Hall of Famer Bob St. Clair dies in Santa Rosa at 84

Bob St. Clair, the Hall of Fame 49ers offensive tackle who was as feared on the field as he was adored off it, died Monday at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital surrounded by family and friends. He was 84.

St. Clair, who grew up in San Francisco but for decades called Sonoma County home, suffered complications from a broken hip he sustained at home Feb. 24.

“He was gracious, he made you smile,” said his daughter, Lynn St. Clair-Gretton of Camp Meeker. “He was someone who made other people feel comfortable.”

St. Clair, who plied his trade on the gridiron at a time when NFL players held down second jobs in the offseason, was known for his outsized personality that belied the anonymity usually affixed to linemen.

“Linemen weren’t famous,” St. Clair-Gretton said.

But, St. Clair, a towering man with a personality to match, was.

“People would walk up and say, ‘I watched you play,’ interrupt him all the time and instead of ignoring them, he would listen and let them tell whatever story they had. He would thank them,” St. Clair-Gretton said. “He always had a moment just to listen and thank them.”

More than what he became, St. Clair is amazing for what he came from, said granddaughter Trisha Ziemer of Santa Rosa.

“He grew up very poor. He built himself from nothing,” she said. “To be a Hall of Famer, it’s an amazing thing.”

St. Clair began playing football at San Francisco’s Polytechnic High School, which was across the street from the former Kezar Stadium, where he would play virtually his entire high school, college and NFL career. After high school, he played for the University of San Francisco, then, after a year at the University of Tulsa, he was picked up by the 49ers as a third-round draft pick in 1953. In 1951, he was part of USF’s undefeated team that would produce three NFL Hall of Famers, the others being Gino Marchetti and Ollie Maston. The squad was invited to play in the Orange Bowl in Florida, but declined after bowl officials tried to exclude the team’s two black players, Burl Toler and Matson.

The team was outraged by the request and said it would rather sit out the Orange Bowl than stand for such racism.

“We told them to go to hell,” St. Clair once told an interviewer.

USF dropped football the next season, hence his move to Tulsa for a year. The ’51 team would not be forgotten, however, becoming the subject of a book by Kristine Clark entitled “Undefeated, Untied and Uninvited.”

St. Clair went on to play mostly as an offensive tackle for the 49ers for 11 seasons. Announcers often marveled at how “Big Bob St. Clair” could open up massive holes in an opposing team’s defensive line to be exploited by the team’s “Million Dollar Backfield.” He also had a knack for swatting down field goal attempts with his huge hands.

“At 6-9 and 265 pounds, St. Clair’s mere presence on the football field tended to intimidate many opponents. He was blessed with size, speed, intelligence and a genuine love of hitting and, using these traits to the maximum; his on-the-field trademarks became hostility, power, and strength,” reads a biography posted at the Pro Football Hall of Fame website.

“It was his 49ers that hooked me,” said prominent Sonoma County defense attorney Chris Andrian, a fan of the team since he was a 6-year-old in San Francisco. “That’s when I became diehard.”

“He was one of my boyhood heroes,” said Andrian, who savored running into St. Clair in Santa Rosa. “He’s been a real icon here, he’s been part of the county landscape.”

He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1990 for a career that saw no championships but included four All-NFL player nods and five pro bowls. He was known by his teammates as “Geek” for his unusual lifelong habit of eating raw meat. The moniker is a reference to the 1947 movie “Nightmare Alley” where the fallen lead character takes a job in a sideshow eating live chickens.

His family used to joke that friends learned to check the menu before accepting an invitation to dine with the St. Clairs.

“If it was pasta, they would come, or chicken, they would come,” recalled St. Clair-Gretton. “If it was meat, they wouldn’t come.”

St. Clair played in an era of simpler safety gear, and it took it’s toll. He played the early part of his career in a leather helmet, and once he had five teeth knocked out and kept on playing. In 1964, he retired after his second Achilles tendon tear in as many years. He would later advocate for better health care coverage for former players.

In 2001, the city renamed Kezar Stadium, where he played 17 seasons and 189 home games, as Bob St. Clair Field.

Unlike today, football stars didn’t make millions. He earned $6,000 in his rookie season and just $20,000 in his final one.

Dick Colombini, the retired owner of a Santa Rosa construction firm and St. Clair’s college teammate, recalls that St. Clair had retired from the 49ers and was working in beverage sales when he introduced him to the late Gene Bendetti, founder of Clover Stornetta Farms. Benedetti hired him in the early 1990s to help extend the Sonoma County dairy processor’s market across the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Bob was responsible for breaking open that territory for us,” said friend and former Clover executive Mike Keefer. “He was a quick study. He learned everything about our business in about three months.”

Keefer recalled traveling often to San Francisco with St. Clair and being astounded at how often fans would approach the ex-49er, and how he received each one graciously.

“People would come up to him over and over and over again,” Keefer said. “I asked him, ‘Bob, don’t you ever get tired of that?’ He said, ‘It’s just the right thing to do.’”

In addition to working in sales, during and after his football career St. Clair had a successful political career, first as the mayor of Daly City from 1958 to 1961, then as a San Mateo County supervisor from 1966 to 1974.

Daughter Gail St. Clair Midyett of Oakley said there weren’t many people with a better sense of humor and outlook on life than her father. She remembered him and a buddy in Sebastopol tossing meat to vultures as though it was seed to sparrows.

She said the family went often to the San Francisco Zoo and her dad would make sure to be at the lions’ habitat at feeding time. “He would roar until all lions were roaring at the top of their lungs.”

For years, St. Clair participated in a Santa Rosa sports celebrity fundraiser called the Red Coats, recalled local attorney Dan Galvin, whose father, a radio broadcaster with connections to professional athletes, helped organize the events.

“He was a larger-than-life kind of guy. Very giving of himself and very approachable. He was just a gentle man in a huge body,” Galvin said.

Longtime friend Carole Grady is the widow of Jim Grady, another radio broadcaster who worked with St. Clair during the celebrity sports banquets.

St. Clair “was a genuine, warm guy,” she said. “He wasn’t phony. Even though he was a public figure, he was always very accessible.”

He was a regular and a celebrity at Santa Rosa’s Nutty Bar and Restaurant, formerly the Nutty Irishman, where for years his 49er memorabilia adorned a wall.

Sean Aikens, who bought the place two years ago along with his wife, Erin, said St. Clair had his own table for 49er game days. It was remarkable how generous and engaged he was with the people who’d approach him for an autograph, a photo or a chat about the team, old and current.

“He was just the nicest guy,” Aikens said. “I have a picture of him with his arm around me and his big rings.”

In addition to his daughters and granddaughter, St. Clair was survived by his wife of nearly three decades, Marsha Bonfigli St. Clair of Santa Rosa; sons Gary St. Clair of Seattle, Greg St. Clair of San Mateo; daughters Rene St. Clair of Cameron Park and Jill St. Clair of Placerville; 19 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren. Services are pending.