A Pasadena snapshot, and a tale of perseverance

On the eve of the Apple Cup, get to know Kathy Warren, and consider the ties that bind.

Kathy Warren with her husband, Onie, and their oldest son, Wes, at a UW game in the early 1980s. (Photo courtesy of Ramsey Warren)

You notice the colors first, ethereal maize and blue and gold against the Rose Bowl’s green grass. Warren Moon jogs off the field in one photo; Michigan’s Rick Leach throws a pass in another. The game holds a certain place in Washington football lore: Don James’ first Rose Bowl victory. The photo album tells the story of Jan. 2, 1978 from ground level.

The folks at Husky Throwbacks found it at a thrift store. In May, they posted a video to Instagram, paging through the nearly 47-year-old photos. There, amid shots of players and coaches and saxophonists, is a senior cheerleader who has lived her life in purple and gold.

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Kathy Warren (the first cheerleader pictured in the video) and her husband, Onie, raised four sons in their Medina home. All four played football at Bellevue High. Two played in college. All grew up watching mom dance in the kitchen while cooking dinner and hearing stories about Michael Jackson and Nesby Glasgow. Kathy and Onie are longtime UW season-ticket holders — they hadn’t missed a home game in years, she said, until their second-youngest, Nick, went to play for Western Washington — and her oldest sons have fond memories of their mom wearing her cheerleading outfit to homecoming games at Husky Stadium.

College athletics are changing. TV networks have taken over. The Apple Cup is being played in September. If you’re like me, you’ve grown weary of headlines about realignment and media-rights money.

If you want to find the sport’s soul, you have to go looking for it.

Maybe you don’t have to look so hard.

Ramsey Warren is the second-oldest of Kathy’s boys, and a diehard UW fan living in Portland. His younger brother, Nick, saw the Instagram post and spotted the old photo of their mom. That an image of her on that sunny day in Pasadena might surface all these years later, Kathy told me this summer, felt “totally one in a million. I couldn’t believe it. I instantly shared it with all my cheerleader friends.”

It was a nice little pick-me-up. Kathy had her third round of chemotherapy that week. Ramsey wrote about it on her Caring Bridge website. His coworker, Scott Thompson, emailed to tell me about it. Guy randomly spots his mom in a vintage photo album from the ‘78 Rose Bowl? Might make for a fun summer feature, he figured.

But Kathy’s story has me thinking about the ties that bind. How do people find their way to this crazy sport? What keeps them coming back? What happens to all those faces in the crowd?

Kathy (O’Hara at the time) first tried out for the cheerleading team as a sophomore, but didn’t make it. In hindsight, that was a blessing; back then, she said, cheerleaders only got two years on the team, so she would have missed out on the 1977 season. 

Kathy’s senior year was James’ third at UW. The Huskies had gone 11-11 in his first two seasons, and began the ’77 schedule 1-3. But they won six of their last seven, including victories over second-place USC and Stanford, to clinch the school’s first Rose Bowl trip in 14 years. Kathy remembers sleeping through her alarm that morning, rushing to get ready and heading downstairs, only to realize she’d forgotten her pompoms. She finally made it to the bus as it was leaving the parking lot.

The Huskies built a 24-0 lead and won, 27-20, over a Michigan team favored by two touchdowns. Nesby Glasgow made the clinching interception. A photograph of Kathy and four other cheerleaders performing on the sideline — fully clothed, Ramsey emphasizes — wound up making Playboy’s “Girls of the Pac-10” edition. (You get the sense Ramsey has explained this distinction a time or two.)

Fourteen years later, Ramsey and Wes took a roadtrip with their grandparents to watch the Huskies and Wolverines in the 1992 Rose Bowl. It was a formative experience, not only for the game and outcome — Ramsey was 9 at the time, but still remembers the “Desmond Who?” chants — but also because his mom had 12 siblings, and her parents had more than 50 grandchildren. Exclusive, individual time with them was rare. It was a special trip, and a forever memory. Plus, they stopped at Six Flags. 

Ramsey traveled to Houston for last season’s national championship game. Kathy planned to go, too, but had to cancel after she learned she was sick. They spoke the day of the game, each wishing she could be there for another Michigan memory.

She first visited the doctor for severe abdominal pain around early December. On March 29, after a maddening four months of runaround, she received a formal diagnosis: Stage 4 Diffuse Large B-Cell lymphoma (DLBCL), and follicular lymphoma. The latter is incurable but slow growing, such that many people live long, healthy lives with it. The former, even at Stage 4, is considered highly treatable and is known to respond well to chemotherapy.

Cancer is scary. Nothing is guaranteed. But as Ramsey put it: “Definitely not a ‘bad’ diagnosis.” The wait was frustrating on its own. It had been a battle just to get a proper biopsy scheduled and completed. 

“All she wanted to do was just start attacking it,” Ramsey said.

Not surprising. Once, when his mom was in town for a visit, Wes mentioned casually that he’d been meaning to remove an old cement walkway cutting through his yard. While he was at work, Kathy found a sledgehammer and busted the path apart.

“​​She couldn’t bend her knee for the next five days,” Ramsey said, “but she will literally do anything within her power to help her four sons.” After each of his own two sons were born and his wife went back to work, Ramsey told me, his mom drove to Portland every week to help care for them. When their youngest son, Cam, played at Montana, Kathy and Onie drove to Missoula for every game.

Doctors ordered six rounds of chemotherapy beginning in April. Kathy prepared to lose her hair and braced for the worst chemo side effects. Some days were worse than others. She was diagnosed with an existing hip fracture, the pain from which had made it difficult to get around. It required her to use a walker and prevented her from exercising for months. But she was emboldened after making it through her first treatment with relatively mild nausea.

“I thought I’d be nauseous and throwing up and that I’d lose 10 pounds,” she said.

Kathy took heart in the support she received from family and friends, especially her husband, who she says took over “every duty I ever had” while she recovered from the worst of her pain. Knowing how many people cared motivated her to fight even harder.

There were some complications. In mid-July, her white blood-cell count dipped when a cold gave way to fever and pneumonia. It landed her in the hospital, but she recovered in time for her final chemo treatment. 

Last week, a positron emission tomography (PET) scan revealed no active disease from her DLBCL. The treatment worked. Regular scans and continued diligence will be required, but Ramsey delighted in writing to family and friends: “Remission. Victory. Happiness. Joy.”

Back in the summer, I’d asked Kathy if her cancer journey had changed her perspective on life.

“You start to realize that every little thing matters — every detail of your life, and every little moment with your grandchildren and your children,” she said. “You stop worrying about the little things, and just really focus on your family and the people you love, and how you want to be here for them.”

Two days after Ramsey shared her PET scan results, Kathy walked from the Arboretum to Husky Stadium — no more walker for her — for Washington’s game against Eastern Michigan.

She watched her 5-year-old granddaughter participate in the UW’s Band Day as a junior cheerleader.

— Christian Caple, On Montlake