The private medical office of the former Bakersfield College Renegade football team doctor, Romain Pierre Clérou, is not unlike any other office. An LCD television is placed in the center of the waiting room, and the typical office fauna is placed all around, but as one ventures deeper into the office one will find the history of a man whose career extends well into the better part of a century.
Along the walls in the hallway leading to the patient rooms are pictorial montages, consisting of posed photographs of him with former Renegade football players.
They span throughout the years and a hound’s tooth style fedora is present within all of them. As he finished up with a patient, the doctor entered his office and sits at his desk. Before him lays an open book and a partly smoked Winston Churchill cigar. He spoke in short, to-the-point sentences.
“I’ll be damned if I know, 1933 I think.1943,” said Clérou as he tried to recall the time spent practicing medicine.
Placed throughout the room are medical artifacts – well-worn leather doctor’s bags lay on the floor next to the desk, stethoscopes hang loosely about the room and medical books decorate the shelves of the bookcase, opposite of his desk.
Although he is well known as the Renegade team doctor, Clérou was also a player once.
“I made all conference guard in 1935,” said Clérou.
When asked how today’s game compares to his day, the doctor said, “It was just the same.”
After graduating from BC and then receiving his medical degree from UC Berkeley, Clérou joined the Navy and served with the 51st Seabees in WWII as a navy doctor stationed in the South Pacific.
“I was stationed in the Western Carolines, Ulithi and Saipan,” said Clérou and, though the war was ranging throughout the world, the doctor went on to say, “We weren’t in any battles or anything.”
After completing his service in the military, the doctor returned to the States, taking up medical practice and serving as the team doctor for the Renegades.
Throughout his career as the team doctor, despite the physical aggressiveness, the doctor said, “Never really had any serious injuries, fortunately, with football being the contact sport that it is. We were very lucky.”
As for some of the players he treated, the doctor can be credited with treating the hall of famer Frank Gifford.
Though the doctor no longer serves as the team doctor, he can still be found at the games, sitting quietly at the bench, smoking cigars and watching the game intently.