Dec. 13, 2000

By Meri-Jo Borzilleri
The Gazette

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Mention Pee Wee Cordova's name to anyone - coaches, players, administrators - with Air Force Academy's football team, and it has the same effect.

It's like turning on a light in a dark room. Eyes sparkle. Mouths turn up at the corners. Grins appear instantly.

Cordova, 63, stands no bigger than 5-foot-4 and not much thicker than a goalpost. That hasn't kept him from lifting spirits, plenty of them, in 41 years as assistant equipment manager for the Falcons football team.

Cordova will work his final game when Air Force plays Fresno State in the Silicon Valley Classic bowl game in San Jose, Calif., on Dec. 31.

He's retiring. Among other things, he wants to watch his 16-year-old grandson, Anthony Cordova Jr., play high school baseball in Tucson, Ariz. Mostly, he's leaving because it's time.

Cordova has the longest tenure, by far, of anyone with the team, which he joined a few years after the Falcons' first season in 1955.

He remembers when a helmet's inner suspension system resembled a big donut, with the hole where your head went.

He remembers a tough tight end named Randy Spetman, now the academy's athletic director, and a defensive back named Chuck Petersen, now the team's offensive coordinator.

Cordova, whose real name is Levi, is like a pair of comfy stonewashed jeans on a campus where formality rules. He is the team's patron saint of bruised psyches.

"You can be having the worst day of your life up on the hill," said senior tight end Chris Jessop, "and Pee Wee will cheer you up. He'll tap on you, always talking about how tough he is, asks you what girls you're calling up."

"He's one of the best friends I've had," said 17-year coach Fisher DeBerry. "He's done a good job picking me up a lot of times."

On a recent day, freshman player Scott Diehl comes in, holding a pair of torn compression shorts. He asks if anything can be done, and Cordova assures him he'll sew them up. Diehl says thanks, pats Cordova gently on the shoulder before he leaves.

If you really want to hurt Cordova, call him sir. Freshmen, perpetually harried, call him that because they don't know any better. Cordova sets them straight.

"I say, 'Hey, you're my friend. You don't have to be that way. Don't call me sir. I'm Pee Wee.' I make them relax. I always treated freshmen better because they have a rough row to hoe. Whatever I could do to keep them here."

When Air Force played its season's final regular-season game in Falcon Stadium, Cordova was featured along with the seniors on the cover of the game program. Accompanied by his wife, Alice, Cordova was feted at halftime, dressed in a suit of bold Falcon blue. Not that he needed the hoopla.

"Pee Wee's the classic example of the guy who's truly here for the players," said senior linebacker C.J. Zanotti. "If no one in the world gave him recognition, he'd still do his job. He's a special guy."

Cordova, whose father worked for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, started working at the academy at age 21 in 1957, digging ditches during construction. A guy named Frenchie later got him a job handing out towels and squash racquets to cadets. He also worked as a laundry man and security guard.

In Cordova's working area, a desk and sewing machine tucked inside the equipment room, is the happy clutter of good memories: autographed pictures thanking him, 1958 all-American Brock Strom's old locker nameplate, newspaper clippings of players' wedding announcements.

It's not what he'll cherish most, though.

"The biggest thing I'm proud of is all the friends I have, with the football team, the coaches, the athletic director," Cordova said. "It's more than money can buy."

So is a corny Cordova joke, his high-five hello, and a face set in a perpetual smile.

"It's the culmination of a career of helping kids," DeBerry said. "He's so good in what he does. It'll be a great loss for the players."