Tweet
You guys said you wanted to know more. I posted this story one other time so if you remember it then please pardon my posting it again. Since there seems to be some real interest surrounding Rosenbloom’s death I would like to share this again for those who may have missed it. Actually it is a story about my meeting who I consider the greatest Ram ever. And much to the chagrin of my sister, I point blank asked him about Rosenbloom’s death. Remember this story is absolutely true and you have my Rams Fan word on it.
My sister, co founder of Ramsworld and just as loony about the Rams as you are is a lobbyist. Her husband is a lobbyist and he owns the largest lobbying firm in Sacramento California which is conveniently located across from the State Capitol. One of his clients owns Hollywood Park (Horse race track), Boomtown (Huge Casino just outside Reno in a little town called Verdi), Bighorn Country Club in Palm Desert which is the gateway to Palm Springs, (You may remember the skins game being televised from there for several years). This client has a lot of other gambling interests in California as well. In fact in 1995 he had so many gambling interests in California that he was not allowed to own any more. Now I am not going to pretend like I understand the whole lobbying process but when this guy wanted to build and own another card club right smack dab in the middle of Hollywood Park the state lawmakers said sure build one but you can’t own any of it. This is where my sister and her husband come in. You see they go and lobby the state legislature to pass bills or amend laws that make their clients happy. (Read: They schmooze, manipulate, kiss ass or what ever it takes to get as many legislatures’ as they can to vote their clients way.) If you are on the ball then you will remember 1995 being a very significant year geographically for a couple of L.A. teams. One of which had announced they were going to build a new stadium at Hollywood Park and that team was going to receive some of the gate receipts from the new expansion team that L.A. was going to get to replace the Rams. However in an 11th hour deal that team moved back to the bay area leaving Hollywood Park officials scratching their heads. (Read: Al Davis took Oakland/Alameda’s up front Cash and bolted home). This has nothing to do with what I am relaying here about Rosenbloom’s death however; there may be some interested in that little nugget of NFL information.
OK back to the desert. So there I am in Palm Desert riding in the back seat of my brother in laws car thinking about the round of golf that I had just played while my sister and her husband are talking shop in the front seat. I didn’t really care about why we were in Palm Springs Playing golf or what business they were down there for because to me it was always a major yawner talking to them about what they do. I was just glad to be there playing my favorite Golf Course (Bighorn) and couldn’t wait till we teed it up the following morning. (Golf is an every day thing when we go to the desert). I remember Joe (my sister’s husband) was on the phone talking to someone. Then when he hung up, my sister said “well do you want to take us home first or should we just go with you?” Obviously Kelley (My sister) over heard the phone call and knew that Joe had to be some place like right now. Joe looked up into the rear view mirror at me sitting in the back seat and said “Dan do you remember a guy by the name of Don Klosterman, you were probably too young but he was the Gen… I interrupt “The Rams General Manager Don Klosterman?” Joe say’s “Oh you do remember.” Kelley says “Huh? Joe why didn’t you tell me he was with the Rams?” Joe and I together explain to Kelley about Klosterman (Actually I knew more about Klosterman then Joe did). By now I am starting to realize that this boring ass lobbying stuff was about to get really exciting. It occurred to me that Don Klosterman was one of the people that were at the place that Joe had to be at, like right this second. Now my sister becomes as nervous as the 49er secondary lining up against Isaac Bruce in 1999 and says the dumbest thing she could have said. “Joe maybe we should just wait in the car.” Just before I was ready to reach up and slap Kelley along side her head. Joe says “Were only going in for a quick drink then were going to meet later for dinner.” So instead of slapping my sister along side the head, I did what any good lobbyist would do and said yes Kelley we will just have a quick drink then dinner later. (You see I was lobbying to be included at dinner as well.) Kelley say’s “This is an important meeting Dan, I don’t even know if I am going. Joe says “well”, which was all he had to say for me to realize that he wanted Kelley to go but did not want to hurt my feelings. You know what? I didn’t care; I didn’t say “well you guys go to dinner, I get to meet Don Klosterman right now and that’s good enough”. I didn’t say, “I’m not really hungry anyway”, I just allowed Joe to continue worrying about my feelings. We arrived at this place which escapes me now but yes indeed it did have a bar. I didn’t know what Don Klosterman looked like and the first person I am introduced to was a short guy probably in his late sixty’s and Joe say’s, “Dan you remember Eddie Lebaron don’t you?” I’m thinking to myself, “No. remember Joe I don’t go out and meet your client’s this is a first for me. Where’s Don?” But I said nothing. I just tried to look like I was trying to remember this Eddie guy although I knew damned well I had never seen this guy in my life. Joe say’s Eddie was the first quarterback the Dallas Cowboys ever had. “I’m thinking thanks Joe! Ya think you could have mentioned this in the car while we were talking about NFL people?” I don’t remember if I lied and said “Oh Ya” or if I just stood there shaking my head. Either way I didn’t have a good feeling about myself when we walked away.
Then I met Don Klosterman. Never have I met a person that made me feel so good, so at ease and so included as Don Klosterman. I am not talking from a Rams standpoint, a football standpoint or a star struck standpoint. I am talking from a people standpoint, and a friend standpoint. It was strange to me feeling that way but I didn’t mind that kind of strange. Not until his death in 2000 did I realize that I was not alone in receiving this feeling from Don. I cannot emphasize enough this point about Klosterman. There was something about this guy that made me feel great and it wasn’t the fact that he was with the Rams it was just Don being Don. As stated, after his death in 2000 I realized that I was not the lone ranger in feeling this way. The Kennedy’s (Ethel, Ted, Bobby, John) adored Don Klosterman. When I read the article about his memorial service, I found out that everyone he came in contact with felt this way. I will post that article below and if you do not read it then shame on you.
To be continued.....
But first I want you all to read this article.
From the LA Times
Klosterman was much more than a former football executive. He was a Los Angeles sports institution, and not only because he was an All-American quarterback at Loyola who led the nation in passing in 1951 and later a backup to Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Brocklin on the Rams of the mid-1950s.
Klosterman's countless friendships are what made him stand out. It seemed he literally knew everyone, and everyone knew him.
"He was a friend to everyone from the lowly to the mighty," said Eddie Merrins, the longtime golf pro at Bel-Air Country Club, where Klosterman was a member since 1974 and the greens committee chairman the last 10 years. "He was loved and admired by everyone he came in contact with."
Robert Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy, whom Klosterman met through his good friend Frank Gifford, was among those who called Klosterman a dear friend.
Jim Mahoney, the legendary Hollywood publicist, said, "When I think of the word friend, I think of Don. He wasn't one of my best friends, he was my best friend.
"We played golf two or three times a week, and when we weren't playing golf, we talked on the phone four or five times a day. He'd call and say, 'Turn on Channel 7 or Channel 6 or whatever,' and hang up. And I'd do the same."
Mahoney visited Klosterman in the hospital Tuesday night.
"He was not responsive," Mahoney said. "He was in a coma."
Klosterman was injured in a skiing accident in 1957 and was hospitalized for a year. He was paralyzed from the waist down but somehow managed to walk again, albeit unsteadily and with a cane.
The injury weakened his heart, and he first had heart surgery in 1976. Six weeks ago he had major bypass and valve heart surgery.
"I've got a 7:40 tee time," he told a friend the night before the surgery, cheerful as always.
Klosterman seemed on the way to recovery. He had visited Bel-Air and told his friends there that it would be a few more weeks before he could play golf.
Mahoney said Klosterman, along with a couple of friends, went to a high-rise condominium in West Hollywood on Sunday morning to pick up some clothes from a friend in the clothing business. On his way out of the building, Klosterman got stuck in an elevator.
"I'm sure that was a stressful situation," Mahoney said. "From my understanding, when they got the elevator going, it went down to the basement and he had to walk back up a couple of flights of stairs."
That's when he had the heart attack. He was taken to Cedar-Sinai but never regained consciousness.
Klosterman's two adopted children, Kirk, 38, an executive with a limousine service in Beverly Hills, and Katie Fenton, 37, who along with husband Richard is in the restaurant business in Bath, England, were among the family members at Klosterman's side when he died at 1:15 a.m. Wednesday.
Fenton came to Los Angeles to nurse her father after his surgery. She returned home about a week ago, then came back to Los Angeles on Sunday.
The news of Klosterman's heart attack spread among his many friends.
Gifford was one of his closest, first getting to know Klosterman when both were high school football stars, Gifford in Bakersfield and Klosterman in Compton.
"We were in the same class," Gifford said. "Later, we hung out together when I was at USC and he was at Loyola. But what solidified our friendship was when we roomed together at the [1951] East-West Shrine Game, where we started in the same backfield."
In 1976, Gifford wrote a book, "Gifford on Courage," about the 10 most courageous athletes he knew, including Klosterman.
"Don may have been the most courageous person I've ever known," Gifford said Wednesday. "When I wrote the book, I interviewed his doctors and learned firsthand what he went through. I think I'm a pretty tough guy, a gutsy guy, but I couldn't have handled what he went through.
"Whenever I get down, when things in my life aren't going well, I always think of Don and what he's been through.
"Don was a great guy who made everyone around him feel better. He could light up a room just by walking in."
Almost as close to Klosterman was Gifford's former "Monday Night Football" partner, Al Michaels, who was among Klosterman's Bel-Air golfing buddies.
"Don was dealt a bad hand early on, but it made him one of the toughest men on the planet," Michaels said. "Still, he had a heart of gold and a hall of fame sense of humor. God, will I miss laughing with him."
Said Dick Crane, another friend: "He was the older brother I never had. He was bigger than life. He represented honesty, integrity and courage, all the virtues that made him the man he was. He was as good as it gets."
Another close friend, former Times editor in chief Bill Thomas, said, "That was a horrible, debilitating injury that Don suffered [on the ski slopes], but in all the years I knew him he never complained.
"Only once do I recall him mentioning it. We were playing golf and I had a severe case of bursitis and was complaining all day. Finally, he said, 'What are you complaining about? I'm the prince of pain.' "
Although the skiing accident left him with little strength in his legs, Klosterman maintained an 18 handicap.
A few years ago, he was playing at Bel-Air with Merrins when he had his best round ever, a 76.
Klosterman, a tremendous all-around athlete, was nearly a scratch golfer before his accident.
As a quarterback at Loyola, in the years when the Lions played a big-time football schedule, he set NCAA marks for passes thrown (63), passes completed (33) and yards gained in one game (373) against Florida in 1951.
That year, in a nine-game season, Klosterman completed 54.6% of his passes for 1,582 yards and 19 touchdowns. One of his receivers that year was future NFL star Gene Brito.
At Loyola, he carried the nickname "The Duke of Del Rey."
In later years, friends called him the "Duke of Dining Out" because of his penchant for having dinner with celebrities.
In 1952, he was the Cleveland Browns' third-round draft pick.
He was luckless in the NFL. First, he found himself behind Otto Graham at Cleveland, then later behind Waterfield and Van Brocklin with the Rams.
After six weeks, Cleveland traded Klosterman to the Dallas Texans, who then shipped him to the Rams. He played in two games for the Rams, then departed for Calgary of the Canadian League in 1953.
It was while he was playing in the CFL that Klosterman had his skiing accident near Banff.
A woman skier fell in front of him, and Klosterman, trying to avoid her and spare her serious injury, sailed off a cliff. He suffered a broken back, a broken leg and numerous broken ribs.
He underwent eight surgeries and became so ill while suffering from two staph infections that he was given last rites three times within 16 months.
Klosterman often told the story of the doctor who entered his room one day to tell him he'd never walk again.
"I picked up a flower vase and as he was running out of the room I hit him in the back with it," he said in a 1985 magazine interview. "My legs may have been paralyzed, but there was nothing wrong with my arm."
It was several years before Klosterman walked again.
In 1959, he was well enough for former Notre Dame coach Frank Leahy to hire him as a player recruiter for the Los Angeles Chargers of the new American Football League.
He was the Houston Oilers' general manager in 1966 and ran the 1970 Baltimore Colts, who won Super Bowl V. The next year, Colt owner Carroll Rosenbloom, in a no-cash swap, obtained the Rams from Robert Irsay, who had bought the team from the estate of the late Dan Reeves and ended up with the Colts.
Rosenbloom brought Klosterman to L.A. as executive vice president and general manager of the Rams. After Rosenbloom drowned in 1979, Klosterman's relationship with Rosenbloom's widow, Georgia, became rocky. It deteriorated to the point where he was eventually banned from the Rams' practice facility.
In 1983, he became president of the USFL's Los Angeles Express, but two years later that ended badly too, as it did for everyone connected with the short-lived league.
Klosterman signed Brigham Young rookie Steve Young to a $40-million contract in early 1984.
Klosterman was riding high then, freely spending the money of California financier and team owner William J. Oldenberg. But when Oldenberg's company came under federal scrutiny in the spring of 1984, no more money came to Klosterman's budget. Attendance was falling and the league took over Klosterman's team, leaving him to recruit a new owner for a money-losing team and fighting off creditors at the same time.
In his later years, Klosterman was active in Loyola Marymount alumni affairs and the California Special Olympics.
Donald Clement Klosterman was born in Le Mars, Iowa, one of 15 children of a farmer, Clement Klosterman. According to Klosterman, the No. 12 child in the brood, when his father missed one payment in 1938 on his 1,200-acre farm, he was foreclosed by a bank and the family moved first to Whittier, then Compton, where his high school friends included Duke Snider and Pete Rozelle.
Funeral services will be held Monday at 10 a.m. at Loyola Marymount.
My sister, co founder of Ramsworld and just as loony about the Rams as you are is a lobbyist. Her husband is a lobbyist and he owns the largest lobbying firm in Sacramento California which is conveniently located across from the State Capitol. One of his clients owns Hollywood Park (Horse race track), Boomtown (Huge Casino just outside Reno in a little town called Verdi), Bighorn Country Club in Palm Desert which is the gateway to Palm Springs, (You may remember the skins game being televised from there for several years). This client has a lot of other gambling interests in California as well. In fact in 1995 he had so many gambling interests in California that he was not allowed to own any more. Now I am not going to pretend like I understand the whole lobbying process but when this guy wanted to build and own another card club right smack dab in the middle of Hollywood Park the state lawmakers said sure build one but you can’t own any of it. This is where my sister and her husband come in. You see they go and lobby the state legislature to pass bills or amend laws that make their clients happy. (Read: They schmooze, manipulate, kiss ass or what ever it takes to get as many legislatures’ as they can to vote their clients way.) If you are on the ball then you will remember 1995 being a very significant year geographically for a couple of L.A. teams. One of which had announced they were going to build a new stadium at Hollywood Park and that team was going to receive some of the gate receipts from the new expansion team that L.A. was going to get to replace the Rams. However in an 11th hour deal that team moved back to the bay area leaving Hollywood Park officials scratching their heads. (Read: Al Davis took Oakland/Alameda’s up front Cash and bolted home). This has nothing to do with what I am relaying here about Rosenbloom’s death however; there may be some interested in that little nugget of NFL information.
OK back to the desert. So there I am in Palm Desert riding in the back seat of my brother in laws car thinking about the round of golf that I had just played while my sister and her husband are talking shop in the front seat. I didn’t really care about why we were in Palm Springs Playing golf or what business they were down there for because to me it was always a major yawner talking to them about what they do. I was just glad to be there playing my favorite Golf Course (Bighorn) and couldn’t wait till we teed it up the following morning. (Golf is an every day thing when we go to the desert). I remember Joe (my sister’s husband) was on the phone talking to someone. Then when he hung up, my sister said “well do you want to take us home first or should we just go with you?” Obviously Kelley (My sister) over heard the phone call and knew that Joe had to be some place like right now. Joe looked up into the rear view mirror at me sitting in the back seat and said “Dan do you remember a guy by the name of Don Klosterman, you were probably too young but he was the Gen… I interrupt “The Rams General Manager Don Klosterman?” Joe say’s “Oh you do remember.” Kelley says “Huh? Joe why didn’t you tell me he was with the Rams?” Joe and I together explain to Kelley about Klosterman (Actually I knew more about Klosterman then Joe did). By now I am starting to realize that this boring ass lobbying stuff was about to get really exciting. It occurred to me that Don Klosterman was one of the people that were at the place that Joe had to be at, like right this second. Now my sister becomes as nervous as the 49er secondary lining up against Isaac Bruce in 1999 and says the dumbest thing she could have said. “Joe maybe we should just wait in the car.” Just before I was ready to reach up and slap Kelley along side her head. Joe says “Were only going in for a quick drink then were going to meet later for dinner.” So instead of slapping my sister along side the head, I did what any good lobbyist would do and said yes Kelley we will just have a quick drink then dinner later. (You see I was lobbying to be included at dinner as well.) Kelley say’s “This is an important meeting Dan, I don’t even know if I am going. Joe says “well”, which was all he had to say for me to realize that he wanted Kelley to go but did not want to hurt my feelings. You know what? I didn’t care; I didn’t say “well you guys go to dinner, I get to meet Don Klosterman right now and that’s good enough”. I didn’t say, “I’m not really hungry anyway”, I just allowed Joe to continue worrying about my feelings. We arrived at this place which escapes me now but yes indeed it did have a bar. I didn’t know what Don Klosterman looked like and the first person I am introduced to was a short guy probably in his late sixty’s and Joe say’s, “Dan you remember Eddie Lebaron don’t you?” I’m thinking to myself, “No. remember Joe I don’t go out and meet your client’s this is a first for me. Where’s Don?” But I said nothing. I just tried to look like I was trying to remember this Eddie guy although I knew damned well I had never seen this guy in my life. Joe say’s Eddie was the first quarterback the Dallas Cowboys ever had. “I’m thinking thanks Joe! Ya think you could have mentioned this in the car while we were talking about NFL people?” I don’t remember if I lied and said “Oh Ya” or if I just stood there shaking my head. Either way I didn’t have a good feeling about myself when we walked away.
Then I met Don Klosterman. Never have I met a person that made me feel so good, so at ease and so included as Don Klosterman. I am not talking from a Rams standpoint, a football standpoint or a star struck standpoint. I am talking from a people standpoint, and a friend standpoint. It was strange to me feeling that way but I didn’t mind that kind of strange. Not until his death in 2000 did I realize that I was not alone in receiving this feeling from Don. I cannot emphasize enough this point about Klosterman. There was something about this guy that made me feel great and it wasn’t the fact that he was with the Rams it was just Don being Don. As stated, after his death in 2000 I realized that I was not the lone ranger in feeling this way. The Kennedy’s (Ethel, Ted, Bobby, John) adored Don Klosterman. When I read the article about his memorial service, I found out that everyone he came in contact with felt this way. I will post that article below and if you do not read it then shame on you.
To be continued.....
But first I want you all to read this article.
From the LA Times
Klosterman was much more than a former football executive. He was a Los Angeles sports institution, and not only because he was an All-American quarterback at Loyola who led the nation in passing in 1951 and later a backup to Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Brocklin on the Rams of the mid-1950s.
Klosterman's countless friendships are what made him stand out. It seemed he literally knew everyone, and everyone knew him.
"He was a friend to everyone from the lowly to the mighty," said Eddie Merrins, the longtime golf pro at Bel-Air Country Club, where Klosterman was a member since 1974 and the greens committee chairman the last 10 years. "He was loved and admired by everyone he came in contact with."
Robert Kennedy's widow, Ethel Kennedy, whom Klosterman met through his good friend Frank Gifford, was among those who called Klosterman a dear friend.
Jim Mahoney, the legendary Hollywood publicist, said, "When I think of the word friend, I think of Don. He wasn't one of my best friends, he was my best friend.
"We played golf two or three times a week, and when we weren't playing golf, we talked on the phone four or five times a day. He'd call and say, 'Turn on Channel 7 or Channel 6 or whatever,' and hang up. And I'd do the same."
Mahoney visited Klosterman in the hospital Tuesday night.
"He was not responsive," Mahoney said. "He was in a coma."
Klosterman was injured in a skiing accident in 1957 and was hospitalized for a year. He was paralyzed from the waist down but somehow managed to walk again, albeit unsteadily and with a cane.
The injury weakened his heart, and he first had heart surgery in 1976. Six weeks ago he had major bypass and valve heart surgery.
"I've got a 7:40 tee time," he told a friend the night before the surgery, cheerful as always.
Klosterman seemed on the way to recovery. He had visited Bel-Air and told his friends there that it would be a few more weeks before he could play golf.
Mahoney said Klosterman, along with a couple of friends, went to a high-rise condominium in West Hollywood on Sunday morning to pick up some clothes from a friend in the clothing business. On his way out of the building, Klosterman got stuck in an elevator.
"I'm sure that was a stressful situation," Mahoney said. "From my understanding, when they got the elevator going, it went down to the basement and he had to walk back up a couple of flights of stairs."
That's when he had the heart attack. He was taken to Cedar-Sinai but never regained consciousness.
Klosterman's two adopted children, Kirk, 38, an executive with a limousine service in Beverly Hills, and Katie Fenton, 37, who along with husband Richard is in the restaurant business in Bath, England, were among the family members at Klosterman's side when he died at 1:15 a.m. Wednesday.
Fenton came to Los Angeles to nurse her father after his surgery. She returned home about a week ago, then came back to Los Angeles on Sunday.
The news of Klosterman's heart attack spread among his many friends.
Gifford was one of his closest, first getting to know Klosterman when both were high school football stars, Gifford in Bakersfield and Klosterman in Compton.
"We were in the same class," Gifford said. "Later, we hung out together when I was at USC and he was at Loyola. But what solidified our friendship was when we roomed together at the [1951] East-West Shrine Game, where we started in the same backfield."
In 1976, Gifford wrote a book, "Gifford on Courage," about the 10 most courageous athletes he knew, including Klosterman.
"Don may have been the most courageous person I've ever known," Gifford said Wednesday. "When I wrote the book, I interviewed his doctors and learned firsthand what he went through. I think I'm a pretty tough guy, a gutsy guy, but I couldn't have handled what he went through.
"Whenever I get down, when things in my life aren't going well, I always think of Don and what he's been through.
"Don was a great guy who made everyone around him feel better. He could light up a room just by walking in."
Almost as close to Klosterman was Gifford's former "Monday Night Football" partner, Al Michaels, who was among Klosterman's Bel-Air golfing buddies.
"Don was dealt a bad hand early on, but it made him one of the toughest men on the planet," Michaels said. "Still, he had a heart of gold and a hall of fame sense of humor. God, will I miss laughing with him."
Said Dick Crane, another friend: "He was the older brother I never had. He was bigger than life. He represented honesty, integrity and courage, all the virtues that made him the man he was. He was as good as it gets."
Another close friend, former Times editor in chief Bill Thomas, said, "That was a horrible, debilitating injury that Don suffered [on the ski slopes], but in all the years I knew him he never complained.
"Only once do I recall him mentioning it. We were playing golf and I had a severe case of bursitis and was complaining all day. Finally, he said, 'What are you complaining about? I'm the prince of pain.' "
Although the skiing accident left him with little strength in his legs, Klosterman maintained an 18 handicap.
A few years ago, he was playing at Bel-Air with Merrins when he had his best round ever, a 76.
Klosterman, a tremendous all-around athlete, was nearly a scratch golfer before his accident.
As a quarterback at Loyola, in the years when the Lions played a big-time football schedule, he set NCAA marks for passes thrown (63), passes completed (33) and yards gained in one game (373) against Florida in 1951.
That year, in a nine-game season, Klosterman completed 54.6% of his passes for 1,582 yards and 19 touchdowns. One of his receivers that year was future NFL star Gene Brito.
At Loyola, he carried the nickname "The Duke of Del Rey."
In later years, friends called him the "Duke of Dining Out" because of his penchant for having dinner with celebrities.
In 1952, he was the Cleveland Browns' third-round draft pick.
He was luckless in the NFL. First, he found himself behind Otto Graham at Cleveland, then later behind Waterfield and Van Brocklin with the Rams.
After six weeks, Cleveland traded Klosterman to the Dallas Texans, who then shipped him to the Rams. He played in two games for the Rams, then departed for Calgary of the Canadian League in 1953.
It was while he was playing in the CFL that Klosterman had his skiing accident near Banff.
A woman skier fell in front of him, and Klosterman, trying to avoid her and spare her serious injury, sailed off a cliff. He suffered a broken back, a broken leg and numerous broken ribs.
He underwent eight surgeries and became so ill while suffering from two staph infections that he was given last rites three times within 16 months.
Klosterman often told the story of the doctor who entered his room one day to tell him he'd never walk again.
"I picked up a flower vase and as he was running out of the room I hit him in the back with it," he said in a 1985 magazine interview. "My legs may have been paralyzed, but there was nothing wrong with my arm."
It was several years before Klosterman walked again.
In 1959, he was well enough for former Notre Dame coach Frank Leahy to hire him as a player recruiter for the Los Angeles Chargers of the new American Football League.
He was the Houston Oilers' general manager in 1966 and ran the 1970 Baltimore Colts, who won Super Bowl V. The next year, Colt owner Carroll Rosenbloom, in a no-cash swap, obtained the Rams from Robert Irsay, who had bought the team from the estate of the late Dan Reeves and ended up with the Colts.
Rosenbloom brought Klosterman to L.A. as executive vice president and general manager of the Rams. After Rosenbloom drowned in 1979, Klosterman's relationship with Rosenbloom's widow, Georgia, became rocky. It deteriorated to the point where he was eventually banned from the Rams' practice facility.
In 1983, he became president of the USFL's Los Angeles Express, but two years later that ended badly too, as it did for everyone connected with the short-lived league.
Klosterman signed Brigham Young rookie Steve Young to a $40-million contract in early 1984.
Klosterman was riding high then, freely spending the money of California financier and team owner William J. Oldenberg. But when Oldenberg's company came under federal scrutiny in the spring of 1984, no more money came to Klosterman's budget. Attendance was falling and the league took over Klosterman's team, leaving him to recruit a new owner for a money-losing team and fighting off creditors at the same time.
In his later years, Klosterman was active in Loyola Marymount alumni affairs and the California Special Olympics.
Donald Clement Klosterman was born in Le Mars, Iowa, one of 15 children of a farmer, Clement Klosterman. According to Klosterman, the No. 12 child in the brood, when his father missed one payment in 1938 on his 1,200-acre farm, he was foreclosed by a bank and the family moved first to Whittier, then Compton, where his high school friends included Duke Snider and Pete Rozelle.
Funeral services will be held Monday at 10 a.m. at Loyola Marymount.
Comment