Courtesy: Martenson Funeral Homes

Don Lessner was 69 years old.

He was a legend among Michigan’s high school coaches, 18 th on the all-time wins list and a member of six halls of fame. He was instrumental in developing the Michigan High School Coach’s Association, and establishing the Michigan East-West All Star Game that is played every year at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing.

Michigan Head Coach Lloyd Carr mentioned Coach Lessner in his pregame press-conference last week, they were close friends. There was a moment of silence at every high school football game in the state last Friday.

He coached at my school for 35 years. I played for him for two of those years, and yet I suspect not a day goes by that I don’t remember him, or think about the lessons I learned while playing for him. How many hundreds, if not thousands of men who played for him do the same thing?

I was terrified of him before camp started in 1982. All the incoming juniors were, whether they admitted it or not. We heard all the stories from the upper-classmen. Coach Lessner was tough, a disciplinarian, who demanded precision and didn’t shy away from the left hand to the helmet I wrote about a couple weeks ago.

Most of what the upperclassmen had said, we would find out, was true. He was tough, he was demanding, he yelled a lot. Most of all, we learned he was fair. Work hard, keep your mouth shut, give your best effort, don’t make the same mistake twice- and all would be well.

The program went 8-1 four years in a row while I was in high school.

My junior season we went into Redford Bishop Borgess, a huge Catholic school near Detroit. They were Class A, a football powerhouse. It was the first game of our season, my first start, and we traveled to their field.

They ran out close to a hundred players. We probably had 40.

We won, scoring a late touchdown and winning, I think, 28-21. That win set the tone for our season, and made me believe I could actually play this game.

We had the reputation of being the best-prepared team, because we were and Coach made sure of that by working harder and longer than anyone else.

I remember thinking at the Bishop Borgess game that they hadn’t done anything on defense I didn’t already know they were going to do. Their linebackers were exactly where I was told they were going to be on every play, their defensive tackles right where they were expected to be. That’s why we won that game.

Coach Lessner believed in his players, because he was tough on them. If you could survive “Double Sessions,” six hours of practice for two and a half weeks in the scorching Michigan humidity, you could survive the season.

Most of all, the discipline that was inherent in Coach Lessner’s style made men out of all of us. I’m not exaggerating when I say that playing for Coach Lessner made me a better person. He understood me from day one, knew I had only been playing for two years before I stepped on the field for the varsity, and knew how to push my buttons when they needed to be pushed. He also knew which guys needed to be yelled at and which needed the left hand to the facemask every now and then.

If you decided you wanted to go to college to play football, Coach worked just has hard for you- he was well-connected and worked the phones and sent out game films all over the country if necessary. I was recruited by nine Big-Ten schools and I know it was because coach was lobbying on my behalf.

He took me to games at Michigan and Michigan State where we got access to the coaches and the teams. Bo Schembechler and George Perles knew me by name. I walked out of the tunnel at Michigan Stadium moments after the team ran out on the field in front of 107,000 screaming fans, an experience not everyone can say they’ve had. I wasn’t a Michigan fan but I would have suited up right then and there if they had asked me. All because my coach believed in me.

It’s difficult, as a player, to think of your coach as a normal person, with a family and a life off the field. Coaches sacrifice so much during the season that you just don’t think of them as having such things because they are always working.

Coach had a wife I know he adored, and five children who gave him 18 grandchildren. I’m told he insisted each grandchild have an 8x10 photo on his mantle.

In 2001, a group of players at the school I graduated from complained about Coach Lessner’s style, and Coach was fired- after 35 years and a 223-104-1 record.

The football field at my school is named after Coach Lessner. He was fired anyway.

The players who followed missed out on playing for a great coach and a greater man. And now he’s gone.

I remember the wins, I remember the hard work, and the discipline, and the next time I have to work late on a project, or come in on a Saturday when I don’t feel like it I’m going to close my eyes and smell the freshly cut grass, feel the scratch of the pads on my shoulders, and think about the lessons I learned by the big Oak tree next to our practice field- playing for the best coach a kid could ask for.

Goodbye, Coach.

Brian is Creative Services Director for FOX 11and My Tucson TV-18.