The Day That Coach Left Us

“Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you.” 
― Shannon Alder

If life is a game of nine innings, we were aware that Gordie had gone into extra innings. The outcome at the end of the game, as with all of living beings, has been predetermined from the time we were born. For many of us mortals, the game might end after only five, seven, or fewer innings.

And how grateful we were that the premier coach and mentor had been with us past regulation time. 

But then a part of us had concluded that the Coach was more than that.  Unencumbered by facts, many of us believed that he would always be here, inspiring us with his wisdom, his smile, and penetrating eyes that made you feel that you alone were the most important person in the universe.

Certainly, Gordie’s increasing frailties were indications that he might be as vulnerable as the rest of us.  Yet he arose on every occasion to assure us that would always bounce back.  And it was easy for us to confidently see him as the same 30-year old he had always been.  “There’s still bounce in his step!” “He still remembers names and events from long ago.” “He’s still the old Gillespie I remember.” “The best!”

We beat back thoughts of a day when he would be gone because our world would be different, less than the one we knew so well.  The world would be off kilter.

These were some of my thoughts and feelings on the day that my friend Pat Sullivan called with the dreadful word that Coach Gordon Gillespie had passed away. Denial, anger, and total remorse invaded my whole being. Similar thoughts and feelings echoed when my mother and father died.  At first, I was confused but somehow started to consider what comes next.  Funeral dates. Memorial events. Logistics. All thoughts related to logic, routine, and common sense. Still calm and resolute.  After all, I was aware that his days had been coming to an end, but the shock lay within me.

Within an hour, a phone call came from Herald-News sports editor, Dick Goss, asking for a few comments about Gordie. I tried to talk but found that I couldn’t. A wave of unanticipated emotion overpowered me and stopped any further conversation. I started to uncontrollably sob on the phone. Through the tears and shock, I said, “Dick, got to call you back later. I just can’t talk.” It was several hours later that I was able to return that phone to Dick.  

What was it about the Coach that had such a dramatic impact on all of us?  It would take an entire book to capture the essence of a person who had a remarkable, and irreplaceable influence on the lives of literally thousands of athletes, students, and friends that were touched by Gordie.  He was a role model who set the standard none of us could reach.  

It wasn’t until later in life that I realized how much my basketball teammates valued and respected this man.  I recalled my sophomore year at Lewis – during my first full season of playing – our team raised money to buy a “hi-fi” as a Christmas present for the coach.  We all knew how much he loved music, but we literally had no money.  We were first generation college students whose parents scraped together funds to send their kids to college. Because of our gratitude to him, we bought the hi-fi.  Since that time, I have known no other situation like this.  But it surely demonstrates the love that we felt for coach.

When he did periodically reveal his human flaws, I brushed them off as glitches, anomalies. That wasn’t the real Gordie. He surpassed the ordinary limits of coach, teacher, friend, colleague, and mentor.  I saw him breaking past human limitations into a next evolutionary stage. 

Coach had considerably more confidence in me than I saw in myself.  He believed that I had only scratched the surface of my potential and, as a result, I gradually took him at his word and did things that I now question how I did them. As a freshman at Lewis, I considered transferring to Joliet Junior College, but Gordie convinced me to stay and said, “You are a diamond in the rough.”  (Very rough, I thought.)

He transformed me – a raw, skinny, inexperienced athlete – into someone who would play college basketball and be drafted in the NBA. He believed that I, a first baseman, could pitch the last inning and strike out the side and save the win. When we had no catchers available, he believed that I could catch a nine-inning game and do the job. He was right on all counts.

After graduating and teaching high school for five years, I became his assistant baseball coach at Lewis where he further mentored me and called me his “co-coach,” on equal terms with him.  I never did believe that, but it made me feel very qualified to be associated with the best coach ever.

As we grew older, we entered into a more advanced relationship where he would confide in me and I in him.  We shared our varied interests in movies and music, and we laughed together about episodes of “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” a TV show.  His sense of humor, always evident to his players, became more common.

Although coach Gordie Gillespie ran out of innings on that February day in 2015, his legacy did not die.  Through his wonderful family, his former players and students, his coaching peers across the country, and his friends, the spirit of the man lives on brightly. He literally altered the way teachers teach, coaches coach, and managers supervise.  He raised the level and expectations of human relationships in a manner few before him understood.

Because of Coach Gillespie, we wanted to be better human beings and broadcast his legacy. We keep trying, don’t we?

“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”

Nelson Henderson