Obituary: Albert Ferber / Former referee, clock operator at Pitt, Steelers football games
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Albert "Jerry" Ferber told others of the day in elementary school when a gym teacher handed him a whistle and told him to referee the game his classmates were playing. He loved it.
Those who knew the fair, hard-to-rattle Mr. Ferber in adulthood would understand. He spent half a century either officiating basketball and football games at the high school and collegiate levels or running the clock that helped settle the outcome of contests involving the Pitt Panthers and the Steelers.
Despite growing health problems, he remained a Petersen Events Center courtside fixture this year, closely following the play of both the men's and women's basketball teams while keeping scoreboard data up to date.
Mr. Ferber, of Hampton, died Friday at UPMC Passavant from heart-related ailments. He was 76.
Although he had a day job for 44 years as a mechanical draftsman before retiring from Tippins Inc. in Etna in the mid-1990s, his passion was always for sports. He had been a speedy football and basketball player at Etna High School in the late 1940s and early '50s, and he played sandlot baseball afterward.
While Mr. Ferber couldn't make a living playing any of those sports, he found he could supplement his income and stay involved by officiating. What started out as refereeing youth basketball games led to a career of weeknights and weekends that ultimately led to officiating WPIAL football title games at Three Rivers Stadium, PIAA basketball championships in Hershey, and Division I football contests in the 1980s involving Pitt, Penn State, Notre Dame and other top programs.
A congenial but quiet man who never sought the limelight, Mr. Ferber took great pride in his integrity and the inability of coaches or players to find reason to question it.
Chuck Heberling, a friend and former referee from McCandless, had such respect for Mr. Ferber's abilities and impartiality that he would employ him to evaluate the performance of other officials when Mr. Heberling was the WPIAL's executive director.
"He was a no-nonsense guy," Mr. Heberling said. "He was well-versed in the rules of the game but also had a penchant for applying the rules in a common-sense manner. That was evident in everything he did."
In his 50s, when running up and down courts and fields alongside athletes less than half his age could be wearing, Mr. Ferber was able to switch to clock management. He started out doing so in 1987 for Pitt basketball and football, and in 2006 the NFL hired him to run the clock for Steelers games at Heinz Field, additionally using him for playoff games in other cities when out-of-town clock operators were brought in for the sake of impartiality.
First Published June 7, 2011 12:00 am
