Tulsa Edison Class of 1974 Reunion Weblog

Frank Grimm was an assistant football coach at Edison our junior and senior years. He was an ex-TU football player who originally hailed from Philadelphia; he had a thick Philadelphia accent, like Stallone in Rocky, but that movie was still a few years in the future.

Several of the senior high coaches received classroom teaching assignments at Edison Junior High, and Coach Grimm was no different. He taught four periods of 7th grade geography, down in the prefabs on the far end of campus, before sixth hour gym.

Coach Grimm was a great guy who took coaching seriously. He always called me “Malley”, and with his accent it sounded more like “Maui”. I played the offensive line, as did Mitch Nalley. And then a new assistant coach, Tom O’Malley, became the offensive line coach for our senior year. It never occurred to me that some might find this confluence of names confusing.

During one practice, Coach Grimm tried to set up a blocking drill: “OK, let me have, uh … Randy McNalley!”

Mitch and I looked at each other. Who in the hell was Coach calling into the drill?

It was not until much later that I realized who this Randy McNalley dude was, and how he made such an impression on our coach. After all, Coach Grimm looked at his name all day long, hanging there in his prefab classroom, in the title block of the Mercator Projection of The World — “Rand McNally.”