Bowling Green State University Athletics
Bowling Green Athletes Pay Final Tribute To Beloved Falcon
October 24, 2000 | Football
Oct. 24, 2000
BY MATT MARKEY
BLADE SPORTS WRITER
BOWLING GREEN - The orange and brown umbrellas were lined up outside the sanctuary of the First United Methodist Church yesterday, forming just the kind of color guard Sharpie would have wanted.
Glenn Sharp was likely the most-loved Falcon ever. The 79-year-old former equipment manager died Sunday, October 1.
He didn't design game-winning pass plays and he didn't recruit 6-foot-11 centers. Sharpie did not have a direct impact on the wins and losses at Bowling Green State University, he just changed the lives of hundreds of athletes over half a century.
"I wish I had known what Sharpie was putting in my bag," said the Rev. Vic Cales, who played on the Denny Stolz football teams of the early 1980s. Cales told the impromptu reunion of five decades worth of BGSU football and basketball players that as an 18-year-old freshman, he initially thought that bald and weathered old fellow in the equipment room was just doling out pads and helmets and socks.
"I know now he loved every one of us, and he filled our bags with a lesson in how to treat every person with honesty, dignity and respect - and ultimately love," Cales said. "I wish I had realized what Sharpie was putting in my bag."
Sharpie started at BGSU in 1956, hired by the legendary football coach Doyt Perry. But Perry, who beat his equipment man to the pearly gates, saw beyond the racks of cleats and the baskets of warm-up jackets that cluttered Sharps world.
"I used Sharpie as a sounding board when I was coaching," Perry said some 20 years ago. "I don't think I ever coached a game when I hadn't consulted him. He had a better insight than the coaches or anyone else."
Sharpie had everything in balance. He treated the star and the fourth-stringer the same. He passed out stern reprimands and fatherly pats on the back in multiple daily doses.
"If you had a problem, he was the first guy you sought out to help you," said Ron Hammye, a BGSU basketball player from the 1970s who is now the head coach at Wayne State University. "And if you were skipping class or goofing off and your butt needed straightening out, Sharpie was the one to do that, too."
Sharp counseled players in his equipment room following practice, or on the many occasions they took advantage of the open door/open refrigerator door policy he and his wife Helen instituted at their Bowling Green home. While adjusting shoulder pads and fixing shoe laces, he also was a calming force on the sidelines.
"I'd often come off the field after a series and find a place on the bench so I could be near Sharpie," said Mark Miller, a BGSU quarterback from the 70s. "He could always help you keep your focus. And no matter what happened, he reminded you that the sun was going to come up the next morning. He kept it all in perspective."
For Dean Hall, a football player from the early 80s, Sharp was a visionary, a man who had figured out what the world probably will never know about how to treat others.
"Sharpie didn't care if you were black or white, rich or poor, a good student or someone who struggled in the classroom, all-league or all-nothing," Hall said. "If we could find a model for what society should act like, it would be him. He perfected tough love. He was every players biggest supporter, but if you did something wrong - the heck with the coaches, it was Sharpie you didn't want to face."
Sharp officially retired in 1981, but that was just to keep the folks at the state pension office happy. He never left the BG locker room, the sidelines or the hearts of those kids. Dan Hipsher played basketball at BG in the 70s, and has returned to Anderson Arena numerous times as the head coach at Akron.
"He was always the first person I wanted to see when I came back," Hipsher said. "Sharpie had a love for Bowling Green and the kids playing there that most people never knew about. You would go pick up your stuff for practice and he could read you instantly and just tell if something was on your mind. He was an in-house psychologist for the players, and he had a consistency as a human being that made you so comfortable just being around him."
Sharpie went into the hospital about a week ago, and soon succumbed to the cancer he had stubbornly fought off in 1992.
He stayed close to the players to the end, maneuvering his golf cart behind the Falcon bench when it became too difficult to walk those football sidelines any longer. As the man who equipped Nate Thurmond and Jimmy Darrow for their biggest basketball games, the guy who suited up Bernie Casey and Paul Miles and Brian McClure for epic battles on the football field, he was loved just as much by the Falcons of 2000. Senior quarterback Ricky Schneider kept vigil with the family as Sharpies final hours passed.
"They were always Dads boys, all of them," said Joe Sharp, who took over the equipment managers job at BG after his father retired.
"A lot of them he hadn't seen in years, and some of them even passed away before he did, but to Dad, that was his family too, and he loved every one of them. I always realized that people loved him, but to see such an outpouring from so many generations of players and coaches is really overwhelming. He meant a lot to a lot of people."
"He not only was a very close friend, but he was also like a father to me," current BGSU head coach Gary Blackney said.
"I would go to Sharpie and seek his advice. He had great wisdom about a lot of things."
Sharpie also managed to find a place in the lives of those who never gained the spotlight at BG, or stayed just a short time. Gary Pinkel coached just two seasons at BG, more than 20 years ago, but the head coach of the Toledo Rockets built a lasting relationship with Sharpie in that brief span.
"I was fortunate to have Sharpie as a good friend," Pinkel said. "He had the gift to impact everyone he touched. How I loved that guy."
At yesterdays service, Cales read a letter Sharpie had received years ago from a former Falcon who was never quite good enough to play for Bowling Green. This guy thanked Sharpie for always calling him by name, treating him like an important member of the team, and offering him the same respect and dignity that BG's best players received. The letter-writers only mistake was assuming Sharpie wouldn't remember him all those years later. He did.
That church was filled mostly with men who have the arthritic joints, the exposed foreheads, and the bulk that has dropped from their shoulders to their bellies to reveal that the time since their playing days has passed from years to decades. And as their stories of Sharpie resonated, tears and laughter finished tied on the scoreboard of emotion.
And when they were ready to take Sharpie from that house of worship and lay him to rest near his Bloomdale birthplace, they played Ay Ziggy Zoomba one more time for the most beloved Falcon of them all.
But just a word of warning to those checking in to Heaven today - that will be Sharpie passing out the halos and wings from now on. And if you forgot your shoes, don't worry. Hell just smile and find you another pair.
