Catching up with: Don Cantrell

Richard Dunn

A longtime literary supporter of the Newport Harbor landscape, Don

Cantrell is glad to drum up any prose these days following quadruple

bypass open-heart surgery earlier this month at Heart Hospital of New

Mexico in Albuquerque.

Cantrell, whose surgery lasted 4 1/2 hours, spent almost two weeks in

the hospital, before getting the green light to return home.

“Not just to rest, but to keep walking and moving around,” Cantrell

said. “They want me to walk every day, not just hang around and play

pingpong in the backyard.”

Cantrell walks with his wife, Leslie, and recently his daughter,

Kelly, flew down from Oregon to help out her father for a week. Cantrell

has three daughters and two stepsons.

A 1950 Newport Harbor High graduate who played quarterback for the

Tars under legendary former football coach Al Irwin, Cantrell added it’s

a “slow recovery” from undergoing a quadruple bypass, but that doctors

are “promoting recovery in a positive way. It’s work. It’s not an

overnight process. It takes time, but I’ve improved a lot in the last

couple of weeks.”

Cantrell said the healing of the chest, which is cut open during

surgery, is perhaps the most difficult aspect of recovery.

“Fortunately, New Mexico is highly ranked for its medical field work,”

he said. “The doctors here are among the best in their field. They’re

very honest.”

Cantrell, who turned 69 on July 12, was an overnight sensation in

journalism, when he was hired right out of Long Beach State to become

sports editor of the Costa Mesa Globe-Herald, a precursor to the Daily

Pilot.

He held that position for five years, then became the Daily Pilot’s

first city editor, a job which lasted for two years before Cantrell was

hired away by the Santa Ana Register.

Cantrell, an accomplished painter, photographer and cartoonist, as

well as a writer, retired as a newspaperman in 1975, when he was hired as

an administrator at Cypress College.

Cantrell, who led the Tars’ 1949 gridiron team to an 8-1 record and is

considered a prominent fixture in Newport Harbor annals as a player and

historian, was the first author of the aviation history book, “From

Jennies to Jets.”

Cantrell also had paintings land on exhibitor tables at the Sawdust

Festival in Laguna Beach and photographs displayed at South Coast Plaza.

A member of the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame, Cantrell said he’ll

need another two weeks to recover from surgery.

“Some blockages had built up,” he said. “The whole idea is to get the

system flowing again ... when I see people worse off than I am, I feel

pretty blessed.”