Terry Mosher  Sports columnist

June 27, 2023, 12:22 p.m. PT

Harry Rudolph  Contributed Image

Harry Rudolph has been gone for 18 years, passing away at the age of 94 on August 16, 2005 in his sleep at a retirement home. His death ended what was a brilliant and successful career in sports and is remembered as a real good guy. 

His sports passion was centered on a ball. Whatever sport had a ball, Harry would have a ball with it. If he knew little about a sport, he would learn it through watching others or reading about it, and then go out and win at it. 

“I’m not sure what events turned him into a good guy,” says his only child, Bill Rudolph, who currently lives in Croatia. “Whatever it was, he was well liked and it was always nice to have him around.” 

Tedd Hudanich, who has spent most of his life in golf and has been the pro at Rolling Hills Golf Course for 44 years, was 14 and a junior member at Kitsap Golf & Country Club when he first ran into Rudolph. 

Rudolph, who worked at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, and Ed Perdue, sports editor at the Bremerton Sun, would show up after work and with Hudanich would play the holes where the clubhouse used to be, below the current one. 

But that wasn’t the strangest of golfing partners. As teenagers, Rudolph and George Bayer mixed it on the golf course at Kitsap. Bayer, at 6-5, 235-pounds, was a giant compared to the 5-11, 165-pound Rudolph. He was a hulk who played football at Bremerton High School and, after serving in the Navy during World War II, played football at the University of Washington and then with the Washington Redskins, and wound up on the PGA Tour with a reputation for regularly driving the ball over 300 yards. He once drove a ball 436 yards in a tournament, according to his obituary in the Los Angeles Times, in an era of wooden clubs and low-technology golf balls.

“When they were younger, they and a few others would sleep under the trees (at Kitsap),” says Bill Rudolph. That allowed them to get an early start on the course to play the sport both were deeply passionate about.

Rudolph would go on to win two Kitsap Men’s Club Championship. He beat talented Bayer while winning one of them. 

Rudolph’s parents, William Tipton and Helena Isbella Rudolph, came to Bremerton from San Francisco in 1903 and Harry was born in 1909, the fourth of six children and the only boy. 

Tipton ran the New York Hotel and saloon on First Street and as a young boy Rudolph often was at the YMCA across from the hotel. He played baseball, tennis, basketball and football and caddied at the nine-hole golf course that was next to the shipyard. 

Rudolph’s long life around sports had begun. He took it to Union High School, the forerunner of Bremerton High. He played basketball his first two years, but his last two years he played in a recreational league with Rowdy Gilt Top Tavern because he didn’t like the high school coach.

Once he started working in the shipyard, Rudolph played on the Apprentice basketball team that was highly successful. But the team could never beat Mare Island Navy Shipyard team. 

“Years later I took my dad to two of the reunions of the two shipyard teams. Everybody was younger, but they all remembered how well he played,” Bill Rudolph said. 

But he did play Union High School football and baseball, and was on the 1927 baseball team that beat Everett 2-1 in 19 innings to win the state championship. It was Rudolph, playing shortstop, who started a game-ending double play. 

The guys on that team were Carl Lee, George Hull, Hal Lee, Leo Lund, Glen Lugenbel, Rudolph, Pal Almond, Larry Kelly, Kelly Laraway, Frank Hall, Emmett Bledsoe, Oval Martin, Frank Kawes and Art Waaga, the namesake of Waaga Way in Central Kitsap. The coach was Claude Hallen. 

Lee is arguably the best athlete to come out of Bremerton. He became a two-time All-American basketball player at Washington.

Rudolph’s sports career was just getting hot. 

In a story former Sun Sports Editor Chuck Stark authored, Laraway, another notable Bremerton athlete, said of Rudolph, “The guy could do anything.” 

Some guys are just meant to be involved at the highest level, and that was Rudolph when it came to sports, and even math. He could solve math problems by using some tricks, and often challenged his son to a problem or two. 

When it came to sports, there was nobody like Rudolph. Whatever it was, Rudolph would practice, practice, practice until he had it down and then go out and prove it.  

“I think he enjoyed being part of a team and excelling at what he did,” says Bill Rudolph. “There was a satisfaction he got from doing the best he could, whatever it was.” 

Besides winning those two club golf championships at Kitsap, he and wife Virginia (Wright) Rudolph would win six club couples golf championships. 

Virginia, taught golf by her husband, was sister of Frank Wright, who played basketball with Les Eathorne on Bremerton High School teams and would go on to play the sport at Northwestern University. Virginia would win five Kitsap Women’s Golf Club championships. 

Rudolph made three hole-in-ones during his career, and in his 70s and 80s beat his age on the golf course. 

He became a very good tennis player, winning three Bremerton Tennis championships. He is the only person to win tennis and golf championships in Kitsap County.  

Play pool? No problem. He was in the last years of his life when he started studying billiards and became adapt at that, including a tournament he started at the retirement home. He became a good bowler. Handball? No sweat. He did that, too, winning a Bremerton tournament. 

“He just enjoyed life,” says Bob Fredericks, who just celebrated his 94^th birthday. “He was one of a kind.” 

In 1936 Rudolph’s request to be transferred to Pearl Harbor was accepted and he discovered paradise. 

“He played golf and tennis as much as possible and did very well,” says Bill Rudolph. “One of his friends shared that he had his top dresser drawer filled with uncashed paychecks, as he made enough money to live taking bets on the golf course.” 

Rudolph was playing golf on Dec. 7, 1941 when he saw many planes coming into Pearl Harbor, saw the smoke and realized they were being attacked. Paradise was about to turn into a living hell. 

After the war, Rudolph returned to Bremerton and married Virginia. They both became champions at Kitsap and Harry started a tradition where he would mark his balls with the initials “HR.” If somebody found one of the balls so marked, they would return it to Rudolph. He did the same for balls that had other names on them.  

Not all the balls Rudolph found had markings on them, and those wound up in his golf bag to be used for practice.

“Before he died we counted all he balls he found and it was something like 1,000 to 2,000,” says Bill Rudolph. 

Bill Rudolph believes his dad would have lived to see 100 years old if not for a fall at the retirement community. When he didn’t show up for breakfast, they went looking for him and found him on the floor in is living space. He suffered some broken vertebrae and three months later one of the most active guys around was gone, felled by a fall. 

He will be remembered, though. How can we forget a guy who not only played various sports well, but was well liked and a good person as one could be?

Joe Perdue, son of Ed, who runs Village Greens and the Alexander Golf Cart business, recently found a ball in his shag bag marked “HR” and instantly knew whose ball it was. The discovery brought back memories of one of the good guys and how he taught us to never quit on our passions. Just go for it.