Things were getting ugly. For three decades, the battle over the Stanford Axe had incited street chases, night raids and bloody brawls. In September 1933, student body president Jerry Trautman decided it was time to civilize the competition for the Axe. Trautman called his counterpart at Cal and proposed a treaty: "We hereby agree that the Stanford Axe shall be started as a trophy to the winner of the Big Game." So began a tradition symbolizing one of the fiercest rivalries in collegiate sports.
A soft-spoken leader who would go on to serve as CEO of Greyhound Corp., Trautman died October 25 in Phoenix at the age of 87.
Born in Petoskey, Mich., Trautman grew up in the Southern California town of Ontario. At Stanford, he studied economics, played varsity golf and was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon. After Harvard Law School, Trautman joined the San Francisco firm now known as McCutchen, Doyle, Brown and Enersen. He served as a Naval officer during World War II, then became corporate counsel and vice president of Chicago-based Greyhound. He took over as chairman, president and CEO in 1966 and moved Greyhound's headquarters to Phoenix in 1971. In his 16 years at Greyhound's helm, Trautman transformed the company from a struggling bus line to an industry leader with $5 billion in annual revenues.
Yet Trautman viewed the resolution of the Axe crisis as one of his proudest achievements, recalls Wakefield Taylor, the Cal student president who co-signed the 1933 agreement and remained a lifelong friend. Trautman drafted the pact—complete with a stringent clause holding the president of each student body "responsible for the conduct of its members" at the games—and even let Taylor sign it first. "Considering Stanford held the Axe at the time, that was a pretty classy thing for him to do," says Taylor, a retired appeals court judge in Martinez, Calif. "He was a very quiet, unassuming man."
Trautman is survived by his wife, Barbara; six sons, Gerald Jr., '61, William, Tucker, Timothy, Christopher and Thomas; and eight grandchildren.
