GPHS60 CELEBRATES 60 YEARS IN 2021         

The GPHS60 Class will be celebrating our 60 Year Reunion in September, 2021.  Hopefully, you will plan to attend!

LOCATION:  GROSSE POINTE YACHT CLUB                                                                       

DATE:           FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2021                                                                        

TIME:           3:00 PM - 9:00 PM

We will also have a Thursday evening gathering at Lauren and Jill Bowler's home in Bloomfield Hills on September 9, 2021. 

On the 3rd day of each of the coming months, you will continue to see on our website a special remembrance of the journey of each athletic team to its BCL championship starting with the football title we won on the last day of the season in 1959 . We hope these stories will spark happy memories for you and encourage you to share them on our website or even better make plans to attend our 60 year reunion and share them in person.

GPHS60  Coaches      (Part 2)

Howard MacAdam who was basketball coach our junior year and track and field coach our senior year left GPHS when we did and in 1961 took over as basketball coach and athletic director at Buffalo State University.  During his 9 seasons as coach there, he compiled a 140-75 record, took teams to 5 national tournaments and was named Western New York coach of the year during the 1966-67 season. His 1969-70 team finished 4th in the NCAA college division finals and he was named Eastern Coach of the Year. He also coached golf for 9 seasons and tennis for 2. He served as interim VP for Student Affairs at Buffalo State in 1970-71 before returning to the AD post. During his tenure, Buffalo State’s athletic program expanded from 9 to 18 teams, spent five years at the Division II level before returning to the Division III level in the late 1970s and its first varsity football program was instituted in 1981. He retired in 1985. He died on December 24, 2000 in Naples at the age of 76.

In June 1961 GPHS made another coaching change and named Ernie Bauer who had been the long time assistant coach to replace Ed Wernet as the varsity baseball coach. Bauer was a member of the class of 1950 at the University of Wisconsin and played third base for the Badgers. He was a good friend of Harvey Kuehn, the Detroit Tigers all star shortstop who played for the University of Wisconsin in 1951 and 1952. He earned his masters degree at Wayne State . He came to the GP School System as a math teacher and JV football coach in 1952. From 1953 through 1960 he was the backfield coach for the varsity football team and the assistant baseball coach. For many years, he was the manager of a Little League baseball team and coach of the Little League All Star team. He was also a Sunday school teacher at the GP Congregational Church.

Tragically, “ Coach Bauer”, as the GP News said he was “ known to thousands”, died suddenly on May 1, 1968 doing what he loved to do best—working with boys. He was coaching the 1968 GPHS varsity baseball team during a game when he died. He was only 44 years old and was survived by his wife Carol, 2 sons and a daughter.  In a front page article in the GP News, it was noted that he “ will be greatly missed but being the kind of man he was he would have said to all who missed him ‘Play ball. ‘ “

The other first year coach during our senior season was Don Zysk who took over a marquee program and continued to coach the tennis team to league and tournament titles. He coached tennis at GPHS ( and then GP South) for 28 years and was named Michigan Tennis Coach of the Year in 1988. He retired that year and moved to Palm City, Florida where he died at the age of 76 in 2013. He was survived by his wife Carolyn of 55 years, 2 sons and 2 grandchildren.

He was born in Grand Haven, Michigan and graduated from Grand Haven High School where he was amultisport  athlete.  He played on the school’s 1953 football team which was the only school football team to go through an entire season without a loss or a tie. That team was recognized by the Detroit Free Press as mythical state champions in Michigan in 1953.

Coordinating all these coaches was Frank Banach who served as the school’s athletic director.  He was a three year fullback and captain of Menominee High’s 1922 football team. His popularity became clear in November 1921. He injured his hip in a Menominee game and was confined to a hospital bed where the local paper reported that he had “close to an average of 300 visitors a day” and that he had been showered with so many “ flowers and luxuries” that his room had become too small to contain them. He became a three year fullback and captain at Western Michigan. Banach was named Captain of Western  Michigan’s 1927 team because “ he worked harder than any other member of the squad during the 1924 and 1925 seasons . “ When the captain of Western Michigan’s 1924 team first saw Banach, he said “ he does everything with a vengeance as if every game depended on it.  “That  was the way all  the 1959-60 GPHS teams approached every game and for that we thank Frank Banach for setting such a tone.  Banach graduated from Western Michigan in 1927 and came to coach at GPHS in 1928. He coached there for 40 years until he retired in 1968.  He coached football, swimming for 28 years and track for 25 years and served as athletic director since 1944.  By late October 1931, after four games, the 1931 GPHS football team was undefeated and unscored on.  Banach and Howard Poe were the coaches. Neither was head coach as they worked together.  Their efforts molded one of the best defensive teams in the Metro Detroit area.  The coaches instilled the spirit of cooperation in the team, the same spirit he instilled in all his coaches as athletic director and the same spirit those coaches instilled in all the members of the 1959-60 GPHS teams.  The 1931 football team’s halfback (a “ shifty” runner) and best punter was Ed Wernet who later became the GPHS football coach. He was inducted in 1964 into the Michigan High School Coaches Hall of Fame and was inducted in 1981 into the Upper Peninsula Sports Hall of Fame.  He died in 1978 in Grosse Pointe.  He was survived by his wife, his daughter, two brothers, a sister and two grandchildren.

Learning from all these extraordinary coaches, our own classmate Jon Rice coached at GPHS for 31 years. He  was inducted in 1997 into the Michigan High School Coaches Hall of Fame following his father’s induction in 1977. Jon was the first coach to be inducted into the Hall  of Fame whose father is also a Hall of Fame member.  Like the coaches who mentored us, Jon coached multiple sports including football, baseball and golf.  During his career, his teams won 19 conference championships.

Ron Schram

October 3, 2020