The Writer's Life 7/14 - Ace

Today I celebrate the life of Coach Murray Adler, ex-Marine, father of three, who died peacefully in his sleep yesterday. He was rarely addressed by his given name. Everyone called him Ace. I don't know how he came by the nickname. He grew up in Coney Island, where his mom ran a Boardwalk concession. He frequently said: "You can take the boy out of Coney Island, but you can't take the Coney Island out of the boy." He taught gym and hygeine. For many years he was an assistant to Bernie Mars at Tilden H. S.. Finally, in his mid 30's, he had his own team. He came to us at Lafayette in January of 1966. Our football team was the laughing stock of NYC. We lost all seven games in 1965, and scored only one TD - in the final minute of the last game. Ace immediately elevated the program. I don't know his overall record, but his teams won many more games than they lost. That first year we dropped only one game, 0-6 to mighty Jefferson. In 1970 the Redmen were undefeated, 8-0. Unfortunately, there were no playoffs then, so it was a mythical city championship. One of his final teams, in the early '80's, was 8-0 and headed to the playoffs when one of its players was ruled ineligible, which led to forfeiture of all its win. He subsequently moved to Florida and worked as an assistant for a while. He loved the game, gave his heart and soul to it, took defeat very hard. He was as good a teacher of the fundamentals of blocking and tackling as there ever was. Here are three excerpts I've written about him: 

"... I remember when the A.D. first introduced Coach Ace to us. He looked so tough. Then he introduced his assistant, a young guy with a crew cut in a Marine jacket. I thought they were gonna kill us.” He chuckled. “They looked even meaner when they lit up these big cigars. The contrast between their appearance and their personalities was incredible. They were so positive, so much fun..."

Once that same winter we were practicing indoors on a rainy day, working hard, talking it up, when all of a sudden he blew the whistle. We all stopped, wondering what happened, who screwed up. You could've heard a pin drop. The coach looked around the room as if he were amazed and said: ‘How’d you kids ever lose?’ And we all just stared, holding our breaths, our hearts pounding—at least mine was. It was brilliant. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I remember I doubted he was telling the truth, but it didn't matter because I knew what he was trying to do. All spring long he was telling us: ‘You’re the best kids I've ever had.’ He was trying to raise our confidence, erase the negativism we’d suffered. He called us ‘pathfinders’ and said we’d lead the way to a winning tradition that’d never be broken. Here we were, a school that’d had six disastrous seasons in a row, that’d won only one game in two years, and he was telling us we were great."

Our team was comprised mostly of Italian-Americans. He appealed to our pride, saying: "Gimme a buncha crazy guineas and I'll beat anybody." We weren't insulted - we loved it!

He is now on the other side with his wife Barbara and older son Lowell. Condolences to Carrie and Andy and all the grandkids. Thank you, Coach. Rest in peace.

Here's a photo taken at the team's 50th reunion. The coaches are surrounded by those of us who were seniors in '66-'67: