survivors include daughter Katherine Loveland of Port Angeles; son Steve Lanman of Redmond; and grandchildren James and Laura Loveland, Alison and Grant Tinker, and Tiffany and Cory Lanman.

A memorial service will be tomorrow at 2 p.m. at the Sequim Presbyterian Church. Remembrances may be sent to a charity of choice.