To celebrate 50 years of statehood, The Advertiser has selected our top 50 sportspersons /teams/people who helped change or shape the landscape in Hawai'i sports since 1959.

Our Fab 50 will go in chronological order starting from the 1959-1969 decade. We will present a story a day until Aug. 21.

It could have been the 20-0 loss to New Mexico on homecoming in the 4-5 football season of 1964.

Perhaps it was the 37-7 defeat by Cal State Los Angeles in the 1-8-1 campaign of 1965 or ...

Take your pick of thumpings, legend has it that after watching the state's football team get whacked around in the 1960s, then-Gov. John A. Burns (1962-'74) finally had enough one day, getting up and walking out of Honolulu Stadium, disgusted.

But he did more than shake his head. He pointedly told the UH President at the time, Thomas Hamilton, " 'either field a team or forget it,' " according to son Jim Burns.

Short and to the point, it nevertheless marked a major turning point in sports history here. Just as he helped author a new course politically and socially for his adopted state, so, too, did Gov. Burns write one for sports.

On each front, Gov. Burns confronted what he termed, "a subtle inferiority of spirit" in the young state.

"He was saying, 'hey folks, we're just as good as the rest of the United States, so let's show them that we are,' " his son recalls. Gov. Burns believed UH should — and could — have prestigious medical and law schools. And, athletic teams.

"Show me a university that is financially secure and I'll show you its athletic foundation; show me a championship team and I'll show you a student body academically driven by the same zeal of excellence," Gov. Burns said.

In pointing UH athletics toward the major college level, Burns offered more than words. He outlined a focused vision and all but laid out the blueprints, from booster club and stadium to conference affiliation.

Then, along with his vision, Gov. Burns, a former policeman and father of the modern Democratic Party in Hawai'i, put an initial investment of $8,000 of his own money and the power of his office toward realizing it.

The governor enlisted his right-hand man, Dan Aoki, a former 442nd Regimental Combat Team sergeant, to plow ahead on the details. He rallied school officials, prominent citizens and businessmen behind the idea that UH could compete in not only football but several sports.

"Back then people had to be persuaded because they didn't think it (the climb to major college respectability) could be done," Jim Burns recalled. "And the only way to do that was through the power and respect of the governor's office."

By the time the 1967 season started, UH had a booster club, 'Ahahui Koa Anuenue, a growing bank account, the beginning of a push for a new stadium and a goal.

If Gov. Burns was part dreamer and a doer as a politician, so, too, did he bring those attributes to sports. He foresaw the need for UH, then a struggling independent, to find a conference home. Moreover, from 1966 he pointed the school toward the Western Athletic Conference.

"We want to belong to a conference that would rate about with our prospects," Gov. Burns said in 1969. "The WAC does just that."

Gov. Burns began by lobbying the western governors who had schools in the WAC. Then, he gave the new UH athletic director, Paul Durham, his marching orders. "I started working on it (WAC membership) as soon as I got the (athletic director's) job in 1968 at the governor's request," Durham later said.

Within three years of Koa Anuenue's founding, UH was in the small college football polls. Within five seasons, UH basketball had the "Fabulous Five" and was competing in the NCAA postseason.

When UH's bid for WAC membership was rebuffed by a 5-3 vote in 1974, Gov. Burns was undeterred. "My reaction is that we'll try again next year," Gov. Burns said at the time.

In the meantime, the work behind the vision was unrelenting, leading to the construction of Aloha Stadium, which opened in 1975. In 1978, UH was finally voted into the WAC, becoming a member in 1979, four years after Burns' death.

When UH won the WAC baseball title in its inaugural year of conference membership, beating Brigham Young, Durham, then retired, said, "I wish Gov. Burns could be here to see it. He would have loved it."

But the many-times reshuffled WAC that UH now calls home, minus the eight old members who bolted to form the Mountain West Conference in 1999, would have likely disappointed the late Governor. Jim Burns said "I believe, he would have been sad when we, basically, got left out of the old WAC."