Legendary retired HF-L teacher and coach Walt Dyer turned 80 last month. Photo by Barb Dyer
BY DEB AND TIM SMITH
The 80th anniversary of D-Day takes on a unique double meaning in this story. On the afternoon of June 6, 2024, while the world was generally celebrating the anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, a more focused group of folks from Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima was at Dyer Straights celebrating the 80th birthday of retired HF-L teacher and coach Walt Dyer.
Walt’s wife, Barb, had arranged the surprise event which was attended by a nicely assembled group of family, friends and former student athletes. In addition to the fine food and drink, there was a centerpiece mural that collected photographic memories spanning the decades. The afternoon was filled with so many stories it would be impossible to share them all, but we have collected the most memorable for inclusion in this tribute piece to acknowledge the man whose influence was particularly impactful upon Tim’s life.
That story is one that I (Tim Smith, switching to a first-person perspective for the next portion of this piece) had already planned to tell at some point and the 80th birthday party just emerged as the perfect catalyst to create a transcendent salute to Walt Dyer… the Man, the Myth, the Legend.
For those of you who didn’t know him, I need to paint the overall picture because that is necessary for my personal piece to be put into perspective. Walt was tenacious and driven. Once his sights were set on a goal, the necessary steps would be taken for the achievement of said goal, and if some rules needed to be broken along the way, so be it. Authority figures had little or no authority over him.
Walt was funny. He was the ultimate practical joker and his humor was charged with a biting cynical sarcastic style that I know I tried to emulate in my personal interactions, my teaching, and my writing. As I sought to engage students in my 33-year high school teaching career there were many occasions when, after I managed to work the crowd for a big laugh, I would think to myself, “That’s just like Walt would have played it!”
The other part of Dyer’s dynamics was that he very consciously chose to exude a brash arrogance. It was part of his schtick. He boasted a bold bravado, a no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners approach to life. You needed to either get on his team or get out of his way. So it was that hard outer crust that most people associated with Walt but, for those within his realm, there was the heart of gold in that soft white underbelly which truly defined Dyer.
The timing in how our lives’ paths played out, played into how the relationship that developed between us was so significant. I moved back to Honeoye Falls in 7th grade, my father abandoned our family when I was in 8th grade, and I met Walt in 9th grade. I was a hard worker, solid student, and strong athlete and given my poor-kid-with-no-father status, he absolutely took me under his wing in so many ways.
He taught me to drive so I could get my license, even though I would never have the money to get a car until 6 years later when I started my teaching job. He was my JV soccer coach in 9th and 10th grade and the following summer when most all of the kids who were going to be on that next year’s varsity team arranged to attend the Colgate University Soccer Camp I had to pass because I didn’t have the money. Walt surprised me with the news that he had paid for me to go.
He gave me my first jobs, working at Mendon-Honeoye Falls Summer Recreation as well as working extra odd jobs with him. He had purchased a duplex on Monroe Street in the Village, a fixer-upper which had him living on the ground floor while we worked to prepare the upstairs to be rented. We also took on house-painting jobs around town.
When I left HF to go to the U of R and play soccer it was Walt who loaded his station wagon with all of my belongings and drove me to college. And not long after I was there, I got the call to walk over to Strong Memorial Hospital and meet his newborn son who he named Tim. It was almost like a passing of the baton where he had finished successfully raising his first son and now it was time to tackle #2.
When we were at Dyer’s birthday party, the stories were flying around like bats in the belfry and our journalist genes kicked in with the obvious idea that, “This would be a great story!” So, with the party in progress, we recruited some of the jesters in Dyer’s court to write up and submit their best tale(s).
We have wonderful results to share with you here and we need to kick in a concept we’ve never used before in our decade of writing for the Sentinel. From this point on, our article will have a rotating cast of authors beginning with one of HF-L’s greatest storytellers ever, and the man who co-coached skiing with Dyer for decades as well as the man who inducted Deb into the HF-L Hall of Fame, Bernie Gardner.
(by Bernie Gardner, retired HF-L coach, teacher)
Some of the most famous people in history were blessed to have gifts that normal people don’t possess. Beethoven was a gifted composer and pianist. Michelangelo was blessed as a sculptor and painter. Walt Dyer’s gift is the instantaneous recognition of a situation that can be turned into a prank. While there are too many Dyer Pranks to choose from, here are a few.
The Great Pool Prank
Back in the day, the current B-wing of the high school was then the middle school. [There was no school building on Quaker Meeting House Rd. yet.] It was my inaugural year of teaching, and it was the first day of my middle school swim unit. I had let everyone know that it was going to be the middle school’s turn in the pool but high school PE teacher John Heck must have not gotten the message, as when I let the students into the pool locker rooms, he was inside running laps around the deck, his routine workout when there were no classes.
I let him know we were now in there for the next six weeks, but I could see he was perturbed about missing out on his half-completed workout, so I didn’t pay any attention to his admonishment that, “They just put chemicals in the water.”
“No way,” I said, “I called them yesterday, and even so, those chemicals are never put in during the day anyway.” Heck shrugged his shoulders in defeat, and left as I got the students into the water for the day’s lesson. Each class was proceeding nicely until just before my lunch break, when the pool phone rang.
Answering it, I heard “Mr. Gardner, this is the middle school nurse, we seem to have a situation.” I nearly fainted, and I didn’t need to hear anything else, as immediately a crystal clear flashback of John Heck saying, “They just put chemicals in the water,” seared itself into my brain.
The nurse continued with, “Yes Mr. Gardner, we have had to send some students home due to what we believe is chemical burns from the pool.”
It was all I could do to not vomit. I had not even lasted a year, and my career at HF-L, and probably anywhere, was over. “Mr. Gardner, I have one student here right now, and I think it would be best if you could come down to see for yourself what is going on.”
“Yes,” I said, “I will be there as soon as the bell rings, as I have lunch next, see you in a minute.” I was “Dead man walking” as I made my way to the nurse’s office, my mind filled with horrible thoughts on just how bad this situation was.
Upon entering the office, the nurse pointed to a side room saying, “We have the student resting in there, waiting for his mother to pick him up. I think it would be best if, when you see him, you control your emotions.”
Willing my legs to move, I shuffled into the room, where I could see a screen blocking the view of a bed, with just a glimpse of a pair of feet covered by a blanket showing. As I stepped around the screen, the patient came into view, with a blanket pulled up to his chin… Walt Dyer was laying there with a giant grin.
“Gotcha, Gardner”!
My brain fizzled and froze. I’m thinking, Wait? What? This was just a prank? The water was fine? “Ahhhh!” I yelled as I ran to the head of the bed and started choking Dyer! “I’m going to KILL YOU Dyer!”
I did almost kill him, but it was from laughter. Once he stopped howling, he told me Heck had complained to him about how mad he was that I had kicked him out of the pool, and without blinking an eye, Dyer had sprinted to the Nurse’s office to enlist her help in playing this dastardly practical joke.
Walt’s genius in playing pranks was that it was created by a situation where just the thought of what was happening was enough to sell his evil hijinks.
(by Mark Borden, retired HF-L teacher)
Borden’s Intro Story
Hey Tim and Deb, Here’s a few thoughts. Thanks for doing this for a well-deserving “legend”!
I feel blessed to have known and worked with Wally Dyer. I don’t know anyone who put more time and effort and energy into looking for ways to make life more fun. Every class, every practice, every otherwise mundane activity was turned into a competition or a game or an opportunity to jab someone or pull one of his famous pranks.
I first had him as a teacher when I was in middle school. It was the year they were building the high school, so we were on split sessions. As middle schoolers, our day started at noon and finished at 5 o’clock. Even at that hour, he would stay late, almost every day and just play any and every game in the gym with us until well past suppertime. We loved it.
(by Mike McGory, coached soccer with Dyer)
The Bed Story
We were at a soccer tournament in Lewiston [near Buffalo] and the home team hosted the out-of-town players and coaches. Wally and I stayed at the Lewiston Varsity Coach’s home, I was mortified when he took us to our sleeping quarters and saw there was only one very small bed in the room. After the coach closed the door, Dyer looked at me and said in his trademark concerned vocal style, “McGory… don’t even think about it.” Needless to say, I did not get any sleep that night. Still the only guy I ever slept with – not that there’s anything wrong with that.
(by Liz O’Leary Rollins, HF-L teacher)
The Liz Rollins Tribute Story
I’m sure there are many great stories to share about Walt, as an alum, friend, coach, teacher, etc. In speaking for his teaching friends, Walt was always the one who got the party started! He made everyone laugh (and maybe made a few mad at his numerous pranks)! We all remember the faculty/staff competitions he would organize, including driving an obstacle course, ironing a shirt, and cake decorating, to name a few.
We always looked forward to lunch time with Walt, as we never knew what shenanigans were in store for the day! “Quarter in the shop-talk cup”, “Let’s take a vote”, “Bernie on trial”… those who worked with Walt remember these gems, I’m sure! Then there was always the “T-count” during basketball season and the “Exam Scam” week during finals!
(by Tim Smith)
The Posthole Digger Story
Here’s a funny story of a project Walt, Bernie Gardner and I were working on together. It was back around 1970 when they were building the Villager townhouses on North Main St. in Honeoye Falls. Walt was the Director of the Mendon-Honeoye Falls Summer Recreation program and we would work there every day until 3:00 and then go to work at the Villager.
Walt was friends with some guy named Smitty who was in charge of the building project. One of the jobs we were to undertake was to build fences around each of the decks of the 72 townhouses that comprise the Villager. So it was a repetitive process of using a manual post hole digger to dig holes at each of the corners before attaching the sections of stockade fencing.
We’re thinking that at least some of our readers would not be familiar with the concept of a manual post hole digger so here’s a quick summary. Ours had two wooden handles which led down to two metal shovel-like pieces at the end. You separate the handles, plunge the shovel parts into the ground as hard and as far as possible, then squeeze the handles together to hold onto and extract whatever dirt you’ve been able to loosen.
At its best it’s an arduous and tiring process, which is occasionally complicated when you run into a buried rock or tree root which you have to work your way around. At any rate, we would report to the Villager every afternoon and Walt would leave us to go meet with Smitty and receive instructions as to what today’s task would entail. As the summer wore on, the whole Smitty thing began to emerge as a storyline in and of itself. Walt would meet with him every day but we never saw the guy. There was an office with an air conditioner hanging out the window, and a door, and supposedly a Smitty behind the door, but he never came out.
So the running joke became whether or not there actually was a Smitty, or if it was just something Walt had cooked up as one of his many practical jokes. So keep that in the back of your mind as we transition back to the fence-building story. One day I’m digging a post hole and hit a rough spot I can’t hammer through, so I call Bernie over to take a shot at it. When he is also not able to make any headway, we call in the big guy.
With his typical macho bravado, Walt calls us a pair of candy-assed pussies and takes control. Mustering all his strength, he thrusts the post hole digger into the open space, and, Shazam! Sparks and fire and smoke all come spewing out of the hole, a flaming example of what happens when you cut through a heavy underground electrical cable with the two metal blades of a post hole digger.
Well, actually at this point in the story we’re going to have to refer to the tool as a “former post hole digger.” As Walt extracts the instrument from the hole the three of us find ourselves staring at a tool with two 5” U-shaped gaps melted into both blades.
In retrospect it’s funny because nobody got hurt. For the record, at the time it was kind of funny to Bernie and I, probably because we weren’t the ones who almost got killed. And we really aren’t saying this facetiously; if that digger had metal handles, Walt likely would have been a goner.
So here’s the one positive ramification of the story. Walt went charging toward the office like a raging bull and for the first time all summer Smitty’s white collar air-conditioned ass was out of the office and on site to inspect the damage.
The ultimatum was issued that the Dyer team would not be digging another hole until having access to a detailed schematic map of every underground cable in the complex. After issuing that demand, Walt, who never took a minute off of work in his entire life, turned to Bernie and me and announced, “Boys, we’re goin’ home!”
We’ve got one quirky end story we’ll tack on to finish this. All those fences we built back in the 1970’s have been replaced with one exception. If you drive by the gas station mini-mart in front of the Villager, you can still notice about a 20-foot length of old stockade fencing to the right of the mini-mart building there which separates the mini-mart from the Villager property. That was built by us and somehow survives as a vestige of that bygone era.
(by Bernie Gardner)
The Ice Cream Eating Contest Story
There are many of Dyer’s ferocious practice sessions that are still remembered today, but none of them come close to the “Great Ice Cream Eating Contest”.
It was held in the Spring, which hadn’t sprung, Track and Field season. The Boys and Girls had been running in the snow for days, due to a spring snowstorm, but on this occasion, the team had the use of the pool for half of practice. Walt had an ingenious idea of how to spend the second half of that practice. Have an ice cream eating contest.
He organized the competition into Boys and Girls divisions, with each “eater” having two “handlers” for encouragement and coaching. On the fateful day, Walt told all the kids to bring in their favorite ice cream, which he stored in the school cafeteria’s freezer for that afternoon’s event.
Taking place in the high school cafeteria, tables were moved around so that the contestants and their handlers were up front, and the crowd was looking forward at them. On the word “GO!” it became quickly apparent that Dyer had miscalculated on two aspects of an ice cream eating contesting.
Number one, a half gallon of ice cream is a lot of ice cream.
Number two, when that half gallon of ice cream has spent all day in an industrial strength freezer, it gets changed from ice cream to ice granite. The eaters were literally bending their spoons trying to get any ice cream to even eat.
It was impossible to hold the spoon by the handle as it couldn’t even dent the ice cream brick. If you held it as far down on the spoon as possible, it could be used to scrape or chip small fragments off the ice cream block, which then could be eaten, if that chip didn’t fly off onto the floor beforehand.
After an initial rush of cheering and chanting, the crowd soon realized that a half gallon of iced granite was going to take a long time to eat, and they weren’t going anywhere for a while.
Despite the obstacles, the eaters were making headway, but at a glacial pace, until one senior boy, in a flash of inspiration, decided to pick up the block of rock-hard ice cream in his hands, and then gnaw at it like a beaver eating a tree. It was a messy method. But somewhat effective, and urged on by his friends and teammates, he started to pull away for the win.
Soon afterwards, the winner of the girls division, using the spoon-scape method, finished as well. When the dust had settled, the cafeteria was destroyed. Flakes of formerly frozen ice cream had now melted on the tables, and the floor. The contestants were covered in melted and melting ice cream.
Many of the ice cream blocks were only half eaten, and they had to be disposed of, the tables cleaned, the floor mopped. The winners were presented with their prizes, everyone went home for dinner and to be tucked into bed by their parents.
Except for two of the contestants that is, who after a short while at home, had to be taken to the emergency room! Yes, the senior boy who won, after a while at home, started to feel a burning in his mouth and hands, so much so that his parents took him into the emergency room to find out that he had frost bitten his hands! And mouth!
The mouth was cured on its own as it wasn’t as bad, but the hands had to be bandaged up like the hands of a Mummy! He was out of commission for a few weeks, and even needed a scribe for taking notes and tests!
The other emergency room visitor was there because she chose chocolate chip ice cream! It seemed that ten days earlier, she had her wisdom teeth taken out. The rock-hard chocolate chips had opened up the newly healed wisdom teeth wounds, and she never even knew it until her mouth “thawed out”. That was a quicker remedy, some cotton gauze in the area until the bleeding stopped.
And that is why Walt Dyer is a legend, as only he could take a harmless ice cream eating contest, and send two people to the hospital in their relentless drive to win it.
It should be noted that they both quickly recovered to have outstanding track seasons, and both have gone on to lead exemplary lives since then.
However, I don’t know if they ever ate ice cream again.
(by Mark Borden)
The Battle of the Sexes Story
Then there was the famous “Battle of the Sexes” where he came up with weekly competitions between our faculty women and men – ironing clothes, hammering nails, a blindfolded obstacle course, packing a suitcase, cake-decorating, peeling an apple – basically anything his creative mind could conjure up.
(by Mike McGory)
The Sectionals Story
Wally won his first Soccer Sectional title in 1987, which was my first year as his JV Coach. To taunt him I had a poster prepared and placed in his office that said “# of Dyer’s Championships Pre-McGory-0, With McGory-1 for 1.”
(by Mark Borden)
The Lunch Bunch Story
When I started teaching at HFL, one of my favorite times of the day was our “lunch bunch”. Led by Walt, every day was an adventure. There were fines for “talking shop” – 25 cents for every infraction, which would lead to an eventual pizza party. Twice a year (midterms and finals), was the dreaded “Exam Scam” scandal season, where you had to stay on your toes with your proctoring assignments lest you got caught making the slightest misstep and were subsequently pilloried in the faculty room the next day.
You really knew you were in trouble when Walt offered to buy you lunch. That meant that he had gotten ahold of some piece of dirt on you and you’d be put on trial in front of your peers – a trial you had absolutely no chance of winning … regardless of the facts (one of Wally’s favorite sayings was “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story”).
(by Bernie Gardner)
The Teacher Checkout Story
At the end of each school year, before teachers can be released into their summer vacation, there is a checklist that must be completed, with one item being an inspection by the principal, of their teaching area.
For Walt, part of this inspection was his office, which at this time, he shared with fellow PE teacher, John Heck. Dyer was notoriously messy, but on this day, he came in early and cleaned up the office to unprecedented levels of tidiness.
As it was so early, and he had other items to fulfill, Walt waited to get the sign off from Principal Jim Dollard.
While Dyer was off running around, Heck brought Dollard down to the office to get checked off himself and when they saw the level of cleanliness, they decided to prank Walt by messing up the place, so that when he opened the door for Dollard, he would be shocked by the condition, whereby Dollard could chide him for his “cleanliness”.
It was the perfect plan, except Dyer had forgotten his car keys and had returned to the office moments after they had left. Upon seeing it messed up, he instantly recognized what the plot was.
Without a second thought, Walt quickly went into his desk drawer, taking out a pair of old glasses with one lens missing. Putting the glasses on the floor, he took a chair leg, broke the remaining lens, and then placed the chair on top of the lens, covering up the now cracked lens with some papers that had been scattered around.
Walt quickly ran down to the main office to find Heck and Dollard chatting. “Jim, you are going to be so proud of me, wait till you see how clean my office is!” Dyer exclaimed.
Practically skipping as he led Dollard and Heck back to the office, he laid it on thick about how much time he had spent cleaning things up and how he couldn’t wait for Dollard to see the result of all his efforts.
Upon opening the door, and seeing the disaster inside, Dyer acted shocked and perplexed as Heck and Dollard cracked up over his reaction, and teased him with “Clean? This looks just like normal.”
Walt played along before moving to put the office chair back in place. As he did, the broken glasses became apparent to all. “Oh man, those are my new glasses!” Dyer moaned. “Ahh, geeze, Barb is going to kill me, I haven’t even had them a week!”
The gloating looks quickly vanished from Heck and Dollard’s faces. Instantly, they went from heroes to zeros. It was like two balloons losing all their air. Dollard took out his wallet and gave Walt all the money he had, begging for forgiveness. Heck was mortified as well and gave Dyer a handful of bills, begging forgiveness.
At that point, Dyer goes “Gotcha Boys!” as he then explained how he had just turned defeat into total victory, ingeniously turning the tables on Dollard and Heck.
(by Mike McGory)
The Fast Food Story
Often, when we were coming back from a road game, we would stop at a McDonalds. Wally would have me discreetly leave the bus to get our food while he rose and gave a speech to the players about how they were representing the entire Honeoye Falls-Lima community and to behave themselves in a manner that would make community proud. Of course, he was only feigning sincerity so we could get our meals and not have to wait in line behind the players.
(by Mark Borden)
The Australian Rules Golf Story
Speaking of conjure up, Dyer and I invented “Australian Rules Golf”, an anything-goes approach to one of his favorite sports. A 2-versus-2 match where every hole had its own rules. Sometimes you’d have to play the entire hole with your putter; sometimes it was a reverse scramble, where your opponent picks which shot your team plays; another hole would be an actual running race to see who could get the ball in the hole first; or you’d have to play left-handed. Once again, Walt was always looking for a new way to make everything a little more competitive and a lot more fun.
(by Bernie Gardner)
The Ski Patrol Story
As a ski patroller at Bristol Mountain, Walt could get a reduced rate on lift tickets. This story took place during a gap between winter and spring sports seasons, but Bristol Mountain was still operating. Walt organized a group outing with some of the senior athletes who wanted to take advantage of the deal for a night ski pass.
He had arranged for everyone to get a lift ticket and rentals for a nominal price, and then after skiing for a few hours, he had gotten use of the Ski Patrol outdoor grill for us to have hot dogs and chips before skiing until closing time.
Unbeknownst to four good friends, it wasn’t the only thing he arranged. They were all on the girls basketball team and while they had not skied that season, they had past experience, and were excited to get on the slopes.
They went straight to the top of the mountain, and then slowly made their way down, cautiously. At the half way point on the slope, a ski patroller came up to them and asked them to stop. “Ladies, we have a problem. You clearly didn’t read the rules of the ski area, as you have just broken a number of them.”
The girls were embarrassed. And mystified. “Ladies, you need to follow me to the office so we can sort this out with the director”. Now the girls were scared. They were getting kicked off the mountain and they hadn’t even skied one run.
At the bottom of the slope, they took off their skis and trudged into the ski patrol building, where listed in giant letters, were the rules for the ski area. “Ladies, I want you to read these, while I go get the director.” Standing shamefully in front of the sign, they went down each rule, wondering what they had done wrong, as it seemed they hadn’t broken any of them.
“Ladies, if you come over here, you can now speak to the director”. As they turned toward the counter, up popped Walt!
“Hi Girls! You were going so slow, you were a danger out there”… “Gotcha!!!”
The girls screamed “DYER!!!” and did everything they could to jump over the counter to get at him. Of course, he loved every minute of it.
As one of the victims said laughing afterwards… “I felt every emotion simultaneously. Guilt for doing something wrong, even though I didn’t know what. Followed by feeling worried, flustered, then shocked. And then…rage and fury. I wanted to strangle Mr. Dyer!!!”
(by Mark Borden)
The Student vs. Faculty Story
Dyer was the organizer of countless student vs. faculty contests in volleyball, softball, floor hockey, soccer and football. It was a wonderful way to break down traditional barriers and connect students with teachers, something ALL of us benefited from. In short Walt has always had a genuine zest for life! And the best part is his willingness to share this true gift with anyone he comes in contact with.
(by Bernie Gardner)
The Final Exam Story
The best prank that ever was played upon Walt himself was during the end of the year finals testing.
For finals, it’s all hands on deck for the teaching staff in regards to proctoring final exams. Given in the gym, a number of classes will be lined up in rows, with the subject and teacher listed on a placard placed on the front desk. It was the duty of the proctoring teacher to take care of everything in regards to the testing.
In a staff meeting prior to finals, Principal Jim Dollard had made it clear that this assignment was to be taken seriously. “Be on time. Check attendance. Pay attention.”
On this fateful day, Walt was in the faculty room having meaningful discussions, when he looked at the time and realized he was due to hand out and proctor an English test in 5 minutes! Jumping up, he sprinted to the office, slowing as he entered to give the impression of calmness. Once he got the packet of tests, he strolled to the door, and then sprinted all out to the A-Gym.
Entering the gym, in a dead sweat, he looked at the rows of desks, with tests already placed on them, with the other proctors taking attendance. Starting to panic as he scanned the names of the classes on the rows of front desks, he realized he must be in the wrong gym.
Briskly walking out of the A-Gym, Walt set a world record in sprinting over to the B-gym. Soaked in perspiration, and now in a full-blown panic attack over what Mr. Dollard would say to him, he burst into the B-gym where another group of students were testing. Hastily striding along the rows of desks, he again couldn’t find his class of “testees.”
By now it was 10 minutes into the testing time and Dyer was running out of options. “Maybe they are giving the test in the classroom itself,” he thought in a last-ditch option. Once again playing it cool, he strode confidently out of the B-gym, and then went full tilt to the second floor of the A-wing, looking for the classroom, praying to find the missing class.
Arriving out of breath, and frazzled, he opened the classroom door to find… no one. Could it be that he had somehow missed the class in the A-gym at the beginning of this pursuit? Down the stairs Walt galloped, before strolling past the main office looking like he had not a care in the world, he then raced to the A-gym again.
Peeking in the windows, his worst nightmare was happening. Principal Dollard was standing just inside the door! It was time to face the music. Somehow, Dyer had not only violated Dollard’s commandments of being on time, checking attendance, and paying attention, he had lost his whole class. Peeking inside the gym, Walt motioned for Mr. Dollard to join him in the lobby.
Throwing himself on the mercy of the court, Dyer explained the situation, leaving out the fact that he had been running late from the very beginning! Strangely, Mr. Dollard didn’t seem angry, in fact he seemed amused. “Walt, did you ever look at who is in that class?”
“Ahhh, no,” Dyer said, as for the first time he looked to see who he was supposed to be testing.
“George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Davy Crockett, Mickey Mouse… What?!” Dollard could barely keep it together as he explained that that test had been given in English class a week ago, and the teacher had come to him to see if he minded if he didn’t tell Dyer that the exam had already been administered. It was assumed that Dyer would, of course, see the fake names and realize he was just being teased, and didn’t have to proctor at all!
Never in their wildest dreams did they expect to get Dyer running all over the school in a cold sweat panic! To his credit, Walt tells that story with as much relish as he does his own “Gotchas”!
(by Mike McGory)
The Summer Rec Story
As you know, I was his favorite whipping boy at Summer Rec. He enjoyed physically punishing me for minor crimes, primarily for ridiculing his favorite athlete “Pete Rose”. He would make sure there was an audience and would proceed to twist my arm until I said “Pete Rose is the greatest”. At one encounter, he even used my head to mop the floor.
(by Bernie Gardner)
The Battling Dyer Story
One aspect that has made Walt Dyer a legend, is his coaching and teaching style. In fact, during the Golden Era of Dyer, his high school gym class was so popular that he not only had his scheduled students sprinting down the halls to get there, he had a hand cramp from writing so many passes to allow kids, not in that class, to get out of study hall and come to the gym.
Due to the rotating class schedule, as a Senior, once every two weeks, it could be possible to have PE, two study halls where a Dyer pass would get you back into the gym, and if you skipped eating lunch to stay there, you could spend basically the whole day battling Dyer.
Yes, battling Dyer. The reason everyone wanted in on gym, was that Walt made everything a competition, and those competitions were bigger than the Super Bowl. A new unit of activity would look something like this:
Introduction of the sport, Rules of the sport, Drills and skills to learn or improve your ability to play the sport, and then… let the games begin.
Walt would separate groups into even teams, and then make that contest seem like it was the deciding game of the World Series. He’d post the classes’ standings of the set’s round robin tournaments, and as he refereed, he would commentate in ways that were both inspiring, entertaining and challenging.
Walt’s glory days however were in units where he himself would play, like badminton. Dyer was the King of the Badminton Court. And everyone wanted to take his crown. With a badminton racket, Dyer had a dexterity matched only by the world’s best brain surgeons.
He could do whatever he wanted with the birdie, and would drive his opponents dizzy with his ability to stop them from barely scoring a point. That didn’t stop everyone from trying. Dyer would mostly play himself versus a doubles team, to make it interesting. And he never lost.
One time he told a cocky senior he could beat him sitting in a chair, and he did. He took the chair out onto the court, then quickly carried it to wherever his opponent’s birdie was going, set it down, sat in it, then played the point. And yes, he won.
During the Volleyball unit, he also organized a regular faculty versus students game that played once or twice a week right after school. It was a must-see event and garnered a lot of respect between the teachers and students that played and spectated. Action followed him like it was his scent.
It’s important to remember that Walt Dyer made everything a competition, be it in his PE classes, or in his coaching realm. In coaching, he constantly dreamed up ways to make every drill, no matter how small, into a contest, even going so far as to handicap it by giving some athletes head starts in races, or giving a team a two-goal lead to start with.
In Nordic Skiing for example, everything was a race. Running time trials, skiing time trials, relay races on one ski, or with one pole, or in pairs holding poles. There was never a dull moment.
Competing in a real race or game was a piece of cake as you didn’t have Dyer smack talking or teasing you like in practice.
His athletes were like hardened steel from the constant skirmishes they waged against each other…and Dyer!
(by Tim Smith)
The Epilog Story
(To Walt…)
I can still remember like it was yesterday, the feeling I had riding in that convertible down Main Street during my induction into the Honeoye Falls-Lima Alumni Hall of Fame in 2004. Approaching the four corners, with the bridge and the falls looming on my right, I looked up to my left and saw you emceeing the ceremony from the second-floor balcony of the Masonic Temple / Wilcox Building and watched you exuberantly extend that left arm with an emphatic thumbs up as you announced my name. Absolute chills… combined with total humility. Embracing my brain at that moment was the honest admission that, “I don’t know if I’d be here if not for you.” I truly cherish this opportunity to be the spokesperson for generations of former students and athletes who share that sentiment and would like to add their thanks to this Walt Dyer-defining document. We feel honored to be able to do this before the lights go out. Thank you for being the father I never had. Love ya, Dad.
