LINCOLN – The Eastern Maine athletic community is mourning the loss of Dale Curry, the longtime coach and athletic director at Mattanawcook Academy who died of cancer Saturday at age 64.

“He was one of the best buddies I ever had in education,” said Stearns High School athletic director Don Dow. “We went to a lot of meetings together. We talked about families, jobs, kids we had in school. He showed a lot of heartfelt compassion for all the kids he taught and coached, and I don’t know of a single kid who didn’t like him.

“I’m really going to miss him.”

Curry was a standout football player at the University of Maine, where he played fullback for the Black Bears in the late 1950s and early 1960s. As a senior, he started on the last UMaine team to go undefeated, Harold Westerman’s 1961 club that finished with an 8-0-1 record.

In the fall of 1962, Curry took a teaching and coaching position in Lincoln, and he never left. He coached high school football for some two decades, as well as track. He later served as assistant principal at Mattanawcook Academy and as the school’s athletic director, a position he held until his death.

“He had a very, very long run, and it was very much appreciated,” said MA principal Dick Greenlaw. “He touched a lot of people. He was a very nice person. He believed in the values of athletics, and he’d do anything to help anyone.”

Mike Carney played football for Curry during the mid-1960s and captained his 1966 team.

“When he first came to Lincoln, Lincoln had struggled in football. It had been a number of years without a winning team. But the first year the team tied a game. The second year we won one game. The third year we went 6-2.

“They dedicated the yearbook to him that year, and the quote under his photo said ‘Because he showed us how to win.’ That’s the kind of effect he had on people.”

Carney and Curry became close friends. Carney student-taught under Curry and later was on Curry’s MA coaching staff, while Curry worked in Carney’s restaurant business for a time, and also was in Carney’s wedding party.

“He was like an older brother to me,” Carney said.

A year ago, Carney became Mattanawcook’s head football coach.

“Right after I became the head coach, I was outside his office one day, and Coach gave me a big hug and said, ‘Welcome home, it’s good to keep this in the family.’ I still choke up every time I think about that.

“I may be the football coach here now, but Dale Curry will always be ‘Coach’ here at Mattanawcook.”

Carney is one of many of Curry’s proteges who went on to become teachers and coaches. Another is Mike Archer, who graduated from Mattanawcook Academy in 1986 and currently is the athletic director at Orono High School.

“He was a tremendous role model for me, the reason I got into education,” said Archer. “Coach Curry had a huge influence on me in high school. To this day I always call him Coach Curry. I’d never think of calling him Dale.”

In addition to his teaching, coaching, and administrative duties, Curry served on the Maine Principals’ Association track committee and was a member of the Maine Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association, for which he was a past member of the executive association representing Eastern Maine Class C.

Curry also was a longtime basketball official and a member of Eastern Maine Board 111 of the International Association of Approved Basketball Officials.

Ask anyone who knew Curry, and they’ll say that beneath his sometimes gruff exterior was someone with the ability to reach out to all he coached and taught.

“He had a profound ability to make it personal with every kid he came across,” Carney said. “No matter who they were, they had a personal relationship with Coach.

“There was one kid I talked to a week or so ago about Coach Curry who told me, ‘That man saved my life; I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t met that man.’ From kids like that to kids who went on to become doctors and lawyers, he had a profound effect on all of them.”

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday at Clay Funeral Home in Lincoln, with one of Curry’s former players, the Rev. Ronald Bean, officiating.

Plans are in the works to rename the Mattanawcook football field for Curry, and Carney said an effort is under way to raise funds to erect a sign at the field in Curry’s honor. Anyone wishing to donate to the fund may send checks to the Lincoln Maine Federal Credit Union, Box 200, Lincoln, ME 04457.