Poet Laureate of the Locker Room

For 35 years, William “Ropes” Barr Robertson, ’41, was a constant presence in Oregon State University Athletics — tending injuries, steadying nerves and shaping the lives of student-athletes across sports and generations.

Robertson served as OSU’s first — and for some years only — athletic trainer from 1945 to 1980. In 1972, he also helped launch the university’s academic athletic training program in what’s now the College of Health.

His nickname dated to his World War II service with the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, where fellow soldier Gene Winters dubbed him “Rope-Sole” for his rope-wrapped climbing shoes. According to Robertson’s wife, Mary, one day Winters strolled into his office and said, “How are ya doing, Ropes?” The athletes in the room loved it, and the nickname stuck.

On campus, Robertson was known as the “poet laureate of the locker room.” A gifted storyteller, he rewrote verses on the fly to suit the lesson a player needed to hear. His signature performance was a dramatic recitation of Casey at the Bat, personalized anew for the moment and the listener.

Former Beavers MVP quarterback Steve Preece, ’68, says Robertson was a kid at heart with an instinct for reading people and situations.

“He’d start talking about a friend of his and pretty soon you’d realize you’re in the middle of something he’d recited over and over,” Preece recalls. “I must have heard Mighty Casey 50 times, and each time you felt like you were Casey. He would be animated and almost in tears. He was a magician.”

That charm extended well beyond the training room. When the Beavers basketball team played Louisiana State University in December 1969, during Preece’s rookie year with the New Orleans Saints, Robertson came to a party at the house Preece shared with teammates. Preece remembers Robertson stepping up to an open microphone during the band’s intermission and telling stories for 30 minutes until he had to give up the stage — to protests and boos from the crowd.

But for the athletes he worked with, Robertson’s importance was less about performance than presence. “He kept me upright for four years,” Preece says. “And he did it for about 30 other guys, which is why they loved him. To Ropes, everything was fixable. He made you feel good; he got you.”

Terry Baker, ’63 — the only student-athlete ever to both win the Heisman Trophy and play in the Final Four — remembers Ropes well. “Ropes let me hang out at his house, he loaned me his car, and he liked to have a good time,” Baker says. “He was like a buddy.”

Baker laughs as he recalls sneaking out of a hotel room with basketball teammate Steve Pauly one night in Idaho. When they returned, they found a locked-out Coach A.T. “Slats” Gill attempting to hoist Robertson through the transom window of his room. Gill’s son was deaf and couldn’t hear them knocking.

After Robertson’s death in November 1980, 400 people gathered at Gill Coliseum to honor “one of Oregon State’s great human beings.” Preece served as master of ceremonies, joined by other alumni sports greats including brothers Jimmy Clark, ’53, and Herman Clark, ’55. The governor declared the day “Bill Robertson Day.”

Then-OSU athletic director Dee Andros captured the sentiment well: “We have lost one of the great Beavers of all time. He was right at the top of my list of nice guys. He loved the kids, and that is what made him so good at his job.”

Today, Robertson’s legacy continues through the William “Ropes” Robertson Endowed Athletic Training Student Success Fund, which supports students in the program he helped establish.