I’ve been thinking about Coach DeWald.

 

Allan DeWald coached my peewee football team in Aurora, Colo. This was a long time ago that some days feels like the blink of an eye. We were skinny little boys in giant helmets, but inside we imagined ourselves gladiators. Coach helped us to believe.

 

From August to November, three afternoons per week (with games on Saturday mornings), Coach schooled us in the rudiments: how to make a huddle, pass blocking vs. run blocking, the difference between the T formation and the Single Wing, what to do when the ball pops loose on the ground — as it did fairly often. I can’t say that we were quick learners.

 

What brought Coach to mind, though, has nothing to do with triple-option plays or the solemn duty of defensive ends to guard against a reverse. It was his higher curriculum. We weren’t destined for the pros, that was plain to see, but we were all on track to grow from boys to men, and Coach had firm ideas about the adults we should be. He expected us to work hard and give our best. To win without gloating and to lose without blame. He taught us to be accountable for our own mistakes and forgiving of the mistakes of others. He modeled the strength of kindness and the dignity of integrity.

 

These were values taught at home as well, but there was something potent about knowing that our family values were shared by the community. That humility and self-discipline and teamwork mattered even to a towering alpha like Coach DeWald. There was a right way to live, as surely as there was a right way to grip the laces when throwing a forward pass.

 

The potency of the lessons was amplified by the example of Coach’s son Daryll, our quarterback and captain by acclamation. He was the most compelling peer I knew, superior in brains and skills, yet humble verging on bashful. With his quiet drawl and self-effacing confidence, he struck me as a boyhood version of the great Bart Starr, epitome of the dynastic Green Bay Packers. I went looking on the Internet for Daryll DeWald the other day and was not at all surprised to find him quickly, a distinguished biochemist and chancellor of Washington State University’s health science campus in Spokane.

 

“He was the greatest influence in my life,” Daryll told me when I called, in that same measured, gentle voice, now minus the drawl. “He taught me that winning and losing is not what matters; it’s helping people to become better versions of themselves. How to handle success and how to learn from failure. All the people who most inspired me have deliberately invested in others; their centers of gravity are somewhere beyond themselves — none more so than my dad.”

 

Coach was the son of a Border Patrol agent in the Rio Grande town of Eagle Pass, Tex. Tall and strapping, he played tackle both ways on the high school team that won a district championship in 1955. At 18, he married his 16-year-old sweetheart and soon thereafter enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, where he made a career of maintaining advanced aircraft, eventually including the space shuttle. I was amazed to realize that he was just in his early 30s when I knew him, for he had seemed as timeless and wise as Zeus to me.

 

Aurora was a small place then, with a large Air Force presence, so we were accustomed to people coming and going. The DeWalds left for Edwards AFB in California after our sixth-grade season. Retired Master Sgt. DeWald and his family eventually settled in Laramie, Wyo., in 1981, where Daryll was attending college. There, while stopped at a red light in the middle of the day, Coach was struck by a speeding drunk driver and killed instantly. He was 43.

 

All these years later, he’s back in my thoughts.

 

His ethos steers me today. Self-discipline, self-sacrifice, humility and service aren’t questions of personal style; not in Coach’s America. They are bedrock matters of right and wrong, of how to live, and what
America stands for.