A Bob Ettinger column...



ASHTABULA — In the coming days, weeks and years, tributes, memorials and monuments will be made to SS. John and Paul assistant football coach John Buskirk. The multitudes of people — including those who never met him — that were touched in even the smallest way by the teacher and football coach have been relaying stories to anyone that will listen about the impact he had on their lives.

That impact was profound and no doubt has changed people’s lives. But it pales in comparison to the everlasting effect Buskirk, who was laid to rest Saturday in Mount Pleasant Cemetery following a mass of Christian burial at Assumption Catholic Church in Geneva after losing his battle with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), had on the students and athletes under his tutelage.

“As teachers, you don’t know the influence you have over children,” SJP Principal Bina Larson said. “Sometimes, you don’t think you have any at all. I read recently that children don’t remember what you taught them, but how you made them feel. Not too long ago, one of the kids came back, one of the girls, I never had her in class, said I always made her feel happy here.

“I taught John. I was always proud of the man he was and of the direction he’d taken. I’m proud of the school and any part that we shared in that. I’m proud he shared part of his life with us. You always remember how people made you feel.”

The impact Buskirk, a 1993 St. John graduate, had on his students and athletes was immediate. He had a way of letting them know he cared. He gained their respect. Most of all he gained their trust.

“Buskirk was my track coach at Harvey and was one of the most inspirational people I have ever met,” Ashley Schaefer wrote as a comment on the Buskirks’ blog after learning of John’s passing. “You could tell that he loved what he was doing, and it quickly gained him so much respect from his students and athletes.”

Buskirk was the exact kind of educator and coach every parent hopes his or her children have.

“I was honored that my son played for John and Devlin (Culliver, the current Harvey coach),” Harvey athletic director Mike Mohner said. “As a father, you hope your child will forge a relationship with a coach. I’m 100 percent certain (Mick) will instill those life lessons he learned from John in his own children and other young people he might come in contact with.”



The classroom

Buskirk loved being a teacher even more than he loved coaching football. After he was first diagnosed with ALL, his biggest regret was that he would have to leave the classroom he taught history in at Harvey High School in order to begin the process of beating the disease. One of his greatest thrills was returning to that classroom after beating the disease into remission the first time.

“It does shed a light on all teachers and educators and the impact they have on kids,” Mike Mohner said. “John taught (his students) a lot.”

Almost universally, the students Buskirk taught mention his sense of humor as a big reason they call him their favorite teacher. They mention how he was always smiling and trying to make sure they had a good time in class.

“I had him for senior history,” Laura Criss wrote on the blog. “He was so funny and energetic. He really cared about all of his students. I remember one time in class he separated me and Nicole because we talked too much. But he gave in and let us sit by each other again.”

That sense of humor disarmed many of his students. It also helped them to feel as if they belonged in his classroom, no matter how much they felt they were an outsider.

“The students not good at schoolwork have walls built up,” Abby Santiago said. “They don’t want to let any-body in. They feel like they’re not smart or any good on any level. With him, he made it OK. If you didn’t know something, he’d show you. He was there to help guide you through it, whether it was by cracking a joke or doing something else.”

“Mr. Buskirk was my history teacher at Harvey, he was an amazing teacher, he always picked on me for my clumsiness, I always looked forward to going to his class,” Christen Evans wrote .

“My son, Zach, had John for a class the first year he attended Harvey High School in 2006 (when we moved here from out of state),” Andrea Lester wrote on the blog. “He was an inspiration to my son and his favorite teacher. John made my son feel welcome to a new school and he was a wonderful teacher and helped my son excel.”

The sense of humor only helped the students learn a little easier.

“He made things fun,” Natasha Strong said. “Making it funny was a way to make it stick.”

He wanted his students to be at home, but he also wanted them to succeed. That was a big reason his students gravitated toward him. It was also a big reason they let him in at all.

“Teachers are close with their students, no matter where they are, but at a Catholic school, they’re really close,” Larson said. “You get to know them more as people because you spend more time with them. You share their faith. You try to help them develop not only intellectually as well as spiritually and emotionally.

“You work with them on developing their personal character as an individual. John had a gift. They knew he cared deeply. He was firm with them because he cared and wanted them to be the best they could be. They appreciated that he loved them enough to be tough on them. That doesn’t happen much anymore.”

Showing he cared also entailed sticking with a student, letting them know one mistake wasn’t going to make him give up on them.

“At Harvey, you’ve got to be tough,” Steven Poth said. “He didn’t take anything from anybody. But he wasn’t the type to give up on students.”

“He didn’t give up on students,” Santiago said. “Whether we were hard-headed or not, he kept pushing. He had great character. He wasn’t just a teacher. He would get on the students’ level and try and understand them.”

“He just kept trying,” Stephanie Luke said.

Patience was also helpful in the students taking to Buskirk.

“He would always be happy,” Adrianna Iarocci, whose dad Nick, was one of John’s coaches at St. John, said. “I had him for a whole year and he raised his voice one time. He kicked a desk. He limped for a whole week. It became this big joke because Mr. Buskirk flipped out this one time.”

But showing he truly cared didn’t stop at helping a student receive a good grade or allowing them to sit next to a friend despite talking too much. It went far deeper. And that made all the difference to his students.

“I lost my father to a doctor that made a wrong decision,” Amanda Henry wrote. “When I went back to school, I was very depressed and just cried all day long. I had Buzz as a teacher twice, I was also a teacher assistant for him, and I was a water girl when I was a sophomore. Well, at the time I was his assistant, I went to his class and he asked me what was wrong. I told him and he said a lot of inspirational things to me to help me cope with the loss.

“He even offered my boyfriend money to take me out to eat. He was also around when my grandmother died from liver disease. Hospice brought her to my house because she wanted to be with her grandkids. There, we watched her get worse and pass away. Buzz helped me at that time, also. I am very thankful that I knew such a wonderful man, great teacher and inspirational coach.”

And it was because of situations like those that his students made a point of leaning on him when they needed strength.

“Whenever I had a problem, I went to talk with him about it,” Natalie Shepherd said. “He always had the best answer.”

The fact Buskirk was back in the classroom after sending the ALL into remission the first time showed his students just how much he truly cared.

“When he came back after he was first sick, that showed he was dedicated, loved his job and loved working with kids,” Santiago said. “It showed he was a strong and powerful man. He had what it took to come back and he didn’t give up.”



The field of play

Coaches, especially football coaches, are supposed to big, angry men that yell and scream a lot. Players are supposed to fear them, at least from the dog days of August through Halloween.

At least that’s the perception. In truth, the people involved in coaching high school sports are entrusted with a monumental task.

They are to help young student athletes excel all the while helping them grow from teenagers into adults. It can be a thankless job. Many athletes and parents are indifferent toward coaches.

But Buskirk was appreciated by both his athletes and their parents. They seemed to understand just what kind of coach Buskirk was.

“John was a great role model to both my children,” Cheryl Johnson wrote.

In total truth, Buskirk was loved by his athletes.

“I was a freshman at Harvey and playing softball at the time that Buzz wrangled me into throwing the discus for the Harvey girls track team,” Abby Miller wrote. “A year later, I would be setting the school record because of him, and four years later, I would be attending college to coach like he did. He was an inspiration to watch and truly cared about his athletes and students.

“Like Ashley (Schaefer) said, he loved what he did and he will continue to be one of my driving forces to finish college and continue what he taught me. He was the best coach I ever had.”

“It was just John,” SJP head football coach and strong personal friend Jim Timonere said. “It was just his personality. They’d see a guy that, no matter what happened, was willing to go the distance. He was dying to coach.

“He probably came back too early, but there was no stopping him. He was on the sideline or at practice, no matter how mad (his wife) Jess or I got. The kids saw that level of dedication and fight and wanted to be involved. They can’t help but be attracted to that.”

Buskirk also loved his athletes.

“He just loved being around the kids,” Jessica Buskirk said. “He loved helping kids. He always wanted to help everyone of them. He wanted every kid to be a success on the football field and in the classroom.

“His willingness to help kids, especially the kids at Harvey that came from broken homes or didn’t have a lot, was special. He was willing to buy them shoes or give them money, if that’s what they needed. He was willing to do anything for any of the kids.”

As a coach, Buskirk would go the extra mile for just about any of his current and former athletes no matter the situation.

“I was always thankful to him because he helped me when I got in trouble at school,” Joe Dinallo, who has gone on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Ashland University and is working on a master’s degree at John Carroll University, said. “He wrote a letter in my defense. He kept me in school. I might have gone to college, but I definitely wouldn’t have stayed.”

For his players to be successful, a coach has to believe in his players. He also has to build them up instead of tear them down. Buskirk had a way of doing both.

“As a sophomore, I was competing with two other quarterbacks to be the starter at Harvey,” Mick Mohner said. “If he didn’t have faith in me as a young sophomore, I don’t think I’d be playing college football (at Wayne State University) right now.”

Buskirk’s willingness to forgive wasn’t saved for just the classroom.

“We were playing Jefferson my sophomore year,” Mick Mohner said. “We were down 19-7 and we were driving. We were on the 1-yard line and had four plays. There was a pass interference on fourth down and the clock was running down. On first down we ran a trap. On second down, Coach told me to spike the ball. I decided to try and run. I didn’t exactly make it.

“He yelled at me a little bit, then he came over with a smile and said, ‘You won’t make that mistake again.’ I said I wouldn’t.”



A time to learn

During John Buskirk’s long battle with ALL, he continued to teach his students and athletes lessons. The difference was that instead of teaching a history class, he was now teaching life lessons.

And his students and athletes were still paying close attention, using his fight as inspiration. It’s just what he would’ve wanted.

“He’d want them to take his fight as inspiration,” Jessica Buskirk said. “His passion for living, his love for coaching football, teaching kids, being with his family and friends, how much he fought and took should be an inspiration.”

The biggest lesson the kids learned was about courage. Deeper than teaching about standing tall in the face of fear was teaching to keep plugging away.

“Words can’t describe how much it hurts,” SJP player Jacob Flautt said. “It’s extra hard on us as seniors with how much he’s done for us and how inspirational he was. Buzzy was a man that would never give up or let down. He lost an eye and part of his nose and he still wanted to live and fight. He wanted to go on fighting no matter what.”

“It’s got to be perseverance,” Timonere said. “He was there every day. He wanted to be there. He taught them to never give up. He would joke about (his illness). Someone would say their knee hurt and he would say, ‘Hey, I’ve got cancer.’

“He made light of it. He showed them it could be much worse and he was still out there. The way he fought, his zest for life, the way he wanted to keep going, the fact he always put other people first, is something I’ll take from him, let alone the kids, the adults, the fans and the parents. Buzz could walk into a room and it would light up. He was a special person. It was that way even on his last day.”

The way the Buskirks fought ALL with a positive attitude the whole way set a great example for the players at SJP especially.

“He was very influential to us just with his fight with leukemia,” Eric Simon said. “He was always positive.

“He was definitely a role model in my life. He kept fighting and was willing to do whatever he needed to do to get through it. He always had a positive attitude and it was never about him. He never worried about himself. He was thinking of the wellness of other people.”



A living legacy

It is said our future will be defined by the young people in our society. If those young people John Buskirk impacted so greatly pass on the lessons they learned, the future will be bright.

Patrick Stocker, Jessica’s brother, used a quote from the movie “Gladiator” in a eulogy at the funeral. It seems quite fitting for the situation.

“What you do in life echoes in eternity,” Stocker read a quote from Maximus, Russell Crowe’s character in the film.

In the case of John Buskirk and the impact he had in the lives of his students and athletes, that quote seemed to say it all.

“John will never die,” Larson said. “Each of those boys will take a piece of John. He taught them something and that will, like a legacy, live on and will be transferred on to someone else. He was a man of great faith and great strength, yet he was still very human and they could relate to that.

“That made him special and they could see that. He didn’t try to be holier than thou, but he did try to be a good person. Those boys learned a lot, not just about football, but about how to be men.”

“Coach Buzz will always be in my heart,” SJP quarterback Jake Phelps said. “He showed me what Herald pride was. The story of Coach Buzz will always be in my heart through my whole life.”

That’s the greatest memorial anyone could give a man. John Buskirk would be proud his legacy lived on in his kids and was passed on to theirs.

“He’ll always be with those boys,” Jessica Buskirk said. “They’ll never forget. They’ll always remember what he taught them, just like he’d never forget them.

“If the boys can take anything from this, it’s that John believed in them. It would ease his mind and it eases my mind that we didn’t have the chance to have kids because these kids have been a huge part of his life and my life. They’ll remember what he taught them and carry it on with them. It would make him feel better that we didn’t have kids because they were part of his life and they will instill in their kids what they learned from him.

“They’ll remember him the rest of their lives.”

The boys themselves know they will help his legacy live on.

“We all loved Buzzy,” Stephen Robison said. “We all want to be like him. It’s not a burden to try and keep him alive. We’re happy to do it. Like Buzzy was, the way he lived is what we want to try and be.”



Ettinger is a sports writer for the Star Beacon. Reach him at bettinger@starbeacon.com.