Sites I Like: The Herman Wedemeyer Home Page

June 16th, 2010  |  Published in Players Who Became Actors, Sites I Like

1948 Exhibit Herman Wedemeyer football cardYesterday, while searching for information on 1948-1952 Exhibit football cards, I ran across The Herman Wedemeyer Home Page. What a fun site! Wedemeyer, who grew up in Hawaii, was a star player for St. Mary’s College in California in the 1940s, finishing fourth in the voting for the Heisman Trophy in 1945, and sixth in 1946. His running style earned him several colorful nicknames: “Squirmin’ Herman,” “The Hawaiian Hurricane,” “The Hawaiian Centipede,” and “The Hula-Hipped Hawaiian.”

After college, Wedemeyer played two years of pro football with the Los Angeles Dons and Baltimore Colts of the AAFC. Years later (after playing professional baseball, managing sales for the Ilikai Hotel, and serving in public office), he appeared in the Hawaii Five-O series as Sergeant Duke Lukela. The Herman Wedemeyer Home Page includes lots of pictures of Wedemeyer on the Hawaii Five-O set.

The card pictured here is Wedemeyer’s Exhibit card, printed in either 1948 or 1949. (The web page where I found it says 1948; my old Beckett says 1949.) I believe he is wearing his St. Mary’s uniform, since the image resembles an image in Randy Andrada’s “They Did It Every Time,” a book about St. Mary’s football. My Beckett says the card is short printed and much scarcer than most of the other Exhibit football cards. You can find a few Wedemeyer cards for sale on eBay, and they are definitely priced as if the card is scarce.

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