Cardington alumni remember Coach Bell

By Eve­lyn Long -

The death of Dr. Den­nis Bell on August 26, stirred mem­o­ries of many of his for­mer play­ers, stu­dents and friends in Cardington.

Dr. Bell was the first foot­ball coach when Card­ing­ton High School resumed foot­ball in 1947. He coached foot­ball, bas­ket­ball and base­ball for sev­eral years and left Card­ing­ton in 1957. He was also a teacher in the Card­ing­ton School and was active in the com­mu­nity which included the Card­ing­ton Rotary Club.

Sev­eral of his for­mer play­ers, stu­dents and local res­i­dents shared their mem­o­ries of Dr. Bell.

NOEL UNDERWOOD, Marysville, said “Den­nis Bell was a man I highly respected. I owe my edu­ca­tion to him for my suc­cess in life. I cor­re­sponded with him on a regu– lar basis.”

JOYCE UNDERWOOD WEBER, Ash­land, was a cheer­leader, and played bas­ket­ball under Bell. “He was a great per­son, coach, teacher and a man you can never for­get. He was respect­ful, one who cared about his stu­dents. He was just an all around good guy.”

DEWEY YAKE, Waldo, “He was one of the best coaches I ever had. He was always involved in base­ball. In bas­ket­ball, he would make us each shoot ten foul shots in a row before we went to the show­ers. The shoot around was done by Bill Maxwell, Paul Bow­man, Kent Curl and myself. We played in an Inde­pen­dent base­ball team and Mr. Bell always played with us.”

HAROLD BEAN, Mans­field: “He had a team of farm boys — I didn’t even know what a first and ten was. He was very nice, gen­tle– he took us to McComb to his folks’ home one time and we stayed there and played bas­ket­ball. His folks were really nice. We had a great time. I talked to him a month ago. He was a heck of a nice guy.”

ROGER DAVIS, Murfrees­boro, Tenn “Mr. Bell was my kind of base­ball coach. If we came to school and didn’t have a game that day, and the weather looked good, he got on the phone and found us a game to play some­where. He was a gentleman’s gentleman.”

CARL STEVENS, Wood­stock, Geor­gia: “When I talked to Denny after grad­u­a­tion, he would always say ‘Carl, you need your b– kicked for not stay­ing in base­ball because you could have played in pro­fes­sional base­ball. When­ever we talked he always brought that up. I loved the guy. He was a great person.”

BILL HENTHORNE, Card­ing­ton, “I remem­ber we had a very good base­ball team my junior and senior years, coached by Mr. Bell. He would sched­ule games to play and we would travel all over the state of Ohio just so we could play base­ball on Sat­ur­days. He took a back seat to no one.”

HAL CLINGER, Mount Gilead, “We kept in con­tact — we had our mil­i­tary ser­vice in com­mon — I told him one time that hav­ing served in the mil­i­tary I had worked for a lot of colonels and gen­er­als and I ranked him right up there with them. I played foot­ball and bas­ket­ball for him — my dad wouldn’t let me play in the spring because we had spring plant­ing duties.”

NADENE COYKENDALL UNDERWOOD, Card­ing­ton, “Coach Bell earned the respect of his team. His ded­i­ca­tion to them and theirs to him was both on and off the field of play. Their ded­i­ca­tion fol­lows the coach even to today. He was a good role model.”

RON PINE, Cale­do­nia: “Bell and Noel Under­wood talked me into Defi­ance Col­lege and if it weren’t for Coach Bell and his guid­ance, I wouldn’t have been where I am today.”

DOYLE SMITH, Card­ing­ton, “I enjoyed play­ing for him — He played some inde­pen­dent base­ball games with us.”

FRED WILLIAMSON, Card­ing­ton, “Bell made me a cap­tain and I was the cap­tain for the Ash­ley game– dur­ing that game a pass was thrown in my area– and I missed it. Bell came over to me and said ‘Fred, catch that pass the next time.’ He always gave us dex­trose at half time — he would watch the game and pick out indi­vid­u­als and urge them to do bet­ter. One time Dal­ton Jenk­ins said he couldn’t raise his right arm and he was play­ing any­way– then we found out he had bro­ken his shoul­der. The first year we had hel­mets and played in t-shirts and shorts, the sec­ond year we had scar­let and grey uni­forms the boost­ers bought for us.”

CECIL MAXWELL, Card­ing­ton, who knew Dr. Bell as a mem­ber of the com­mu­nity, the Rotary Club and as a neigh­bor, recalled that he was nick­named “Hands in the Pocket” for awhile and he explained that one night a man got mad at him at a game and took a swing at him. Bell just stood there with his hands in his pocket. He did a great job of coach­ing and had such a beau­ti­ful outlook.”

Dr. Bell’s wife, Car­netta, expressed her appre­ci­a­tion for these com­ments and for the foot­ball play­ers remem­ber­ing her hus­band with a flo­ral arrange­ment at his memo­r­ial ser­vice. Dr. Bell resided in Pine­hurst, North Carolina.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Sep 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.