Paul Durham, the athletic director who moved the University of Hawai'i into an era of all-college schedules, NCAA Division I standing and oversaw the foundation for Western Athletic Conference membership, died Friday at age 93, according to friends and family.

Until the past few years, when failing health took its toll, the man known as UH's "AD emeritus" had been a regular spectator at the school's athletic events and popular fixture at Honolulu Quarterback Club meetings.

"I have a great interest in the program, a great love for the athletes and really enjoy going to the games," Durham said in a 2003 interview.

Durham spent seven years as the AD (1968-75) and six additional years teaching in the school's College of Education until his retirement in 1981.

He was inducted into UH's Circle of Honor in 1996, the NAIA Hall of Fame in 1969 and the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics of Athletics Hall of Fame in 2006 and Linfield Hall of Fame in 1998.

But Durham was known in Hawai'i well before coming to UH in 1968 to guide Gov. John Burns' vision of a major college athletic program. As head football coach and athletic director at his alma mater, NAIA power Linfield (Ore.) College (1949-68), Durham had a pipeline to Hawai'i players in a 122-51-10 reign over 20 seasons. At Linfield in 1962 Durham was the NAIA Coach of the Year and 1961 Oregon Man of the Year. His 1956 team began what has become a streak of 51 consecutive winning seasons, a national record.

"There would be 20 of us (from Hawai'i) on the team at a time," recalled Hugh Yoshida, who played for Durham at Linfield in the 1960s. "Paul was a straight-up guy you could always count on."

Several former players, including Yoshida, who also became a UH athletic director, Al Wills, John Sadowski and Tony AhYat, came back home to coach in local high schools.

"I thought it was quite a statement about the man that his former players gathered every year (in later years) at Linfield (and) they would bring Coach back to honor him," Yoshida said. "That's how much influence he had on their lives and the way they respected him."

Six months after the 1967 football season opener, when Durham's Linfield team beat the Rainbows, 15-13, at Honolulu Stadium, he was named to the UH job and given the task of taking a program with an annual budget of $350,000 and struggling scholarship levels to major college status.

Until 1966, UH had played as an independent with a football schedule that included a mix of major college, small college, service and club teams. But Gov. Burns wanted the school to move toward an all-major college schedule so it could gain membership in the WAC and charged Durham, a man who wore many hats at Linfield and had a wealth of West Coast contacts, with getting the ball rolling.

In Durham's tenure the football team had a string of seven consecutive winning seasons and the Fabulous Five men's basketball team took UH to its first national rankings and postseason appearances in the National Invitation Tournament (1970-71) and NCAA (1971-72).

But UH's success led to pressure to win bigger and saw boosters and political factions fighting for a larger role while Durham attempted to grow the program within NCAA rules. The battle became too much for the Durham, who suffered a heart attack in Dec. of 1974 and resigned five months later.

Two years later when the NCAA put UH on a two-year probation for 68 violations, Durham won a clearing of his name by the NCAA Committee on Infractions, which determined that he had no knowledge or involvement in the incidents.

In 1978 when the WAC voted to add UH, giving the school its first conference affiliation, Durham said the painstaking groundwork he had laid had paid off. "His legacy at UH was that he positioned the school for (the) major college (level) and the WAC," Yoshida said.

Durham is survived by three children, Jeff of Tigard, Ore., Terry of Beaverton, Ore., and Cathy of Chicago; seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements in Hawai'i and McMinnville, Ore. are pending.