The Harrington Family Foundation

By DON HAMILTON

Mike Haglund remembers how just one word from coach Wally Shepard fired up his middle school football team.
   
It was halftime, and Shepard's All Saints School team wasn't playing well. The players had been sloppy, Haglund remembered, with maybe a fumble down at the goal line. They were down 6-0 when Shepard called them around for a halftime talk.
   
"He called us pansies," said Haglund, now a Portland attorney. "All our eyes went wide. That was the strongest word any of us had ever heard come out of his mouth. He was unhappy with us! We went out and beat them 12-6."
   
That wasn't the first or the last time Shepard's words inspired students at All Saints, a pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade school in the Laurelhurst neighborhood. He retired recently after 39 years of teaching and 48 as a coach. Hundreds of friends feted him last spring with a dinner filled with warm and affectionate reminiscences of the respect he earned and the high standards he set in the classroom and on the field.
   
"I tried real hard to take good care of those kids," Shepard said. "I tried to provide good health and keep them safe."
   
Further honors may await. One of his players, Joey Harrington, a 1993 All Saints graduate and now starting quarterback for the Detroit Lions, nominated Shepard for the National Football League's Teacher of the Year award, which honors teachers who have helped NFL players.
   
Shepard is among 10 finalists for the award. Already that means $1,000 for All Saints School.
   
If he's one of the four runners-up, to be selected monthly through the fall, he gets $2,500 and the school another $5,000. And winning the Teacher of the Year award means $5,000 for the teacher, $10,000 for the teacher's school and a trip to Honolulu for the AFC-NFC All-Star game.
   
"I'm thrilled Mr. Shepard is getting the recognition he deserves," Harrington said in a news release. "He has worked selflessly for over 40 years teaching, coaching and serving as the role model for children in our neighborhood."
   
Matter of fact, Shepard is remarkably well-connected to the neighborhood and the school. In 1952, he graduated from All Saints, which today, with 425 students, is the largest elementary school in the Oregon Catholic Diocese. Three years later he started coaching at the school while attending Central Catholic High School and then the University of Portland. One year he worked for Harrington Concrete, the company owned by Bernie Harrington, Joey's grandfather. But in 1964, All Saints hired him as a teacher, and his future was sealed.
   
Except for one year attending Gonzaga University in Spokane, he's lived in the Laurelhurst house his parents owned when he was born 65 years ago. Sharing the home with him is Mary, his wife of nine years. They met a few years back and drifted apart, but renewed their acquaintance when Shepard's mother was staying at Providence Portland Medical Center, where Mary is a nurse.
   
INFLUENCE IN THE CLASSROOM
   
Shepard left his mark on his players, certainly, but touched more lives in the classroom. He spent most of his career teaching eighth grade. He became known for his trips to Washington, D.C.; for the Oregon Book, a semester-long project that culminated with a trip to Salem; and the annual Law Day, which often included a visit to federal court.
   
"My kids all had him for eighth grade," said John Harrington, Joey's father. "If you didn't get Mr. Shepard for eighth grade, your grade-school experience was incomplete. He's the kind of person you wish would teach your child."
 
 As coach and athletic director, Shepard had his hand in most all sports, including football, basketball, track, softball, swimming and gymnastics.
   
His former football players remember Shepard's domain, located beneath a building known as "the annex." It's gone now, replaced by a chapel. The annex basement served as the locker room, even though there were no lockers. But every player had an apple crate to stow his gear in.
   
It was badly lit and poorly ventilated. Haglund remembers the dank smell of sweat and dirty clothes, the salt tablet dispenser for hot days and the training table you'd jump on when Shepard would tape you up before the game. That impressed the kids, getting taped up just like the big players.
   
In school, students saw him cleaning, vacuuming and, when the school finally got a real gym, thoroughly checking its floor. He required the kids to keep a separate pair of gym shoes to protect the floor.
   
"The school saved a lot of money because he was so diligent in the maintenance and upkeep of that gym," Haglund said.
   
The gym now bears Shepard's name.
   
Shepard worked with countless athletes, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters and a whole passel of Harringtons.
   
"Me and all my brothers and cousins were coached by him," said John Harrington, Joey's father.
   
John Harrington remembers practicing not on grass but on the dirt and gravel playground, and most everybody remembers how Shepard led them to 8 a.m. Mass before each Saturday game.
   
"He was a tremendous influence and role model," he says. "He's truly one of the holiest men I have met. He's not a priest or a minister but someone who led by spiritual and moral example."
   
MORE PRESSURE TODAY
   
Spiritual and moral lessons, though, often require more complex solutions today than when he first started teaching.
   
"I've seen a lot of changes," Shepard said.
   
"You're teaching kids with a whole lot more pressures on them than when I started. When I was growing up, you might hear about alcohol or marijuana or cigarettes. Now they get instant education from the TV and the Internet, and a lot of kids have family problems. They work hard, but there are so many challenges they face."
   
When in college, Shepard briefly thought about going to medical school. He'd always been interested in first aid and athletic training. But sports and teaching won out. He arrived at All Saints School as a young boy and never really left.
   
"I really liked the middle school kids, and I liked All Saints. I guess I'm not one for a lot of change."