One of those men was Nelson Kobren, in whose honor we dedicate this dinner tonight. Most of you knew Nelson in one way or another, many of the newer members have only heard of him, and what a legend he was.

Nelson died at the age of 65 in August of last year(1996) and was buried at Arlington Cemetery with the full military honors of a field grade officer on August 16th of 1996. It was a small family funeral and I had the privilege of being the only soccer friend in attendance, although hundreds attended the casket viewing the week prior in Silver Spring, including many of you here in attendance.

I had the honor of knowing Nelson probably longer than anyone in MWSRA. I knew him from High School days when he went to Roosevelt HS in the District of Columbia. I was also a fellow army officer with him serving in Germany in the mid 1960's although we were several hundred miles apart.

While Nelson was well known and active in the sports community, he was a very private person, who devoted what little spare time he had to family and friends. Many of you do not know that Nelson was a superb athlete, particularly in Tennis where he starred on his high school team and later at Catholic University and went on to capture the tennis title in USAREUR. United States Army in Europe.

Few knew that after active duty in the Army Nelson remained active in the reserves and in fact retired from the Army reserves as a lieutenant colonel.

In MWSRA, he was everything. Besides being a founder he single-handedly ran this organization, taught all of its classes for many years, recruited new members, assigned all of its games including N. Va. And the NCAA games and "handled" the money matters as Treasurer. Sometimes his accounting methods were a bit unusual, but we always ended-up with more than we should have and no questions were asked and no answers of course given. If you can just imagine his basement on Apple Grove Rd. In Silver Spring during his hey-day as Commissioner. He had banks of phones and punch phone dialing cards, many dripping with the tobacco juice that was his trademark for many years, one card for each referee. Of course scraps of paper with field notes and game times were everywhere; sheer chaos to everyone but Nelson. We always were worried that his home would be raided by the Police suspecting a numbers operation of some sort.

How many of you knew that besides Soccer, he was also assigning basketball officials? He also officiated Basketball, Football and Softball. He was a friend of all of our spouses as well. How often did he call at 11:00 or even midnight to see if you could take a game. Nelson’s calls stopped more unexpected pregnancies than any other birth control method of its time!

Nelson could never take NO for an answer. The story goes that a referee when called to take a Sunday game in Columbia and replied that he couldn’t because he was getting married that afternoon in Baltimore. Nelson true to form said, well I have two morning games in Columbia and it will be on your way to Baltimore and besides you’ll already be dressed in black, all you’ll have to do is to put on your studs. We never found out if the referee was coerced to work the game or not.

Nelson always looked after his people, and that’s what he called them " his people". He was big on rewards and plaques. In fact he frequently refused to accept a NO from the Board when it came to giving gifts or memento’s as Bob Kanjian would call them. On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the association, every single member received a plaque. Then there were the raffles after meetings. Who could forget the hundreds of soccer ties that he bought that are probably still being given away. He also was somewhat selective in who one those raffles. If he drew a ticket of someone that had already won or one of the old-timers, it frequently was purposely dropped on the floor and more tickets picked until one of the newer referees name or number came up.

Nelson loved many things in life. Sports in any form were high on his list. He would sit for hours in front of his misadjusted big-screen projection TV to watch boxing, football, basketball, and even soccer. Of course he also loved to wager a bit on some of those games and to even fly to Las Vegas on occasion for some action. Nelson also loved to devour crabs in the summer, and he sure could go through piles of them at a sitting as Larry Morgan, Mike Oxman and I can verify. By the end of the evening he was literally covered with crab meat and scraps, all of course splattered on his beloved Montgomery Blair Red Shorts. Did he have any other pants?

Nelson learned from all of his friends. His mind was extremely inquisitive, although he knew a lot having a masters degree from Columbia and having completed his studies for his doctorate at Maryland, he always was keenly interested in what his friends knew or were doing in all kinds of activities from travel to politics. That was how he learned.

Most of all, Nelson was a teacher to all of us. His vocation was as a teacher in the Montgomery County School system where he was Athletic Director at Blair HS for many years. In fact when he retired it was noted that he never missed a day of school during his career. He taught us what the important things were in life through the way that he lived; dedication, honesty, courage, perseverance, loyalty and respect for others. In his last few years he suffered from heart disease resulting eventually in a heart transplant operation when he received the heart of an 18 year old girl who was killed in an auto accident. He set the record at Johns Hopkins Hospital for the shortest recovery from such a transplant and in fact within a short time, Nelson was actually back on the soccer field with his new heart. To my knowledge, he was the only soccer referee in history to have worked games with two different hearts.