18 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY may 16-22, 2024 www.montereycountynow.com alcoholic” and a “natural-born salesman who loved to gamble.” His mom, Florence, a MexicanAmerican, was 17 when Kapp was born, and she proved to be the rock in the family—he calls her “the Toughest Chicana.” R.D. moved the family to San Fernando in Southern California when Kapp was 2, and his years living there would prove to have a lasting impact. “As a small boy I did not really appreciate the significance of living in a neighborhood without sidewalks,” Kapp wrote. “Eventually, I learned that meant we lived in the barrio section of town.” Kapp’s parents spoke Spanish at home, but his mom discouraged him from speaking it in public—“She knew that English was the language to compete in the world.” It was in those early years that Kapp got his first taste of competition: “As a little kid in San Fernando, I liked school, and I liked sports even more.” A family friend in the neighborhood who was a fan of horse racing took Kapp to watch the races in Santa Anita one day, and it left an impression that stuck. “It was at Santa Anita that I first heard that unmistakable and exhilarating roar of the crowd,” Kapp wrote. “I knew then that the roar of the crowd was something special. It was a calling.” Kapp’s dad, after spending time in the military during World War II, got a job in Salinas in 1947 selling cookware and equipment for the Wearever Company. The family lived in a three-bedroom unit in a GI housing Quonset hut just across the street from El Sausal Middle School, which Kapp would attend. “We had no organized sports, so we chose up sides and created our own games, and we had to be resourceful because we couldn’t afford sporting equipment,” Kapp wrote. “Sometimes we used lettuce heads instead of footballs.” In that environment, Kapp also helped take care of his younger siblings while his parents were working, and invented games for them to play together. He also got into some scraps, including one in grade school with a “bigger kid” who called Kapp “a dirty Mexican.” (Kapp describes the population of his neighborhood at that time as “two distinct groups—Okies and Latinos.” Not long after that, a boy who later became Kapp’s friend and teammate, Bob Sartwell—the biggest kid at the time—rolled Kapp’s basketball down a hill. Kapp cried on his mom’s shoulder, but got no sympathy. “She told me to go right back out and settle it. I did, but without a fight.” But it was his time in Salinas that instilled in Kapp the need to stand up for himself, and guided him through the rest of his life. “Growing up in this competitive town was good for me,” Kapp wrote. “I learned early in life that if you don’t stand up for yourself, you get squashed.” It was also in Salinas, while in the seventh grade, that one of his teachers at El Sausal took their class on a field trip to visit UC Berkeley. “Walking through Sather Gate onto campus and past Memorial Stadium was like walking into the center of the universe,” Kapp wrote. “Prior to this, all I knew were barrios, lettuce fields, and Quonset huts.” Cal would remain central in the rest of Kapp’s life, as would Everett Alvarez, his classmate at El Sausal who joined him on that trip, and whose life is a legend in its own right. (Everett Alvarez High School in Salinas is named for him.) Kapp’s family moved back to southern California when he was in the 10th grade, and it was there, for Newhall High in Santa Clarita, that he finally got a chance to prove himself on the field as a quarterback. He was offered a scholarship to play at Cal, but the school was out of football scholarships, so they offered him a basketball scholarship, which he took—he was a two-sport collegiate athlete. But it was the gridiron that was his calling. Kapp excelled on the football field and led Cal to the Rose Bowl in 1958, a feat the team hasn’t achieved since. He was also named an All-American. The Washington Redskins (now called the Commanders) drafted him in 1959, but they never called him up, something that would be unheard of in today’s NFL. So Kapp packed his bags for Kapp, wearing a cowboy hat, surrounded by his friends and family when El Sausal’s athletic field was named after him in 2022. While Kapp’s size is the current prototype for a modern NFL quarterback, he was big in his day. He was also a bruiser. To this day, the NFL players making millions have Joe Kapp to thank. Courtesy of Salinas Union High School District Courtesy of Minnesota Vikings
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