The New Camp Kush : Former Terror of Tempe Is Still Watching Devils, but Now It’s at Reform School

In short bursts of rhythm and rote during an afternoon class shift, boys in red shirts perform about-face pirouettes and march past boys in yellow shirts.

All commands are obeyed.

All eyes are fixed.

All haircuts are military.

It is a brilliant November day, the desert awash in long shadows, as the minivan crunches along a gravel road during inspection of the 188-acre Arizona Boys Ranch.

The driver’s side window is half-open as the vehicle passes two students on their way to class.

“Hello, Sir!” one says respectfully to the driver.

“Hey, Frank!’ says the other.

The van rolls on until, suddenly, the driver gets that look in his eye, stomps his foot on the brake and glares into his rear-view mirror.

“Hey, Frank,” he mutters, mimicking the student’s remark. “He shouldn’t be calling me that. I ought to get on his [expletive] for that, but I don’t want to embarrass him.”

There was a time Frank Kush would have been on that kid’s expletive like butter on toast. Had the boy been wearing a football helmet, well, Kush might have grabbed the facemask and made taffy out of his neck.

Hey, Frank.

Once, had there been an available mountain, the kid might have been running up and down it until he vomited.

For 21-plus seasons, 1958 to 1979, Frank Kush was the meanest SOB to pace a college football sideline, exacting equal amounts of terror and success from his Arizona State players. His three-a-day, training-camp practices at Kohl’s Ranch outside Phoenix were compared to stalags. He compiled a record of 176-54-1 and scores of critics.

“With Frank Kush, when you made a mistake, you feared the man,” former Arizona State lineman Gary Winchester says.

You didn’t play for Kush as much as you survived him. Those who did came to love him. Those who didn’t were easily discarded.

“There were times I just hated that man,” says Mike Pagel, former Arizona State and NFL quarterback. “But when I look back, at that time in my life, it was a great thing for me.”

Kush is 67 now, and much less feared, slowed by a bum knee, abdominal pains and a setting sun.

Six years ago, Bob Thomas, Arizona Boys Ranch’s controversial chief executive officer, asked Kush to become executive administrator at the reform school 35 miles southeast of Phoenix.

The ranch is a private, nonprofit residential agency that affords wayward youths one last chance before juvenile hall or jail.

If Kush’s hiring would be likened to hiring a wolf to run a hen house, Thomas did not care.

“I don’t make moves because something’s controversial,” Thomas says. “I make moves that are good for kids. This guy has helped more kids through ASU than anybody that I’ve ever been aware of.”

Welcome to Frank Kush’s public relations makeover.

In a year when Rose Bowl-bound Arizona State has risen from the ashes to national acclaim, so has Kush returned to the fore.

“I never felt I went anywhere,” he grunts.

As Richard Nixon discovered, time has a way of smoothing over life’s rough spots.

Seventeen years have passed since Arizona State fired Kush, leaving the program he raised from tumbleweeds in a maelstrom and, ultimately, on NCAA probation.

Kush’s firing--the October 1979 surprise--came in the wake of a lawsuit filed by Sun Devil punter Kevin Rutledge, who alleged Kush punched him in the face during a 1978 game against Washington.

Kush was not ousted for the alleged punch, per se, but for trying to cover up the incident by persuading staff members and players to change their stories.

An NCAA investigation found Arizona State guilty of numerous other violations and the school was put on probation, eliminated from television and bowl games for two years.

But as time tends to soften transgressions, there eventually was a move afoot to restore Kush to idolatry.

On Sept. 21, during halftime ceremonies at the Arizona State-Nebraska game, the field at Sun Devil Stadium was renamed Frank Kush Field. More than 300 former players attended.

For old time’s sake, Arizona State stunned No. 1 Nebraska, 19-0, igniting the Sun Devils’ own national title charge.

The reclamation had come full circle. Twenty-one years earlier, at the 1975 Fiesta Bowl, Arizona State had presented Kush his greatest victory, a 17-15 victory over Nebraska that culminated a 12-0 season and No. 2 national ranking.

Kush, elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1995, was never much for sentiment, but even he couldn’t help note the symmetry.

Arizona State alumni had always wanted to restore Kush’s sullied name but feared the public backlash.

“It’s long overdue,” says John Jefferson, former NFL star receiver who played for Kush. “It was just a case of the university coming to its senses. Frank Kush is ASU, just as Woody Hayes is Ohio State.”

When it was determined enough time had passed, Vic Cegles, the school’s assistant athletic director, proceeded with dedication plans.

Cegles received only a few letters of protest.

One was from Robert O. Hing, the Phoenix attorney who handled Rutledge’s lawsuit. “What type of moral and ethical example is the University setting by now glorifying a man who was responsible for ASU’s severe NCAA sanctions, and who displayed a complete lack of ethics and morality in his treatment of players and assistant coaches?” Hing wrote in part.

Rutledge’s case against Kush ended in a hung jury, 5-3, in favor of Kush. Hing said the case was doomed when the judge refused to move it out of Maricopa County, where Kush was beloved.

Kush received a $200,000 settlement from the university and still denies he ever struck Rutledge.

“The point is, you can forgive somebody, but you don’t have to honor them,” Hing says when reached by phone in his Phoenix office. “There is a difference.”

As Cegles put together his invitation list for the Kush dedication, one name was never considered.

Kevin Rutledge’s.

“That was the last thing I was going to do,” Cegles says.

Rutledge is 37 now, living in Tucson, home of Arizona State’s archrival, Arizona. Only a coincidence, he says. Rutledge is an insurance man with a wife and three kids, living what he says is a happy life.

He has not spoken to Kush since he transferred out of Arizona State shortly after the incident.

No one solicited Rutledge’s opinion on the field dedication, but he has one.

“It’s like naming a stadium after O.J. Simpson,” Rutledge says.

Rutledge isn’t surprised Kush is making a comeback.

“My life has gone on,” Rutledge says. “His name on a stadium is not going to perplex me one iota. Personally, it shows some of the high-power boys in the Valley are trying to make amends to a guy they worshiped and thought didn’t get a square deal.”

What did Rutledge think of Kush now working at a reform school?

“It is kind of ironic,” he says. “I think it more suits him.”

No one expected Frank Kush would end up tending daisies.

*

It is lunch time at the Arizona Boys Ranch, and Kush is making the rounds.

He swings open the cafeteria door and catches a glance from a boy in a yellow shirt, the color designating that he has been in trouble at the ranch.

“That one’s giving me the sly eye,” he says.

Before the boys can leave the table, they hoist their utensils overhead for a metal count.

Kush points out a slender, baby-faced 15-year-old at another table.

“He killed a lady,” Kush says. “They don’t know what death means. You have to teach them to respect life.”

After his firing, Kush had coaching runs in the Canadian Football League, the NFL (Baltimore Colts) and the USFL.

Kush, of course, wasn’t enlisted only to crunch numbers.

He was brought to the ranch to build a football program.

At a cost of $100,000, the ABR Spartans were born in 1994. Thomas urged Kush to be the team’s head coach, but Kush thought better of it.

“I have a short fuse,” Kush says. “I wouldn’t tolerate any nonsense or back talk.”

More controversy was not what Boys Ranch needed.

The school, founded in 1949, has been fending off allegations since the 1950s, when its first superintendent, Wendell Newell, was fired for allegedly making kids walk barefoot in hot sand.

The state has investigated alleged abuses in 1982, ’87 and 1994.

On June 22, 1994, Lorenzo Johnson went AWOL and drowned in a canal after being pursued by three staffers. The state ruled the death was accidental, but the state’s Child Protective Service’s agency launched a major investigation.

The agency alleged 30 cases of abuse, only 13 it could substantiate.

As a result, Alameda County in California pulled 59 kids out of the program, many of whom reportedly did not want to leave.

Thomas hired A. Melvin McDonald, a former U.S. attorney, to launch an independent investigation into the allegations, including one that claimed a boy was hit on the head with a shovel; another that charged a boy’s feet were scalded with boiling water.

McDonald concluded one charge had merit--the scalding incident--and that the responsible staffer had been fired promptly.

Boys Ranch has filed a lawsuit against the state of Arizona to clear its name. The case is pending.

“We’re not going to allow any kid to get abused at Boys Ranch,” Thomas says. “We have kids of our own, we’re not going to allow that. I would never run an agency I wouldn’t put my own kid in.”

It was clear from the start that Kush would have little patience for teaching reform school kids the finer points of football.

In the team’s first game in 1994, Kush was seen slamming the headsets down in the press box. More than once he left a practice field muttering “jackasses,” under his breath.

“After the fourth game, one kid asked me, ‘How many yards does it take to get a first down?’ ” Kush said. “Unbelievable.”

Boys Ranch’s football squad is smudged with Kush’s handprints.

The team’s coach is Richard Gray, who played for Kush in the late ‘60s. Winchester, an offensive lineman on Kush’s 1976 and ’77 teams, is an assistant.

Last year, during a practice-field argument some say was incited by Kush’s verbal taunts, a player decked assistant coach Tunufa’I Ta’Ase, who measures 6 feet 2 and 320 pounds.

“Imagine what would have happened on a normal high school team if that would have happened,” Kush says. “That kid’s . . . would have been gone.”

Yet, with Kush working behind the scenes--installing the offensive and defensive schemes--a very remarkable thing happened.

Sanctioned in 1995 to play in the state’s 3A high school division, and picked to finish last among 32 schools, the Spartans shocked the Arizona high school community by advancing to the state championship game before losing to powerhouse Blue Ridge.

It was “The Longest Yard Jr.”

Last year’s quarterback said his mother was a crack addict. Todd Harris, this year’s starting quarterback, came from San Diego after being charged with strong-armed robbery and grand theft auto, according to ranch documents.

Amenweah Yuoh, 18, a linebacker-receiver from San Jose, had been charged with assault to attempt great bodily injury, though he arrived at the ranch for a probation violation.

“These aren’t Boy Scouts,” Kush says.

There was also Tylon Law, 18, a running back who had been charged with strong-armed robbery in San Jose.

Yet, despite some concerns from opposing schools, the Spartans were a model of decorum, winning the 3A’s “Sportsmanship” award, awarded by coaches and athletic directors.

“We killed them with kindness,” Mike Smith, Boys Ranch program director, says. “It was ‘yes sir,’ ‘no sir’ to the officials.”

Boys Ranch’s rapid rise drew criticism from some who suggested the school was recruiting players.

“Yeah,” Kush laughs. “We recruit the ones who get away from the police who can run like hell.”

Harris, 17, says the team heard disparaging remarks from opposing players.

“Some thought we should be behind bars, that we shouldn’t be playing in sports,” he says.

Yuoh says Boys Ranch is better than his alternative.

“Beats going to juvenile hall,” he says.

Law agreed.

“It’s been a lot better place than I could have been, know what I mean?” he says before practice.

Harris thinks Boys Ranch probably saved his life. He has been at the ranch 2 1/2 years. The average stay is 14 months.

“I requested to stay longer,” Harris says. “This place never gave me a reason to leave.”

Last Friday, the team was bused 350 miles for its first-round playoff game against Kayenta Monument Valley.

Boys Ranch won, 19-12, in overtime.

*

Kush says, on average, there are two or three escape attempts each month.

Though security is tight, there are no bars, fences or guard towers on the compound.

Most of the runaways are recovered wandering in the desert--it’s sort of the Alcatraz theory, except with sand--and demoted to yellow shirts.

For Kush, it kindles memories of Arizona State players fleeing his training camps.

“We used to call it ‘going over the hill,’ ” he says. “Here, we call it AWOL.”

Kush says his training camps were much tougher than anything Boys Ranchers have to endure.

“We’re not permitted to put our hand on kids,” he says.

Few of the boys could measure up to Kush’s exacting standards.

“Ninety percent of these kids, they have a very low threshold of pain,” he says. “You’d be surprised.”

“I’ll tell you what. If you ever get confronted by a kid on the street, and you know he doesn’t have a gun or a knife, I’d stand up to him, even as old as I am. I’d bet my bottom buck, 99% of the time they’d back down.”

There are 240 youths at the ranch, ages 8 to 18.

Tuition isn’t cheap, costing $3,700 per month, most of which is covered by the courts that placed boys in the camp.

The boys are divided into groups of three. Newcomers are assigned red polo shirts, those who are in good standing wear green. The troublemakers wear yellow, have privileges revoked and get stuck with menial tasks.

Kush is responsible for screening potential clients, working with judges and probation officers from various jurisdictions.

Seventy percent of the kids at Boys Ranch are from California.

The ranch claims 68% of the boys who leave Boys Ranch never reenter the court system.

Ninety-three percent come from single-parent households and, at last count, there were boys representing 55 gang affiliations.

The youths are housed in cottages with “house parents,” and must keep their quarters squeaky clean and smelling of disinfectant.

The day begins at 5:30 a.m. and stretches into dusk. The boys are instructed in academic and vocational classes and are also active in civic works programs.

Most of the new kids have never heard of Kush.

“They find out,” he says.

*

Kush stops the minivan. He wants to show off the ranch’s agricultural facilities. Inside the barn, he offers some hay to a goat.

The smells remind him of home in Windber, Pa.

If Kush is an SOB, he came by it honestly.

As one of 15 children--10 boys and five girls--Kush shared a bed with five brothers. Their house, perched over Mine No. 35, had no electricity until 1945.

Kush’s father, Alex, died in 1944 at 50 of miner’s asthma.

George, an older brother, could have come home from World War II, citing hardship, but the family needed the $25 he was sending home each month.

So George stayed in the South Pacific.

“Money was more important than life,” Kush says.

It was a brutal youth, and childhood would soon converge with adulthood.

His father never touched the girls, Kush says, but beat the boys often.

“We got the . . . kicked out of us.”

Kush’s life was one of discipline, survival and obedience, tenets he took from the coal town to Michigan State, where, at 5-9 and 200 pounds, he all but willed himself into becoming an All-American lineman.

After serving in the Army, Kush was hired in 1955 as an assistant on Dan Devine’s Arizona State staff. Three years later, when Devine left to take the Missouri job, Kush was named coach.

Kush ruled the desert with an iron fist. In one of his first acts, he oversaw construction to convert school-owned property at Kohl’s Ranch into his own fall training camp purgatory, known as Camp Tontozona.

After the remodeling work had begun, Kush asked the school president for permission.

At Tontozona, Arizona State players experienced such football tortures as “the Hamburger,” “the Circle” and “Mt. Kush,” an 800-foot climb reserved for lucky insubordinates.

Pagel will never forget the day Kush, upset with his team’s effort, ordered the clock turned back three hours and practice to start over.

Kush has no remorse for the way he coached.

“I’d do the same thing again,” he says.

Kush surveys today’s college players--celebrating basic tackles, running amok in off-the-field scandals--and sees it as vindication of his philosophy.

“I get sick when I watch football,” Kush says. “I feel sorry for kids because we assume they know what to do right.”

Kush, feasibly, could still be coaching today--he’s two years younger than Penn State’s Joe Paterno--but acknowledges that society would probably be less tolerant of his ways than it was the day he was fired.

“I knew I was doing the right thing,” he says. “Because that’s the way I was taught.”

Kush admits he ruined careers, pushed too hard at times, but says that his intentions were always sincere.

“I’m not saying everything I did was appropriate,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong. But what I’m saying is, what I did, whether coaching, on the field, my purpose was to get you to be a better football player.”

Kevin Rutledge has a different take.

He claims it wasn’t the punch that forced his lawsuit, but Kush’s behind-the-scenes effort to run him off the team.

When Rutledge refused to quit, he says Kush and his staff began an intense campaign of harassment.

“He was like a big bully in a parking lot that had the power to have me gone at any cost,” Rutledge says.

Rutledge says it was power that corrupted Kush and misdirected a community’s moral compass.

“I was less liked than a convicted killer,” Rutledge says. “There was actually a poll in the Arizona Republic, ‘The top 10 least-liked people,’ and I was down there below a convicted car bomber. It was just a sad time for people who worshiped Frank Kush.”

Minutes earlier, in a separate interview, John Jefferson would say of Kush: “He is a molder of men.”

There would never be any middle ground with Frank Kush. Or with Frank Kush Field.

Rutledge only wishes the dispute could have been resolved differently.

“I wish they would have locked us in a room, and we just went at each other,” Rutledge says. “If we did it that way, it would have been a lot easier.”