Willig Era Ends : 6 Brothers Made Grid History at St. Paul High

Now that the youngest of the six has grown up, all of their childhoods, which had been rich with competition, companionship and endless containers of milk, have been completed.

Greg Willig went off to college this week.

He is the last of the Willig brothers of La Mirada, all of whom were inspirational football stars at St. Paul High School in Santa Fe Springs.

“He’s been kind of the baby. It’s hard to imagine him getting ready to go away,” said Chuck Willig, the oldest of the brothers. They gathered Sunday at their uncle’s San Dimas home for a goodby party for Greg, the quarterback who next morning would head for Houston and Rice University.

Watched by relatives with cameras, the brothers--close friends and all, except Greg, thick-legged and in their 20s--fooled around with a football in the back yard. Chuck, 29, who took some kidding because of his receding hairline, is now the big brother only in age.

‘Now They’re All Huge’

“When I was a senior, they were all smaller than me,” he said. “Now they’re all huge.”

Though Chuck, a 6-footer, did not look that small next to 225-pound Chris and 245-pound Craig, he appeared almost diminutive when he stood beside the three younger brothers--Bob, a brawny 6-5; Matt, the epitome of a college lineman at 6-8, and Greg, lean but 6-7.

From Chuck in 1975 through Greg last fall, the Willig name was synonymous with St. Paul football. In those 14 years the Swordsmen had a 98-36-1 record. Five of the brothers were team captains. Four won scholarships. All made the all-Angelus League team. Three were All-CIF in football, and Greg won that honor in basketball.

That made Charles and Genevieve Willig, who came to California from Pennsylvania 28 years ago, the only parents in St. Paul history to have had four All-CIF sons.

Chuck’s Friday-night exploits, before packed grandstands that always included his parents and brothers, left big footsteps for the others to follow. A cornerback, he had 15 pass interceptions--still a state record--as an All-CIF senior in 1977, and 21 in his career, during which St. Paul won three league championships.

“Having him behind me was just a good feeling of support,” Miguel Olmedo, a former linebacker and now the St. Paul coach, said of his old teammate. “He led by example, and vocally as well.”

Remembering one of Chuck’s games against rival Servite High, in which he played defensive back, receiver and quarterback, his father said: “He passed out after the game from the excitement and tension.”

After playing at Northern Arizona University, Chuck worked for a bank for five years and then returned to St. Paul in 1987 as an assistant football coach. He has been offensive coordinator the last two seasons. Married, with two daughters, he lives in Whittier.

“I always tried to put following in my footsteps out of my brothers’ minds and tried to get them to aspire to do well as individuals,” Chuck said. “I tried to take off some of the pressure they thought other people put on them because they were Willigs and were expected to do well.”

If the other brothers felt any pressure, it never diminished their performance.

Twins came next--Chris, a linebacker with a stability that enabled him to take over the older-brother role when Chuck left for college, and Craig, a defensive tackle who thrived on emotion. Though he was the only Willig who wasn’t team captain, Craig still won the Swordsmen’s most-inspirational award as a senior.

They finished their St. Paul careers in 1980, Craig’s ending tragically in the season’s last game. He shattered his knee and his football future when he knocked a Bishop Amat punt returner five yards through the air. After an unsuccessful attempt at rehabilitation, Craig decided to forgo college. He got married and became a truck driver.

Chris went on to play two years at Cerritos College and was the team’s most valuable player his sophomore season.

They are 26 now, still with short haircuts. Craig lives with his wife and three daughters in Buena Park and drives a truck for an independent grocer. Chris is single, lives in Anaheim and works in an oil company’s credit department.

Bob followed the twins. A lanky All-CIF linebacker in 1983, he was known for his frenetic dancing and loud behavior as much as for his tackles in “The Pit,” the popular name for the St. Paul football field. He played defensive tackle at the University of Washington, graduating this summer at age 23.

Matt, 20, the second-youngest of the brothers and the most imposing, was All-CIF in 1986, winning a scholarship to USC, where in the fall he will be a sophomore tackle. He is the only Willig, his father said, who did not show enthusiasm for football at an early age, preferring soccer and baseball.

‘Looked Up to Them’

“I looked up to all of them; they were all different but they were all marked by competitiveness,” said Greg, 18, who turned out to be the family’s most versatile performer. He set a myriad of St. Paul passing records, including 237 career completions. In basketball last season he averaged 27 points and 13 rebounds.

“He’s probably the most laid-back of all of us,” Chuck said of Greg, who will play only football at Rice. “A congenial type of kid, real level-headed. He was a fantastic leader for us.”

Greg said he was always a little further along than other athletes his age because of all the brotherly advice he received through the years.

“He’s learned a little bit from everybody,” Bob said.

But Greg has never become carried away with himself. No Willig was allowed to.

“They always got constructive criticism and ribbing from each other,” Genevieve said. “They didn’t have a chance to get a big head.”

At the party Sunday, the brothers hoisted their parents, whom they’ve always looked up to anyway, onto their shoulders for a photographer.

Charles, 52, a former semipro lineman whose hair vanished long ago, retired in January after 28 years, most of them as a patrolman, with the Los Angeles Police Department.

“He was our role model,” Chuck said. “He taught us the discipline to be successful. He always encouraged us to do the best we could, but he didn’t push. When things got tough, we looked to him for inspiration.”

Around the house, each of the boys had a job to do and rules to follow. “Anytime they went out to a party, they had to leave the address where they would be,” Charles said. “And they had a time when they had to be home. When Chris was 26 and living at home (he moved out recently), he couldn’t stay out all night.”

The brothers thus were adequately prepared for St. Paul football, which demands hard work and adherence to traditions. Swordsmen voluntarily shave their heads before each season. Before each game, dressed in blazer, tie and slacks, they walk hand in hand down the field. After each game, in a candle-lit chapel, they say the Rosary.

“With six brothers (there were no sisters), and our father working, we had an atmosphere of sharing at home,” Chuck said. “It carried over to St. Paul. It was almost second nature. We just applied it to football and everyday life.”

As students, the brothers ranged from average to pretty good. Chris and Craig were in the National Honor Society.

Not Always Home

While Charles was a hero to his sons, he was not always home, often working two jobs. But Genevieve, a gracious, dark-haired woman with glasses, was always there.

“She was responsible for just about everything,” Charles said.

“She was the heart and soul of the family,” his oldest son added. “She did all the little things for us. She drove us to practice every day, she was (at the school) working when she was needed, she was involved in our activities constantly. Mom was under a lot of pressure to do a lot of things.”

Marc Viens, the St. Paul sports statistician, has been a longtime friend of the family.

“You have seven men, so big, and yet you look at the mother and she’s the common bond,” Viens said. “She is such a quality individual, and she instilled her personal qualities in her six boys. To meet her is to instantly love her.

“She is warm and outgoing; (Charles) is stoic and intense. The blend of the two produced a good corps of young men.”

As they sat in their living room last week, it was hard for Charles and Genevieve to realize that everybody’s gone.

“I’m still cooking as though there were still eight of us,” Genevieve said, recalling countless bags of groceries. For years, she would buy six half-gallons of milk every other day.

There are scrapbooks, made by each of the brothers, in the Willig home, but they are not often opened.

“There aren’t any of us who really dwell on the accomplishments,” Chuck said. “We all kind of moved on.”

There is no seventh son to succeed Greg, and for the parents that is just as well.

“I figured that six was kind of enough,” Genevieve said.

But they’ll both miss the shouts out in the driveway, where the competition was as fierce as it was on the football field or in the living room, where the brothers would push back the furniture to create a playing arena when their parents went out.

The basket is gone now; it’s at Craig’s house.

“I took it down; I could never get anything to grow out there,” Charles said. “And I just replaced the garage door.”

The old door, which suffered as much as the hedge and the flowers under the daily barrage of big bodies, had been knocked out of alignment many games ago.

The boys always tried to stick the flowers back in the ground. Good at yard work, they always cut the grass with an old hand mower. Now Charles will have to cut it himself, although he’ll have it easier than his sons did.

Recently, they bought him a new mower. One with a motor.