Odessans are remembering Gary Gaines as both a football legend and a man of faith who made the world a better place.
Gaines’ family said in a statement the former coach died Monday in Lubbock after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 73.
Gaines may be best known in Odessa for his 1989 perfect football season and state championship but he’s known everywhere as the coach of the Permian High School Panthers made famous in the celebrated H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger book “Friday Night Lights.” That book would become a hit movie and later a TV series.
Former Odessa High coach Ron King and Gaines crossed paths several times during their careers, most notably in 1986 when King, fresh out of college, was hired to coach at Nimitz Middle School when Gaines was coaching at Permian.
King said that he came to the interview and was hired right after and had to make sure.
“He started talking about what I would be doing and I was, ‘I’ve got the job?’” King said. “He had so much influence on me, not only as a young coach but a young man right out of college.
“He taught me what I needed to be successful as a coach, how to coach kids and how to talk to kids to teach them to believe in themselves. I’ve had two men that were father figures to me and Coach Gaines was one of them.”
John Wilkins, who preceded Gaines as Permian’s head football coach and also as ECISD’s athletic director, said Tuesday he hired Gaines originally as an assistant football coach and then later hired him again to lead the Panther football program.
Wilkins said Gaines was a “fine man” who made an impact on coaching.
Gaines made many stops in West Texas during a 30-year coaching career, but was best known for his four-year stint leading the highly successful program at Permian. Gaines returned to Permian later in his career in 2009 to head the program.
His 1988 team was chronicled by Pulitizer Prizer winner Bissinger’s bestselling book, which portrayed a program and school that favored football over academics.
Gaines, who was played by Billy Bob Thornton in the 2004 movie, said he never read the book and felt betrayed by Bissinger after the author spent the entire 1988 season with the team.
The book, which portrayed Gaines as a compassionate coach caught in the win-at-all-costs culture of a high school program in football-crazed Texas, also was turned into a TV series.
Gaines led Permian to the fifth of the program’s six state championships with a perfect season in 1989. Gaines then left to become an assistant coach at Texas Tech.
He later coached two of Permian’s rivals, Abilene High and San Angelo Central, before returning to college as the coach at Abilene Christian. Another four-year run as Permian’s coach started in 2009, and Gaines also was a school district athletic director in Odessa and Lubbock.
Gaines was born in Crane in 1949 and he played for the Golden Cranes and then Angelo State before getting into coaching.
“I first met him when he started coaching in 1970 in Fort Stockton,” said Ronny Flowers, the founder of Athletic Supply. “I was a traveling salesman for a sporting goods company and dropped by and met him and we started a relationship that lasted until he passed.
“He was one of the greatest men I ever knew. He’s in a better place now, no question about it.”
Gaines had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for several years.
Gaines left Tech for Abilene High, San Angelo Central and finally Abilene Christian University.
It was there that King rekindled the relationship as he was coaching at Abilene Cooper at the time.
Gaines eventually moved back to the Ector County Independent School District as the athletic director, which would be another stroke of luck for King.
Back at Odessa High on Scott Phillip’s staff after leaving Abilene Cooper, King was hired by Gaines to take over the Bronchos’ program in March, 2006.
“I was there when he was inducted into the Texas High School Coaches Hall of Fame,” King said. “I just can’t find the words to pay respects. It’s a big loss for the coaching profession. There are a lot of coaches he took under his wing and mentored.”
“He had a lot of young coaches; he was a difference maker, like when you are coaching kids, you are trying to make a difference. I think Coach Gaines did that.”
Mickey Owens was another young coach in the right place at the right time.
Teaching at Monahans High School in 1985, Owens wasn’t on the coaching staff but took a chance.
Walking into the fieldhouse, he told Gaines, who was running the Loboes’ program at the time, that he was willing to do anything.
“He took me up on it,” Owens said, with a laugh. “He got a freebie out of me for a year.
“He was a super man. I did baseball in the spring and freshman football. But before he left for Permian in January, he made sure I was on the staff full time.”
It was a relationship that continued to this day, though Owens said it had been several years since he had spoken with Gaines because of his illness.
He chose to remember the good times, like after he was hired to run the Loboes’ program in 2005, he would invite Gaines back to talk to the team.
“He would come by and I would introduce him to the young coaches and they thought God had walked into the room,” Owens said. “And his old coaching instincts would kick in and he would start talking football with everyone.
“He told me one time that the roughest year he ever had was the year (1989) they won the state and national championship.”
One of the things that Flowers will remember about his longtime friend was his faith, honesty and commitment to the players on his teams.
