Courted, committed and inspired ‘by the bravery,’ 103-year-old Sonia Spear has treasured her Huskies for eight decades.
What began as a car ride home from a picnic in 1935 evolved into a football-themed love story between an arts-loving pianist and a brawny Husky lineman.
Sonia Wachtin was studying piano at Cornish College when she met UW business major Abe Spear. She cared as little for sports as Abe did for music. But through courtship and marriage, kids and grandkids, their singular interests evolved into mutual passions.
“I like football because it’s a tale of people who never give up. They always try their best. I like the bravery of it,” explains Sonia, still sharp at the age of 103.
She remembers Abe playing the line on both sides of the ball.
“He was very good at getting a space ready for whoever had the football,” Sonia notes with pride. “And he was very knowledgeable about defense.”
After graduation, Abe became an assistant coach and helped take the Huskies to the Rose Bowl in 1937 (they lost to Pittsburg, 21-0). House parents for the freshmen, Sonia recounts locking up the refrigerator to keep the boys from devouring every morsel in the house. Abe later partnered with another Husky alum to start a trucking business, which he ran until his death in 1986.
Abe learned to appreciate the concerts his wife had adored since she was a little girl, driving her to performances when they could only afford a single ticket and later attending himself. The Seattle Symphony lauds Sonia as its longest-running subscriber, and she also continues to attend the opera, the theatre and almost every musical event on the UW campus.
As football season-ticket holders for 72 years, the Spear family’s seat-related donations to Husky Athletics now total nearly $100,000.
“I think education is very important to the future of the city, to the future of students’ lives,” Sonia says. “I’ll always be a big fan.”
