Teacher, jokester, taskmaster left deep imprint

Ben Bedini hated seeing long hair on football players. He hated it when he was coaching high school and college ball, when he was searching for talent for the Cleveland Browns and the Kansas City Chiefs, and after he had retired to Raleigh, where, for years he was a volunteer consultant for N.C. State's football program.

But to close-cropped and long-haired players alike, Bedini, who died Dec. 28 at age 87, offered a lifetime of inspiration.

Tony DeMeo, head football coach for the University of Charleston in West Virginia, played for Bedini's 1967 undefeated Iona College team in New Rochelle, N.Y.

DeMeo recently posted a tribute to Bedini on his Web site, in which he writes that the sight of his long hair and black leather jacket used to send his coach into a tirade. Nonetheless, he writes, Bedini "took a black leather jacket kid and turned him into a football coach."

DeMeo is one of hundreds of former players who returned throughout their lives to the lessons they learned from Bedini, either on the field or off. Scores of them sent e-mail and some trekked hundreds of miles to see him when they learned that he was suffering from an incurable lung condition.

Peg Bedini, his wife of 45 years, collected the correspondence from players and friends in a notebook. Bob Caruso, who played for Bedini in 1960 and '61, writes: "You may remember me as 'Birdie' - skinny kid with a spaghetti arm," noting that he cherishes his senior athletic award banner, which he owes to Bedini's mentoring.

Former team manager John W. Robbins recalls how in 1962, a fourth-quarter, come-from-three-touchdowns-behind win hammered home Bedini's teaching on determination. "Coach: One of the best lessons you taught me was to never give up," he writes.

Bedini's daughter Lynne Lewis recalls answering the phone at her parents' home to hear former players, some of whom hadn't set foot on a gridiron in decades, say, "Can I speak with Coach?"

"He talked about the players like they were his children," she says. "He was so proud of their accomplishments."

Peg Bedini met her husband when she was teaching English at Rye High School in Rye, N.Y. She served as the cheerleaders' chaperone, and one day a female student came to her distraught because her boyfriend, a football player, had taken his varsity letter sweater back at Coach Bedini's insistence.

Despite the common practice of athletes bestowing letters upon their sweethearts, Bedini said the cheerleader couldn't wear the sweater because she didn't play football to earn it. The English teacher walked into the coach's office and said her piece.

"I thought he was a Neanderthal," she says, smiling.

Bedini was a stickler for doing things the right way, and he didn't budge. He didn't back down from requiring his players to stand, not sit, on the sidelines with their helmets on while watching a game.

This dedication to principles and attention to detail led Bedini to many winning seasons, induction into the Iona College Hall of Fame and designation as a New York Daily News Coach of the Year.

Fortunately, he got a second chance to win Peg. A few years after she had left Rye and was working as a guidance counselor in Arlington, Va., Bedini looked her up while attending a conference in Washington. They started dating long-distance, and she says she knew pretty quickly that he was the one.

"He had so much more to him than just being a football coach," she says. "He just had this wonderful, lovable personality."

Lewis says her father could laugh about anything. One day in late December he was talking to Lewis about his hospice nurse, a witty woman who enjoyed Bedini's verbal sparring. He confided jokingly to his daughter, in a conspiratorial voice, "She wants me."

Lewis smiles and her eyes light up at the memory. Her father, she says, was so ill he could scarcely breathe at the time. A few days later, he died.

It was his ability to view every part of life as an adventure to be savored that defined him, she says. Lewis says, "I think that's innately who Ben Bedini is."

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