A legend both on the field as one of Bates' greatest two-sport athletes and off the field for his dedication to football as a coach and staunch advocate, Howard S. Vandersea '63 died on Dec. 29 at age 81. 

After graduating from Bates as a history major, Vandersea served in the U.S. Army, then coached football for 37 years, including head coaching stints at Springfield College (eight years) and Bowdoin College (16 years), where he also coached tennis and softball.

Long active in the National Football Foundation, an advocacy organization for amateur football, he founded the organization's Maine chapter, which now bears his name.

While Vandersea's post-Bates career is impressive, his accomplishments while at Bates, as an athlete, teammate, and leader, remain equally vivid among his many friends.

"Howie was tremendous," said Thom Freeman '63, an All-American pitcher at Bates. "He was just as intense on the baseball field as he was on the football field. He was very athletic and very positive. Always encouraging everyone." 

Raised in Whitinsville, a village in Northbridge, Mass., about 20 miles southeast of Worcester, Vandersea matriculated to Bates sight-unseen in 1959 as a first-generation college student.

"My father drove me up and dropped me off in front of Roger Williams Hall, and that was it," Vandersea recalled in an oral history recorded in 2017. "I came from a factory town, and all of a sudden you're on a campus and everyone is very professional and you're meeting young people from all over the place — people you never would've had a chance to meet unless you were going to college."

A well-known schoolboy athlete in the Bay State, Vandersea was recruited to Bates in the style of the era. Dean of Admissions Milt Lindholm '35 sent handwritten notes, and head football coach Bob Hatch frequently visited Northbridge High School, where Vandersea starred in football, basketball, and baseball. 

Vandersea faced challenges both in the classroom and on the gridiron when he became a Bobcat. 

"We had classes six days a week," Vandersea recalled. "So we had classes on Saturday morning before we went out to play a football game. And people find that hard to believe, but that's what we did."

Grade inflation definitely didn't exist during Vandersea's era. 

"Academics ruled over everything, and people flunked out all the time," Vandersea said. "We started out with 250 students and graduated 160. Both my roommates flunked out my freshman year. It was very, very competitive. So you developed a survival mentality and you never missed a class, because you were afraid you'd miss something."

On the field, the rookie Bobcats learned to handle two-a-day practices that were fast, technical, and physical. 

"We had tackling during both sessions," Vandersea said. "I remember after the morning session we would just hang our stuff up on racks outside and wear the same stuff in the afternoon." 

The 6-4, 220-pound Vandersea arrived at Bates during the NCAA-mandated "one-platoon" era, where players had to play both offense and defense, almost never leaving the field. So Vandersea became a star on both sides of the ball, playing center and linebacker for the Bobcats. 

"Being a center and linebacker was kind of a position of notoriety," Vandersea said. "They even ranked the best ones in New England each week in the Boston newspapers. A lot of the people who made All-American, such as Dick Butkus, were centers and linebackers."

Vandersea originally had no interest in continuing his baseball career at Bates, as he didn't think he was good enough. He was a first baseman who, at the time, lacked power. 

Then Bates' rigorous academics reared their head. The incumbent first baseman for head coach Chick Leahey '52 was having trouble in the classroom, so he asked Vandersea to go out for baseball in his stead so he could focus on his studies.

Vandersea was reluctant at first, but he went out for the team. 

"The first batting practice I went to, I said, 'Do you want me to bunt?' And Chick said to me, 'You're not going to bunt for four years.'"

It was smart guidance. Playing every inning of every game for four seasons, Vandersea became a feared power hitter after Leahey helped him fix a weakness.

He noticed that Vandersea struggled with the low outside curve. Leahey pointed out that opponents would see a tall guy at the plate, and they would not throw him fastballs. Vandersea was going to get a lot of curveballs. The key, said Leahey, was to develop a better eye at the plate.

"We would go in the batting cage and he'd pitch to me for an hour, working on low outside curves and how to stay off of them," Vandersea said. "He taught me how to hit." 

Vandersea went from a player who had never hit a home run in his life to someone whose power became legendary among his peers. 

"When he got ahold of one, it went on forever," Freeman said. "He cleared the fence on the old baseball field, it had to be over 400 feet, one day."

By his junior year, Vandersea was well-established in both football and baseball as one of the top players in New England. As a team, the Bobcats found success on the gridiron when they took on the undefeated University of Maine Black Bears in late October of 1961.

The Bobcats had tied Maine the previous season, but the visitors from Orono entered this contest as a heavy favorite. No one expected the 2-2-1 Bobcats to present much of a challenge. But it turned out Bates had other plans, playing Maine to a 15-15 tie. 

"Goliath rallies to tie inspired David," declared The Bates Student. "The University of Maine Black Bears left Garcelon Field, Saturday technically undefeated, but a beaten club as far as the 4,500 cheering fans who looked on were concerned. The Homecoming crowd, which included members of the undefeated 1946 Glass Bowl Team, were treated to Bates' finest effort of the season."

Vandersea was named one of the stars of the game by The Student, mainly for his ability at center to handle the newfangled shotgun offense unleashed by coach Hatch against the unsuspecting Black Bears.

"Howie also should be cited for his job at the pivot post on offensive play," The Student wrote. "It is a difficult job to snap back a ball five or six yards to the shotgun man while two opposing linemen are breathing down your neck."

Vandersea was a must-see Bates athlete of his era, recalled Peter Slovenski in a recent Facebook post. 

Slovenski, the son of Walt Slovenski, the legendary Bates coach of men's cross country and track and field, recalls how, as a boy, he and his friends would "slide under the chain link fence into Garcelon Field to watch Howie and his football teammates. Howie was a defensive thunderstorm busting up plays and making acrobatic tackles all over the field."

The Slovenski family lived on Pettingill Street, where backyard football games followed a pre-game ritual. 

"We would stand in a circle to make teams and explain who they were going to be in the day's game. We loved to imitate our favorite players. The draft typically went like this:

"'I'm gonna be Jim Brown,' the first player would claim. 'I'm Roger Staubach,' would say the next boy. 'I'm Gayle Sayers,' a third would declare. 'I'm Howie Vandersea....'"

While the tie with Maine was the highlight of the 1961 football season, the Bobcats had even better results on the baseball diamond that spring.

Bates won its most games in one season since 1907 and was voted the best team in New England, earning a spot in the NCAA East Regional Championships, where they beat Fairleigh Dickinson before falling to Rollins College.

When venturing out of state, Bates was easy to underestimate, said Vandersea. They came from Maine, and many of the starters wore glasses. 

"Most of us when we came here, didn't wear glasses," Vandersea said. "But the amount of reading you had to do into the night, the library would close, we would go to a classroom to study until midnight. So you just wore out your eyes. And everybody, even the catcher, had glasses on at games. Other teams would just start laughing at us." 

They typically stopped laughing once the game started, as Bates went a combined 22-12 over Vandersea's final two seasons.

In Vandersea's senior football season, "the Hatchmen" posted a 5-3 record, the program's first winning record since 1957. Vandersea was named an All-American by two different organizations, but to him being named a co-captain, by a vote of his peers, was much more meaningful. 

"There's no greater honor a person can receive than being voted by your teammates as a captain," Vandersea said. "As a captain, you have to talk to people, but you also have to set a good example. You have to be in better shape than everybody. You have to be out there all the time." 

As a captain, Vandersea was ahead of this time, insisting that the veterans treat younger players fairly.

"When you first come to a college and play football, you're a little bit nervous because things are moving faster," Vandersea said. "You might get hit harder than you've been hit before. You don't harass those people. You don't haze those people. They're a member of your team. You've got to help them. Give them some advice, encourage them."

Bill Farrington '66 was a first-year when Vandersea was a senior. He and Vandersea both lived in Smith South and Farrington was also a fellow offensive lineman. Vandersea nicknamed Farrington "The Rookie," and it stuck. The two stayed good friends after both had graduated from Bates.  

"He was exceptionally good at reaching out to younger players," Farrington said. "He was always highly principled, a sportsman, just a role model from the beginning." 

Vandersea's accomplishments on the football field and the baseball diamond led to remarkable opportunities in both sports. The Chicago Bears and the Milwaukee Braves both wanted to sign him to a professional contract upon his graduation from Bates. 

Vandersea chose the Bears, then coached by George Halas. He remained in training camp for three weeks in the fall of 1963 before being released, a considerable accomplishment considering players were cut every day after practice. Vandersea dabbled in semi-pro football and had additional tryouts with the Bears and the Green Bay Packers before starting his collegiate coaching career in 1968 as a graduate assistant at Boston University, where he earned a master's in physical education.

His ensuing coaching career spanned decades, and Vandersea credited Hatch with helping him get his start. After Vandersea expressed interest in coaching, Hatch took him under his wing and said, "Why don't you come to Boston with me, they have a clinic in Boston and you'll get a chance to hear these coaches talk." 

"So he brought me to Boston with him. With Hatch, any time you needed a letter written, and any time you needed him to talk to somebody, he did it. He really helped promote his people." 

Vandersea worked for Hatch at a football camp the latter ran for a number of summers and Leahey was Vandersea's golf partner for many years. (They often took on fellow Bates legends Web Harrison '63 and Bob Flynn on the links.) These relationships were crucial to Vandersea's career.  

"Hatch and Chick set the groundwork for me on how to be a coach," Vandersea said. "They were the people that set the example on how to do it."

Even though he spent 16 years as the head coach at rival Bowdoin, Vandersea remained a dedicated Bates alumnus, joining and helping to lead numerous Reunion committees over the years.

"Bates left an indelible mark on Howie," Farrington said. "He was really proud of the education he received, and he was the glue that held his class together. Howie was always the guy to communicate with everybody." 

After retiring from Bowdoin, he helped his son Craig Vandersea coach the Bates baseball team in the early 2000s, and his impact was felt at Bates throughout the 20-year tenure of former head football coach Mark Harriman, who played for Vandersea at Springfield College. 

Vandersea has won many awards, including the Carens Award for Contributions to New England Football, the Citation of Honor from the Football Writers Association of America, and the All-American Football Association's John Vaught Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2012, he was inducted into the Maine Sports Hall of Fame.

As recently as last fall, Vandersea was helping one of the newest and youngest Bates coaches, Matt Coyne, get acclimated, joining alumni Zoom calls to talk to the football team. 

"Through my conversations with Coach Vandersea, I understood his passion for the sport of football and his impact on the state of Maine," Coyne said. "He was very supportive of my transition here at Bates, for which I am extremely grateful. He was a football legend at Bates during his time and it is very evident that this success carried on throughout his coaching career. My thoughts and prayers are with his family during this difficult time." 

Vandersea is survived by his wife of more than 54 years, Sara Jean; their children, Deborah and Craig; and several grandchildren. 

A memorial service for Howie will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 7, at First Parish Church at 9 Cleaveland St., Brunswick, Maine, followed by a reception at Cram Alumni House at 83 Federal St. Brunswick, Maine.