Retiring Football Coach Epitomizes Best of America
“Other than my dad, he’s been the most influential person in my life as far as teaching me how to do things the right way, having high character and making that … an important part of how you conduct yourself. He’s been the greatest example I possibly could have had,” Brick High School’s principal Dennis Filippone said.
“He touched so many lives. He saved souls,” Dan Duddy, coach of nearby Monsignor Donovan High School, asserted. “Coach Wolf is without a doubt one of the greatest men another man could meet.”
There were a lot of similar sentiments being shared during Wolf’s goodbye press conference, where Wolf talked in front of reporters, friends, and family about his move from West New York — where he was an assistant under his mentor, the famous Coach Joe Coviello — to a little-known town called Brick, “wherever the hell that is,” Wolf jokingly recalled. The year was 1958 and by a stroke of serendipity Wolf was named the first football coach for the new school, a job he retained for over a half century.
What makes Coach Wolf such a rarity nowadays is not only his unprecedented success or his longevity, but his dedication to the same community for so long. After his first, second, or even third of many championships, Wolf could have very easily gone on to bigger and better things than Brick High School football. By his second decade coaching, he had already become a Garden State legend, and no doubt more prestigious, collegiate coaching opportunities presented themselves.
But to do that would mean to leave his church. To do that would mean to leave his friends at Brick High. To do that would mean somebody else would have to collect money for the poor outside the local grocery store during Christmas time.
If he wanted, he could have ended up like his good friend Joe Paterno at Penn State. The two would talk football until the early hours of the morning. “We’d close the bar,” says Wolf, recalling how he and a young Paterno used to draw Xs and Os on cocktail napkins.
Instead Wolf chose to stay close to home, serving as mayor of Brick, Ocean County freeholder, and New Jersey assemblyman — amongst other things — throughout the years. After his retirement ceremonies last week, Wolf humorously remembered how, when he first moved to Brick in the late 1950s, the town was so desolate it did not even require its own exit on the parkway. How things have changed since then …
In many ways, Warren Wolf’s life is the quintessential twentieth-century American experience: marry the high school sweetheart, join the service, use the G.I. Bill to get through school, and if you’re lucky, find a slice of heaven somewhere, settle down, and start a new life. In an era where students coming out of school are looking for work and excitement in the “big city,” the aforementioned lifestyle — Warren Wolf’s decision to dedicate himself to Brick — is on the wane. Rather than bolt the small town for the galore and opportunities of the city, Coach Wolf hung around town long enough until it became a city.
“The world just keeps changing,” Brick Mayor Stephen Acropolis said, “but the one thing you could always count on was seeing Warren Wolf marching along the sidelines, encouraging his players.”
“Our town is going to be a different place.”
They don’t really make ‘em like that anymore, do they? It’s no longer vogue to turn down prestige over principle. Technology and the information age have made it possible to know the details of what’s happening on the other side of the world — and sometimes we overlook what’s happening in our own backyard, with our friends and neighbors. The world has gotten smaller and our worlds have grown bigger. Loyalty to locality means less than what it once meant.
Warren Wolf cared what happened in his backyard. He cared what happened to his friends. “Friendship is treasure,” he said to the press conference cameras. He became a grandfather of thousands and an icon of a community, and in the process put a city on the map. Every town in America could use a man like this.
Great article. Coach Wolf was like many good men who have dedicated themselves to teaching and athletics. Best of luck to him!
1958 was the year of ‘The Greatest Game’, the championship match between the Giants and Colts. Those Giants had Lombardi as offensive coordinator, and Landry as defensive coordinator, a super group from the pinnacle of the pantheon. If only the G-men called New Jersey home then, as they do now, the synchronicity would be more cohesive. But at the time, they played at Yankee Stadium, the original constructed by Edison Concrete, which closed this year.
Warren Wolf is a remnant of a dying breed. He offered a permanence in service as a vanguard to a community, a rock against transient currents that muddy the soul. He’s a modern analogue the Christian gentleman-generals Lee and Jackson, who shined with nobility in folding themselves into their communities. Coach Wolf has tied his town through Mr. Lincoln’s ‘mystic chords of memory’ to memories of what’s good and honorable and perhaps uniquely American. Few men in few fields do so as the scholastic football coach does. They often carry stoically and alone the responsibilities that go hand-in-glove with rights. Thanks for cherishing and recognizing this.
What a great story to start my weekend. Made me think about the men that infulenced my life. My Dad, God, Football coach’s, NCO’s, Rugby coach’s and most most important the “old timers” that taught me how to get and stay sober. Thanks Nick.
Unfortunately for our young people, we shall not see many of his type again. Our society is ultimately the loser as his generation of coaches leaves the scene.
As someone who went to a high school that played Brick every year (and back in the day, it was the Thanksgiving Day game), I remember everyone respected Warren Wolf and Brick football.
This article is a worthy tribute to Coach Wolf.
Who is left to mold young men, when under-appreciated treasures like Coach Wolf leave the scene? Coach Wolf, though I’ve never met him, has my utmost respect. Those guys who fought WWII and then came home to help create and preserve what is best in our nation are a dying breed. Who will replace them? A young man, in way a young woman does not, needs a strong male authority figure in his life – a teacher, coach, clergyman, or drill sergeant – to shape his character for the better, to “break” him and rebuild him as a man. Ideally, a father should do this, but it is a big job for anyone, and dads and moms everywhere ought to thank their lucky stars that hard but compassionate men like this one still exist.
I used to teach at an inner city high school, and know firsthand the dire need for men like Coach Wolf in those places, where female single-parent households are so common. Sadly, those who tried to run a strict, by-the-book classroom (as I did) were considered an anachronism, and bad for student’s self-esteem (whatever that is).
Bless you, coach and many happy returns…