Friends and Associates Remember Tim Randall : Eulogy: Official who died after working a high school basketball game had passion for refereeing.

High school basketball referee Frederick (Tim) Randall, who died Tuesday after his heart failed while working a game, was remembered Wednesday by friends and associates as a family man, an accomplished referee and a friend to the athletes and coaches he worked with for nearly two decades.

Randall, an Anaheim resident, died at St. Jude’s Hospital after collapsing during a freshman girls’ game at Troy High School in Fullerton. He was 67. Funeral services are pending.

Although he worked as a referee and softball umpire for many years, Randall touched the lives of hundreds of youngsters in physical education classes and on athletic teams at Los Alamitos High School, where he was equipment manager until his retirement in 1988.

Randall also became close to several members of the Rams’ organization as the referee for the team’s charity basketball games.

“Most players knew his family pretty well,” said Todd Hewitt, the Rams’ assistant equipment manager and Los Alamitos High graduate, who arranged in 1978 for Randall to referee Ram basketball games.

The games are modeled after Harlem Globetrotter games, often featuring hi-jinks more than athletic prowess, and are held to raise money for school athletic programs and other charities.

“We’d put on some skits . . . We threw water on him,” recalled Hewitt, who as a 10th-grader met Randall in 1972. “He was able to be the center stage a little bit. I think there was a little ham or actor in Tim. I think he should have been on stage.”

But Randall was more than a comic on the court.

“He was a very good ref,” Hewitt said. “Even in our games he was a very good ref. He’d take care of the flow of the game and keep it running. He’d keep the game at a low level . . . and nothing got out of hand.”

Hewitt recalled from his high school days that Randall “was kind of like a father figure. If you had a trouble you could go in and talk to him.”

Los Alamitos High Athletic Director Frank Doretti recalled that Randall joined the school staff in 1970 as custodian, but became equipment manager three years later.

“He was a person that people knew,” Doretti said. “He wasn’t loud. He was really like a father to a lot of the kids . . . If they had a problem with the coach, he could sort of mediate.

“The kids cared for him deeply. Each year there would be gobs of them who would come back and help with the football games.”

Randall returned the affection.

“He was real close to the kids,” recalled Al Gragnano, who coaches girls’ basketball at Los Alamitos High. “He could be stern with them if he had to be. But you could tell one of the reasons he did this job was because he cared about kids.”

Randall also helped fledgling coaches such as Gragnano.

“He was like a father away from home for a young coach and I was a very young coach,” recalled Gragnano, who became Los Alamitos’ varsity baseball coach at age 23.

Over the years, Gragnano refereed youth league games with Randall.

“He seemed happiest doing that . . . refereeing was his passion,” Gragnano said.

Randall attended Washington State University and worked as a driver delivering bread before going to work for Los Alamitos, Doretti said. Randall’s wife, Vicki, works as an aide at Hope School for trainable mentally retarded children in Anaheim.

Randall is also survived by daughters Robin and Laura.

“They all have been very close,” Doretti said of the Randall family. “He lost his son by a previous marriage . . . in Vietnam. With that happening, I think it made their family even closer.

“A real big factor with him was his family and his girls. He made sure they were out of college off into their own endeavors before he would even consider retiring.”