Three Times a Coach

A donor pays the ultimate compliment to the inimitable Whitey Burnham, who led the soccer, lacrosse and wrestling teams in the 1960s.

IT HAD TAKEN THE BETTER PART OF the morning, but the phone call finally found Alden "Whitey" Burnham '46A on Jekyll Island, Georgia, where he and his wife, Joanne, hide out while mud season makes its annual mess of Hanover. The call was coming from Stanley Smoyer'34, who shared his plan to make a $4.5 million gift so Dartmouth could build a new soccer stadium. Smoyer had just one request. He wanted permission to name it Alden "Whitey" Burnham Stadium.

This next moment is worth framing, because it captured a phenomenon heretofore unobserved in nature: Whitey Burnham speechless.

He is a man who has a one-liner for seemingly every occasion; a man who has spoken to roughly 200 Dartmouth alumni clubs and classes during his nearly halfcentury affiliation with the College; a man who remains the Hanover social circuits most sought-after emcee, toastmaster and auctioneer. Yet he suddenly couldn't squeeze out a syllable.

"He was overwhelmed when I told him," says Smoyer, whose two sons played soccer for Burnham in the 1960s. "I think maybe he dropped a few tears. I think we all dropped a few tears."

When the words finally started coming they were an uncharacteristic jumble. "I fumbled and hemmed and hawed," Burnham says. "To merely say 'thankyou' to something like that doesn't seem appropriate."

Even now, he has a tough time talking about it. A stadium? Named after him? But that's just Whitey. The way everyone else looks at it, Smoyer couldn't have found a more fitting name for his stadium. If you go looking up the coaching record of Alden H. Burnham—the wins, the losses, the championships, all that—you're already so deep in the trees you missed the forest.

Oh, he's got the resume: He was Dartmouth's first and last three-sport head coach, heading the soccer, wrestling and lacrosse programs simultaneously during the 1960s; he won two Ivy titles in lacrosse and one in soccer; he coached four soccer Ail-Americans and 14 lacrosse All-Americans; Dartmouth, Springfield College and the National Soccer Coaches Association have enshrined him in their halls of fame; and he was the College's assistant director of athletics from 1969 to 1989, helping to guide the athletic council through an era of seismic change.

But if you really want the essence of what makes Whitey one of Dartmouth's true treasures—and why everyone is so thrilled a stadium is going to bear his name—follow behind him as he visits Alumni Gym, which he faithfully does every Monday afternoon. He's 82, but other than the trademark white hair you'd never know it. A 1948 Springfield College graduate who has long espoused the benefits of physical education, he keeps himself in terrific shape. He still moves better than most 6o-year-olds. Which is good, because he covers a lot of ground on those Monday afternoons.

"The first thing he does is visit the secretaries," women's basketball coach Chris Wielgus says. 'After all these years he understands the workings of an athletic department well enough to know where the power really lies."

He goes office to office next, working each room like a politician on the stump, one handshake and one kissed cheek at a time. What should be a two-minute walk from one end of the building to the other takes a minimum of a half hour.

"He either stops everybody in the hallway or gets stopped by them," says June Marshall, Burnham's last assistant before he retired in 1989. "He just brightens everyone's day."

Burnham in Hanover and people just smile." As former football coach Joe Yukica puts it: "You mention the name Whitey

You won't find "days brightened" or "smiles caused" as columns in a coach's record next to wins and losses, of course. Yet when you try to measure the mark Burnham has made on Dartmouth, it's as good a place as any to start. "With Whitey, you can't really say his mark was a certain program or a certain title he won," says Jack DeGange, the Colleges former sports information director. "His mark is the relationships he's built and maintained during all the years he's been connected with the institution. With Whitey, it's always been about people."

Measuring in people, here's all you need to know about how long Burnham has been affiliated with Dartmouth: He was hired by Red Rolfe 31 to replace Tom Dent, who started coaching at Dartmouth in 1924. And when Burnham first arrived in the fall of 1960, he shared a locker room with Alvin "Doggie" Julian and Tony Lupien.

"Next to those guys," Burnham laughs, "I felt like a Cub Scout." In fact, he was already a seasoned coach, having put in a dozen years at the University of Delaware.

"He really looked l'ike a coach," says Edmund "Chip" Harvey '67, who captained the 1966 soccer team. "He dressed perfectly for every occasion, whether it was a practice or a game. He always had the perfect coach's clipboard, the perfect coach's hat, the perfect coach's shoes. If a photographer from the DailyD or the alumni magazine happened to stop by, they were assured to get a classic picture of a classic coach."

Yet if the classic coaches from that era were of the Vince Lombardi mold—demand respect, holler if you don't get it Burnham was different. He was never a screamer, never belittled players who made mistakes. He only insisted on two things: that his players put academics before athletics and that they enjoy themselves.

"He was not only a coach, he was a best friend," Steve Chase '63 says. "You didn't just like a coach like Whitey. You loved him."

Burnham worked his guys as hard as the next coach—in the days before there were lights on Chase Field, they'd practice penalty kicks until it was too dark to see; or there were the "foliage checks," the coach's euphemism for sprints. But he also kept his players laughing with that endless stream of one-liners: "You're playing Cinderella soccer—you'll never get to the ball"..."You're like a dog surrounded by four fire hydrants—you don't have a leg to stand on"..."That guy is so slow he could run all day in a rain barrel and not get to the other side."

"Stuff comes off the wall with Whitey," says John Carpenter '64. "If I had been smart enough to write them down I swear I could have made a million dollars with a book of those one-liners."

In between the laughs, there were some championships. The 1964 soccer team, the first Dartmouth squad to win an Ivy League title in that sport, has remained particularly close. At its most recent reunion, in the fall of 2004,12 playersfrom Oregon, California, even England returned to Hanover. "We came back because of Whitey," says Peter Barber '66, who organized the reunion.

The only conspicuous absence was the guy who scored both the game-tying and game-winning goals against Cornell that allowed Dartmouth to clinch that first tide. Bill Smoyer '67—an All-Ivy half-back and the younger of the two Smoyer boys who played for Burnham—had been killed in Vietnam. It's an ancient ache Burnham still feels, and getting through it all those years ago forged a bond between the Burnhams and the Smoyers that has withstood the decades.

"Whitey has a relationship with my parents that goes way beyond soccer," says David Smoyer '63, whose late mother, Barbara, was also close to Whitey and Joanne Burnham. "That's why my father was so pleased to be able to do this for Whitey."

It brings to mind perhaps the most important of all Whitey Burnham oneliners: "Nobody" he says, "goes through this life undefeated."

It's his way of saying that, in the end, wins and losses really don't matter the most. People do. "I know that sounds like heresy coming from a coach," he says. "But to me, it's always been how you handle the wins and the losses, how you learn and grow from them. That's what matters. My greatest moments in coaching always were with the people and the experiences we went through together."

Burnham likes to say his ideals prove themselves whenever one of his former players knocks on his door, because that's the ultimate validation his people-first coaching' philosophy was a success. Someday soon, a soccer stadium will stand as a tribute to it as well.

Lasting Impression Burnham leadslacrosse practice in 1966. A 2,000-seatgrass soccer stadium named for himopens in 2007.

Perhaps the most important of all Burnham one-liners: "Nobody goes through life undefeated."

BRAD Parks is a staffwriter at The Newark Star-Ledger.