Angie Breaks Hip, Misses Game, but She’ll Be Back

Angie Kretzschmar, the bubbly, motherly figure who for 39 years has passed out gum to players on the sidelines at Serra High football games, is expected to be released from a hospital later today after breaking her right hip in a fall.

Kretzschmar, 75, slipped and fell to the floor at a senior citizens dance in Hawthorne Oct. 17, two days before she was to be honored at Serra’s 40th homecoming celebration. According to a son, Frank Kretzschmar, she underwent surgery late last week to replace the injured hip socket with an artificial joint.

Angie has been hospitalized at Bay Harbor Hospital in Harbor City since the fall, but she said she hopes to be back on to the sidelines within two weeks.

“This old lady ain’t out for the season,” she said. “I’ll be back. No two ways about it.”

Angie was the subject of an Oct. 18 story in The Times which detailed her years of volunteer service at Serra, a Catholic, all-boys school in Gardena. She attends most practices and has missed only a handful of games since Frank, the oldest of three sons, graduated from the school in 1951. Ironically, she said, the only time she skips practices is for Wednesday afternoon dances.

“One moment I was walking across that dance floor and the next, away went my feet,” she said of the fall. “This has been torture, but I’ve been making progress and I am moving along good.”

She will convalesce for about a week at the Huntington Beach home of another son, Bernie, then return to her own home in Hawthorne. As for missing the homecoming celebration where she was to be honored, she said: “I’ll be in the homecoming parade next year. That will be my 40th year at the school and they’ll have to do it then.”