A Fete for Forrie

Hanover selectmen proclaimed Saturday, April 10, Forrest Branch '33 Day. Over 500 well-wishers gathered that night for the first social event in the new Rupert Thompson Arena where tributes came from throughout the world to the man who has been a high school coach longer than anyone else in New England.

A three-year football letterman at Dartmouth, Forrie has been head football coach and a teacher of social studies at Hanover High School since 1937.

He has also coached hockey, baseball, basket- ball, and track. In 1967 he was made the high school's Director of Athletics.

"The greatest athletic director the state of New Hampshire has ever known," said the executive secretary of the state's Interscholastic Athletic Association, and the many other accolades by coaches, officials, and students, past and present, paralleled his assessment.

There was a plethora of awards: From the NHIAA, the National Football Coaches Clinic, and the state's Football Officials Association, Baseball Umpires Association, and Football Coaches Association, to name a few.

Forrie Branch, who will continue through the track and field season as head coach, has made Hanover High's athletic program into the most comprehensive in the state, according to sports writers. His ability to do just that is revealed in a statement he made in a 1942 interview. "I like the kids I work with. We all like to play. A game's a game. That's the way it should be played."