Longtime Los Altos resident Ted Abe was posthumously inducted into the Los Gatos High School Athletic Hall of Fame April 30 at the Rinconada Country Club.
“Pound for pound, Ted was the best athlete we ever had at Los Gatos High School,” Bill Frey, chairperson of the hall of fame committee, said at the event.
The husband of Margaret Abe, Ted graduated from Los Gatos in 1955, received a scholarship to UC Berkeley and later graduated from the UC San Francisco School of Dentistry. He married Margaret in 1961 and established a successful dental practice.
At Los Gatos, Ted was the quarterback and captain of the football team. He received a trophy for being named MVP and was voted First Team All-League all four years. Ted also competed on the basketball, baseball, wrestling and track teams. In track, he set league records in the broad jump and the 100-yard dash, and qualified for the state meet.
Ted’s classmates voted him Most Athletic and Most Likeable. He also received the Panighetti Award as the Outstanding Senior Athlete.
Ted succeeded in the classroom as well. He was elected student body vice president and as a senior earned the California Scholastic Foundation’s Seal Bearer Award for his academic excellence.
Ted spent his early days in the Watsonville-Salinas area, where his family worked on a lettuce farm. In 1942, the family moved to Arizona for two years before settling in Los Gatos.
“They worked a farm where they picked prunes, cut (apricots) and handled many other chores,” said Butch Cattolico, the master of ceremonies at the induction event and former Los Gatos football coach. “From these humble beginnings, Ted went on to have one of the most storied athletic careers at Los Gatos.”
Ted and Margaret raised five sons, and he coached the kids in all of their sports. He also enjoyed fishing and golf.
Ted died of heart complications March 6, 1994, while playing golf with his cousin.
