Note to readers and/or listeners: this feature was originally published on March 21, 2024. The podcast – well, phone call – was recorded on March 12, 2024 but will be released for the first time with this article.
TEMPE, Ariz. — Eighty-two years ago, on March 25, Roy Wehde and his Iowa State teammates played in the Cyclones’ lone Final Four (NCAA) in school history. Wehde tallied four points against Utah.
“I’m in Tempe, Arizona,” Wehde said. “I’m in a retirement area that’s called Friendship Village.
“Last June, we had my 100th birthday party, and I had all of my children and 11 grandchildren. We had 50 people for nearly a week in Scottsdale, so it was really great.”
“I still play golf, I like to dance, I have been very active in my life. I have a regular half hour routine every morning that I do. I don’t do any of the bad things in life, so, that’s good.”
Roy, and his late twin brother Ray were born on June 4, 1923, in Holstein, Iowa. Ray died on Jan. 13, 2026, in Palm Desert, California – about four hours away from Roy on Interstate 10.
Growing up in Holstein
School pictures from first, third, fifth and sixth grade, courtesy of Holstein’s yearbook known as The Moo.
Roy’s father, Gustave, was born July 20, 1880, and emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1888. He married his first wife, Frieda, around 1905 or 1906.
Occupationally, Gus operated the lone creamery in Ida County, Murphy & Wehde Produce Co. according to Annual Report of the State Dairy Commissioner to the Governor of the State of Iowa, for the year 1912, which Dairy and Food Commissioner W.B. Barney prepared for the first governor born in Iowa, B.F. Carroll.
“My father was in the ice cream and produce business,” Wehde said. “He and his partner (John, 1889-1977) were partners and his wife was the sister of his partner. They had five or six substations around and you could get cream, eggs, chicken all that stuff. His first wife, Frieda, died in the flu epidemic in 1918. They had five children.”
“He (Gus, July 20, 1880 – Dec. 20, 1939) married my mother (Anna, 1895-1950) who was 15 years younger than he was. They had four children and Ray and I were the last two, and I was the last one. – According to birth certificates, Ray was born at 6 a.m. and Roy was born at 6:25 a.m. – My oldest brother, Wilbur Wehde, was a relief pitcher (who appeared in 12 games) for the Chicago White Sox in 1930 and 1931. He pitched for the Sioux City Cowboys and was quite the star there.”
High school athletic anecdotes
The Wehde brothers had great success in several sports while wearing the orange and black of the Holstein Pirates. In football, a 67-0 victory over Kingsley in 1939 and a 52-0 victory over the Bombers in 1940 were their largest margin of victories on the gridiron during their upperclassmen years. Holstein scored 568 points over 13 games in two seasons.
“We had outstanding teams,” Wehde recalled. “When I was a junior in high school, we were undefeated, untied and not scored on in football.”
The Pirates also had an exceptional quintet on the hardwood. In the 1940-1941 season, Roy’s senior year, he wore No. 41 for Holstein’s orange jersey and No. 11 for Holstein’s black jersey.
“In basketball, we were 28-1,” Wehde said. “We lost in the semifinal of the state championships to Ames. We then beat Muscatine in the consolation. In ‘41 we won 34 games in a row in basketball and lost to Davenport in the finals of the state championship. In football, again we were undefeated, untied and not scored on. We won 88 out of 90 games my last three years of high school.”
After making the Iowa Daily Press Association’s second team, and scoring 343 points in 35 games his senior year, Roy brought his talents to Ames. Ray made the first team.
“I can remember when I decided to go to Iowa State, which was in ‘41,” Wehde said. “My father had been in the dairy industry business prior to the collapse of the economy in ‘29.”
“When we went in ‘41, we were not even recruited! We didn’t have enough money. In those days it was different. Ray and I decided we would go to Iowa State and learn the dairy industry business. So, we walked into the coach’s office in Ames and we told him we would like to go to Iowa State which caused a lot of excitement for the time but recruiting was different in those days. We all lived in the West Stadium dorm. There were 16 freshmen, mostly basketball, some football and one track guy Richardson in the dorm. We were there when the war broke out.”
Recollections from the 1943-44 season
Inside the Memorial Union, the 12 stained glass windows (designed by Harold W. Cummings, an Iowa State graduate from the class of 1918) were installed, and, at the Armory on Osborn Drive the Cyclones went 8-1 on their home court during the 1943-44 season.
Iowa State opened the season against the Iowa Pre-Flight Seahawks on Dec. 4, 1943, and the Cyclones won 31-29. The Cyclones went 13-3 during the regular season, losing to Minnesota in the second game, losing at Iowa Pre-Flight and dropping a home game against Oklahoma.
“I have lots of memories,” Wehde said. “That was during the military time and there was (Gene) Oulman (second team All-Big Six guard), (Robert) Sauer, (Price) Brookfield, Ray and myself went and lost to Utah in the finals for the Western Region of the NCAA. We were not going to be able to go Madison Square Garden anyway, if we had won, because we were in the military. Four of us were in the naval V-12 program and Brookfield was in the V-5 program which was naval aviation. We couldn’t be out of the area for that much time. We’d have to catch a military (vehicle) going both ways. We had great times, a great season. We lost one game to Oklahoma at Ames (44-30). We beat Oklahoma at Norman (41-39) and that was the only game they lost, so we tied for what was then the Big Six conference championship. We had done much better through the teams we beat, we beat them badly. We were the candidate to go.”
“Pepperdine had a center that was 6’7”, (Nick) Buzolich was his name, that was a giant in those days. You wouldn’t be able to find him on the floor now, but that was big then *laughter*. Our biggest guy was Oulman at 6’5”, and that’s the best we could do.”
The Wehde twins also participated in track while in Ames. Both Wehde brothers took part in band in high school, but only Ray continued that at ISC.
“We both ran the high and low hurdles for Iowa State. We won the conference that year in 1944. Ray was better than I was, he got fourth at the NCAA in the high hurdles. He also played in the marching band for a little bit, the bass horn,” Wehde said.
“I also qualified for the cross country team and said that’s it! *laughter* I was a sprinter, not a 3.5 mile runner. We went back after the war. We both had one year of eligibility because originally freshmen were not available for competition. They changed the rule so that people were there in college could get their year on the back end. We played five years for Iowa State and figured that was enough.”
Military service
Wehde’s collegiate athletic and academic careers were interrupted by World War II. He registered for the draft on June 30, 1942, entered active service July 1, 1943, and left active service in August 1946.
He served outside the United States between Aug. 4, 1945 and July 16, 1946.
“I was a navigator on a minesweeper in the Pacific. I had gone through Midshipmen’s School in Columbia, from there I went to Naval Administration school in Upper New York. Then I went to Miami, Florida, for advanced light officer training, then to San Diego for submarine training,” Wehde said. “I was on my way to the Hawaiian Islands when they dropped the first atomic bomb. I was there for three months while they tried to figure out what to do. The war was winding down and I was keeping busy in school.”
“We played on the Midshipmen’s School team and we had a pretty good team. It’s kind of funny, the only game we really lost was to Oklahoma. The center for Oklahoma was the center on our Midshipmen’s School team. Ray played a little basketball, he was assigned as a torpedo officer on new construction. He never went overseas, they were building a new destroyer in Paris, Texas. I had to sweep mines off Formosa, it’s Taiwan now but it was known as Formosa then. Our port was in Sasebo, Japan. We spent a couple of weeks in Shanghai getting some repairs made. I was in a lot of the islands. The war was over and no one shot at me in anger. I had a Pacific cruise for free, to put it that way.”
Military memories
Roy and Ray, being twins, have lived a very similar life since birth. In fact, their senior quote as seen in The Moo reads “One-half of Us, Inc.” for Ray and “The other half.” for Roy.
“When we went to get our physicals in ‘41 for the military, it was kind of funny, Ray and I were in line, we stripped down and they put a number on us. We got about halfway through, we saw that we mixed up where we were in line, so we changed places,” Wehde said. “Ray’s eyes were not as good as mine at that time. The three (including Gene Oulman) of us made a deal where if we did not make the officer training program at the time, we would all join the regular Navy. As it turns out, they listed the names, they listed Ray and Gene and not me and I thought ‘Son of a gun neither one of them passed their physical’ but then they told me I was the one who didn’t pass they physical. I was shocked! They told me I didn’t pass the eye test. Well, I could come back and take it again but Ray and Gene already had their papers. What happened we decided, when we changed places all of my descriptions and physical attributes were on Ray’s card and his were on mine. I had to pass for Ray. I came back and did it over.”
“When we graduated from college, they gave us another physical to see if anything got worse. We were standing stark naked next to each other, I had a broken nose from football in high school and they looked at Ray’s nose, no problem there. Ray had a little scoliosis of the spine, a little curvature there. They were going up and down my back and they couldn’t find anything. I have a little bit of a hammer toe on one, and they looked at Ray’s feet and nope. We went out of there as two perfect specimens! *chuckles* When we got our permissions to be naval officers, they called me up and they had just one question ‘How did your eyes go from 16/20 to 20/20?’ I told them the truth that I was studying my butt off and that I was tired the first time.”
Following the war
Roy and his late wife Sally (Aug. 9, 1925 – May 3, 2019) got married in 1947 and headed west before returning to historic Ames, Iowa.
“We went to California where I worked in a chemical lab for Parkay margarine that summer. I taught ice cream making lab at Iowa State for two years and I also taught advanced dairy chemistry lab at Iowa State,” Wehde said. “Sally graduated in ‘48 and she then was hired by the university to teach in the Home Health / Home Ec department. We lived in Pammel Court with Ray and Virginia.”
“Ray was drafted by the Celtics, he was the first Iowa State player ever to be drafted by one of the pro teams. He went to Boston and they got married in July and had she was kind of out there by herself while he was at practice. They came back and he helped me run the ice cream plant at Iowa State for the next year. Ray’s wife Virginia, was two years younger than Sally. She missed her freshman class of home ec that Sally taught, so she took it as a sophomore. One day they had a visual arts class, Ray and I were both Sigma Alpha Epsilon and we were having a little promotion so we used her room. When they came back from Boston, there was no place to live in Ames so they lived with us and we had an upstairs apartment on a farm about a mile north of campus. Ray helped me in the ice cream lab I was teaching. We ended up owning a dairy plant in Colorado and then we went into the insurance business with State Farm. We both became regional vice presidents. When we retired, we went to Europe for three months, the four of us. It was an interesting life.”
On books, watercoloring
In addition to staying physically fit through daily activities, Roy exercises creatively as well, and is in the process of self-publishing another book.
“I’ve wrote five books and four since I’ve been here (Friendship Village). I wrote a book of 100 or so poems. I sang in the chorus in a church in Greeley, Colorado. It was Mother’s Day and I hadn’t got anything for Sally, I forgot it was Mother’s Day until the pastor announced it. I took a bulletin and wrote a poem for her. That was the beginning,” Wehde said. “Then, I wrote a book on do you know what I believe? That was from a church here, one of the songs was ‘Do you know who I am?; Then I wrote a book on, we were married for nearly 72 years, I wrote a book on the tree of life on those 72 years. I wrote a book on what I learned in 100 years. I wrote a book on Holstein and my siblings and my parents. Now I’m writing another book right now on my visiting with the grandson. I self-publish.”
Ray (left) and Roy (right) in 1943 and 2008, respectively
Roy thanks his upbringing both on the 11 acre farm, as well as having a positive mindset when it comes to living 100 years. He also reflects on a passage from Act II in Hamlet.
“My comment is I eat a lot of ice cream. *chuckles* But, the answer is, and the truth is, they’ve done a lot of research, a person who has a good mental attitude, positive in life, their lifespan is going to be longer than those who are down all the time. ‘Nothing is either good or bad, but the thinking makes it so.’ That’s from Shakespeare’s Hamlet,” Wehde said. “I use an example if you are going out to dinner, and you wanted the salt, and you ask your dinner partner to pass the salt, then you wait a little bit and ask them again, his response would be ‘Why? I just passed you the salt.’ That’s the way I see life. I heard many times in athletics that if you can get yourself out of the way and instead get involved with what you’re doing. If you’re thinking about yourself all the time, ‘How am I doing?’ and ‘Am I doing this right?’ You’re going to screw up! *chuckles* I had many great games where I never thought about how am I playing, and where I couldn’t get off of thinking how I was playing. That is what I attribute to a long life. Everything’s been good.”
Wehde shared that he still keeps up with the Cyclones by watching them, but “is not a regular fan, unless there’s a good game on.”
