English High School History
Thanks, Coach!
Bill Stewart, Jr., the Beloved English High Coach Who Mentored 4,000+ Students from 1947-1983
“He took us to places we had never been and let us dream about things that might be.”
— Will McDonough, The Boston Globe
It’s no exaggeration that during his 37 years as football, baseball and hockey coach at English High School, Bill Stewart, Jr., positively affected the lives of some 4,000 students.
Bill Stewart, Sr. umpired four World Series and five All Star games for the National league.
Coach Stewart had sports in his genes. . and he learned from the best – his Dad
Coach Stewart’s father, Bill Stewart, Sr., coached several prep and college hockey teams, and coached the 1937-38 Chicago Blackhawks to the Stanley Cup. (He was the first American-born NHL hockey coach.) For 12 years he was an NHL referee, officiating at the first hockey game ever at Boston Garden, and spent 22 years as a major league baseball umpire (1933-54), including four World Series and five All Star games in baseball and five Stanley Cup Finals. Bill, Sr. had also been a member of the 1919 Chicago White Sox after playing ball while in the U.S. Navy in 1918.
Coach Bill Stewart, Jr. pictured here as the 1936 English High School Quarterback
Which brings us to his son, Coach Bill Stewart, Jr., an English High alum who spent a total of 50 years teaching young athletes about sports — and life. After a brief stint at UMass, Coach Stewart joined the English High staff in 1947 as a way of giving back to the City of Boston. At his funeral in 1987, family members wrote, “Bill believed in the pursuit of knowledge, proficiency in sports, and the power of good sportsmanship. He was a consummate teacher for he recognized no boundaries. Race, color, nationality or language did not deter him from reaching out.” All told, he umpired baseball for 43 years and officiated hockey for 32. During his career, he was inducted into seven sports Halls of Fame.
Coach Stewart officiated college football for 28 years, Divisions 1 and 3. From 1946-1987 – three sports that he officiated in over 6,000 games. He was inducted into the EHS Hall of Fame in 1987. His youngest son, Jim, was Captain of EHS football, hockey and baseball in 1976-77.
A Lasting Legacy
Coach Bill Stewart on the field in 1959, flanked by coaches Joseph King, left, and Frederick Gillis, right.
Coach Stewart became fast friends with noted Boston Globe sports columnist Will McDonough who had played football for him in the mid-1950s. In December, 1987, McDonough wrote a tribute the week of the funeral:
“Bill taught students to be men…You can succeed if you’re willing to pay the price… He never asked a kid to do anything he would not do. He had great athletes and some that couldn’t play at all. He treated them all the same. With respect. He scheduled our teams to play suburban schools, even preppies, even inside prison… He took us to places we had never been and let us dream about things that might be.”
The 1979 EHS Baseball Team with Robert “Bobbie” Diggins and Coach Stewart on the far right.
Bobby Diggins, ’80, who played varsity baseball at EHS from 1977-1980, said,
“If anyone deserves a monument for what he has given of himself to his fellow human beings and mankind, it’s Coach Stewart. My memories of him will live forever.”
Another 1957 classmate recalls how Coach Stewart politely and privately reprimanded one player for not being at the top of his game. He suggested eating a lighter breakfast and “dropping your head and shoulders prior to a tackle. He added, Coach helped me and so many others to begin the sometimes frightening journey from boyhood to manhood…You were a perfect 10 on the Human Being depth chart.”
“Coach Stewart was shined shoes, pressed pants, freshly laundered shirts, straightforward, honest, giving, tireless.”
“He Saved My Life”
A former Lawrence High School Principal, Roxbury native and English High alumus, Dr. Steven Jenkins, wrote that Coach Stewart may have saved his life: “I often skipped school and ended up at Boston’s old Combat Zone. The coaches at English were the difference between whether I took the right or wrong road. Thank God. If not for them, I don’t know what direction I would have gone.
Coach Stewart had the knack to hug me when I needed a hug, to kick me when I needed a kick, and have me still say, ‘This guy cares about me.’
Success story? The former Superintendent of the Winthrop Public Schools, today Jenkins serves as Director of Academic Partnerships for an educational organization where he’s responsible for researching and creating partnerships with U. S. public high schools willing to accept international students.
Coach Stewart works the sidelines during a game in the 1965-66 season.
The English High School Association President Michael Thomas ’67, played under Coach Stewart from 1964-67. He says Richard Long, ‘52, was accepted at the prestigious Lawrence Academy and that Thomas got into Andover thanks to their coach. Thomas recalls remarks directed at Coach’s wife, made at his funeral:
“Thank you, Helen, for sharing Bill with us all these years.”
Speaking of his dad, Bill Stewart III, a retired Juvenile Court Probation officer who lovingly recalls his experience being coached by his dad, says, “I remember a man who was honest and straightforward, whose arrival was always more welcome than his departure. He is a legend…kind, patient, generous.”
Dad told Billy about a player named Lamont, maybe 5’6, who had played like he was 7 feet tall. Lamont was visibly upset at the outcome of the game. Coach Stew put his arm around Lamont and said, ‘Keep that head up because you tried.’” And to a player who he thought could be even faster than what he was showing, he quipped, ‘I don’t mind you carrying the piano, but don’t stop and play it on the way!”
Billy – who says the drive to help the city’s youth was inherited from his grandfather and father — retired several years ago after 39 years on the front lines in Boston’s toughest neighborhoods. He popularized the practice of teaming probation officers with police to help control crime.
In his homily at Bill Stewart’s funeral mass at Holy Name Church in 1987, Rev. Lawrence Wetterholm quoted from a poem by sports writer Grantland Rice:
“When the last scorekeeper comes to write against your name,
He will count not whether you won or lost, but how you played the Game.”
