(Photo/Des Moines Register)
Iowa High School Sports legend Dick Tighe died at the age of 94 on Tuesday, a career that spanned 63 football seasons that lasted from the Eisenhower administration to the end of the Obama administration.
In Tighe’s coaching career, he saw this country go from Civil Rights marches to electing a black president; Frank Sinatra topping the charts as a crooner to Drake topping the charts with a rap and a beat, to the world going from black-and-white TV’s to TV’s that can search this thing called the internet.
One thing that never changed in those 63 years? Dick Tighe’s approach to life and football.
I had the privilege of not only playing against Coach during his time at St. Edmond, but getting to be familiar and friendly with him in the final years of his life. I’m not one to be quiet around most people, but put me around Coach Tighe? I could listen to the stories for hours.
As I sat and thought about the interactions I’d had in my short time in Webster City with Coach, I couldn’t help but think of Pro Football Hall of Fame football coach Chuck Noll, who led the Pittsburgh Steelers to 4 Super Bowls in the 1970’s, and the striking similarities between the two.
Through my experiences and recollections, as well as conversations with those who played for him, Coach Tighe was a man of few words on the field, but at the same time, was a stickler for detail and discipline. How else do you win over 430 football games with a playbook that you could fit onto a single 3×5 index card?
Chuck Noll won his first 2 Super Bowl’s in Pittsburgh with a goal-line style offense that wouldn’t seem all to dissimilar to the offensive style of Tighe’s team, but attention to detail and discipline makes the difference.
Once those Super Bowl’s came and went for Noll, the criticisms began to mount, similar for Tighe towards the end of his tenure in Webster City, as he was unceremoniously let go in 1997. But, for all both men put up with, they managed to prove the game hadn’t passed them by before all was set and done.
Noll still had a handful of playoff appearances left in him, and Tighe rebuilt a once-dormant St. Edmond program, and brought them to the brink of a state championship.
That’s not where the similarities end for these two stoic leaders, as off-the-field was just as sacred as on the field.
Tighe was a dedicated father of 6 children, a devout Catholic who likely rarely missed a mass, as well as a lover of history as a history teacher, a drivers education instructor and remained a substitute teacher following retirement.
Similarly, Noll was also a dedicated father, while accruing hobbies such as photography, music, and being a connoisseur of wine-making (all detailed in his biography and A Football Life documentary).
In interviews, Noll would semi-regularly refer to his “life’s work” and that how much he enjoyed the game of football, he did not feel that it was his life’s work.
This, in my mind, is where the two men go their separate ways. Football was Dick Tighe’s life’s work, but his life’s work was bigger than football.
For all the thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of student-athletes he directed on Friday nights, there is likely tens to hundreds of thousands of students he found ways to connect, inspire and mentor as a teacher and never coached them.
In just the hours following the announcement of his passing, our Facebook pages post of the announcement has been flooded with dozens of comments of individuals reminiscing of their best memory’s of Coach, or some cases, Mr. Tighe.
My memory’s of Coach? I went 0-2 against him in my career at Madrid, getting blown out my sophomore year and getting upset at Dodger Stadium my junior year.
But, when I arrived as a young, bold and probably far-too-brash college graduate from Iowa, he invited me into the famous shrine that is his basement to introduce myself and have a chat and perhaps see if he wanted to do something with us at The Q during football season.
I walked down the steps and was greeted by an amount of memorabilia that would make any Hall of Fame site blush. Whether it was from Webster City, St. Edmond, Iowa Falls, Kuemper Catholic, Hamilton Catholic in Ontario, or his beloved alma mater, the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.
It was a football sanctuary, I figured out right away what this man was all about.
In the end, football is what many are going to remember Coach by, and without question, it is justified and right to a certain degree.
However, at his core, was a man whose life’s work was leading and teaching. On the field, in the classroom, in the passenger seat, wherever it may be.
A man who leads and teaches in a fashion and style that we don’t see anymore. Hold on to those memories and lessons tight, cherish them, and pass them along if you can. Because, people the likes Coach Tighe just simply aren’t made anymore, but in his case, he was simply one-of-one.