Timeout with Tambo: Setting matters straight on the beginnings of Ramona Pop Warner
Sentinel
about Ramona Pop Warner marking over 30 years of tradition, Doug Packwood would like offer some corrections.He felt that the article was very nice and was honored that his father, Jack, was honored in the article. He did, however, take exception with some of the quotes in the article.
Jack Packwood approached Ramona High football coach Jack Menotti when he first moved to Ramona. It was the very first day of football practice and not after a losing game.
“My dad just wanted to help in any way he could and he simply asked Coach Menotti if there was any way that he could help. He expected to be introduced to the boosters’ club president or to be asked to work on the chain gang or to do stats (which he did eventually). Coach Menotti asked my father to start a Pop Warner program. And my father did just that,” said Packwood.
This reporter was present when the conversation took place and remembers it the way Packwood described it.
After consulting two charter members of the Pop Warner board of directors, Bill Clark and Tom Jamison, they too agreed that it was Menotti’s idea to start Pop Warner and that he was pro Pop Warner from the start.
“As a matter of fact, Coach Menotti asked me to be a board member,” said Jamison.
“Coach Menotti had often talked about starting a Pop Warner program and when Jack Packwood volunteered to help, Menotti soon found out that he was the right man and the right time to start Pop Warner,” said Clark.
Packwood also doesn’t recollect talking to either of the writers of the article.
“I don’t remember giving anybody a quote or being interviewed by the
Sentinel
until I talked to you,” he said. “Quoting persons that one has never met is not acceptable journalism.” Packwood is the head football coach at San Diego High School and works with journalists as part of his job.The reporter worked for the late Jack Packwood and drove to work with him one summer. We often talked about his volunteering to start Pop Warner. He took much pride in being the man who started the program. He often joked, “I did not volunteer. I was asked.”
For several years, this reporter also worked with Menotti, who is fighting an illness. He was for youth football and was an avid supporter of Pop Warner.