Like a commander to his troops, Air Force veteran Chuck Richardson would salute his Columbus North football players and fellow coaches and say, “I’ll be in the area all day.”
The saying meant that Richardson would be available to help if any problems arose or if anyone needed anything. He uttered the phrase frequently during his roughly 35 years as an athletic trainer and coach at Columbus High School and Columbus North.
Richardson died Saturday at the age of 91.
“He would tell stories to the kids, and he would have a tear in his eye,” said Tom King, who coached with Richardson in the early 1980s. “He had a heart of gold, and he was an emotional guy. He was very endearing to the kids and to the coaches and was a very nice, sweet man, genuine. He was a little kid in a big man’s body, and the heart of gold would just be there. You look at him and think he was a gruff bulldog, but he was just the opposite.”
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
One of the state’s first athletic trainers, Richardson worked at Columbus High School in that capacity from the late 1950s through the early 1970s. He also helped with the wrestling team in the 1960s.
In the 1970s, Richardson gave up training and began coaching football. But he helped a young trainer named Steve Souder, who is still the Bull Dogs’ trainer today, learn his craft.
“He was around for several years after he retired,” Souder said. “He kind of showed me the ropes at the high school as the new kid on the block.”
An Iowa State Teachers College graduate, Richardson taught science at Columbus and Columbus North and was the boys dean. He also spent time on the school board after he retired.
Richardson was an assistant football coach under Bill McCaa and later under Steve Gobert. Richardson also had been a trainer earlier in McCaa’s tenure as coach.
“Chuck was a special guy,” McCaa said. “Not only was he a good football coach, but he was an outstanding trainer. He loved kids. He loved people. He had a heart of gold.”
McCaa said North and Columbus East both are blessed to have full-time trainers. He said he was fortunate to have trainers like Richardson and Souder.
“If you’re a trainer on a football team, you are an assistant coach,” McCaa said. “You make decisions on whether a kid can go back in the ballgame after an injury. You’re at every game, every practice. You’re a key man.”
King, who graduated from North in 1976, coached the JV team with Richardson in 1980 and 1981. Richardson later was the freshman coach with Wayne Roberts, who now is an assistant athletics director at North.
Richardson mainly coached the defensive line.
“Chuck was very animated about things, not in a mean way at all,” King said. “Everyone knew his bark was worse than his bite, but everybody knew he deeply cared about the kids. He was one of the kindest men you have ever known, a kind soul. He was not about the bravado. He was not in it for himself. He was a little kid inside, and he loved what he did.”
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”At a glance” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
A funeral mass for Charles “Chuck” Richardson will be at 10 a.m. Monday at St. Bartholomew Catholic Church. Visitation will be from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday at Barkes, Weaver & Glick.
[sc:pullout-text-end]
