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Obituaries

Ivy Loftin: Dondero Coaching Great, Community Leader

Royal Oak legacy cemented firmly as friends and former players gather for funeral today.

They take high school boys and start forging them into young men, instilling them with values like integrity, sportsmanship, sacrifice and fearlessness.

The community high school football coach does more than orchestrate X’s and O’s on the playing field, and for a couple of generations’ worth of Royal Oak students, nobody did it better than Iverson “Ivy” Loftin. The former Royal Oak Dondero football coach and teacher died Wednesday. He was 84.

When you think of football coaches on any level — high school to pros — most people cast an immediate vision of a square-jawed tough guy; of thick-necked intensity; and an unflappable leader driven to success. Loftin embodied many of these evergreen traits, especially the latter, as he guided Dondero football teams of the late ‘50s through the early ‘90s (1959-92 – 33 years total) to league and state championships, including a few seasons where his squads finished the season unbeaten.

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Loftin was elected to the Michigan High School Coaches Hall of Fame in 1984 and is a member of the Royal Oak High School (Dondero) Hall of Fame as well as the First United Methodist Church in Royal Oak.

Loftin was married to Patricia for 60 years and they had daughters Cynthia, Adrienne and Melinda, according to Loftin’s death notice from . A service will take place at 11 a.m. today at the , 320 W Seventh St., Royal Oak. Memorials suggested to the Parkinson Foundation.

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While Loftin was focused and unrelenting — like many coaches and community leaders must be — he owned characteristics that made him unique to not only the game, but to the Royal Oak community.

Jerry Barich was Dondero’s athletic director from 1983-2000. He remembers Loftin as a successful football coach who got the most out of his players. And while football coaches need to be firm, Barich said that Loftin had a multi-dimensionalism that was, and arguably will remain, unrivaled.

“The biggest thing I remember about Ivy was that he was the most innovative football coach I’d ever known,” Barich said from his home in Troy. “Some coaches have a system and the kids who come to play for that coach have to fit into that system. Ivy had a new offense every week. Other teams couldn’t scout Dondero because they didn’t know what they were going to do. They wouldn’t do the same thing twice.

“He had a wealth of knowledge of football. He was misplaced as a high school coach. He belonged in the college ranks. Football was everything to him.”

Evidently, so were a couple of good jokes.

“You think of football coaches being big, rough football guys,” Barich said. “But he had the best sense of humor. At lunch we’d get together with other staff in the lounge in the basement and he would tell story after story and you’d laugh through the entire lunch period. He was fun to be around, as intense as he was, he never lost his sense of humor.”

He never lost too many football games, either. The high school football landscape is considerably different today than it was in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Firstly, Royal Oak had two high schools — Dondero and Kimball — on opposite sides of town and each one losing absolutely no love toward the other. They met once a year at the last game of the season. Former players recall that thousands of people would turn out for that grudge match, that fans would be shoe-horned into the stands. This was Loftin’s stage and he prepared his players to excel with a cunning blueprint, racking up league and state championships.

Royal Oak resident James Reese was a center and linebacker on the 1966 Dondero team under Loftin. That team went unbeaten (it tied Kimball, 14-14, in the final game) before winning the state championship. Reese speaks in terms of respect and admiration when he talks of Loftin. Reese recounted some of the tools of communication Loftin used to get through to players.

“I think very highly of the man,” he said. “He would speak to us in a childish voice when he thought we were being childish. And it wasn’t funny because you knew that was about as easy as the conversation was going to get. It wasn’t going to get any better after that. He would put one hand firmly on your facemask and make sure he had eye contact with you. He was never violent, never hurt anybody, but he had a way of getting your attention.

“He was a major believer in toughness and conditioning.”

Barich, who played for crosstown rival Kimball in high school, agreed.

“We used to think Dondero had the toughest kids around,” Barich said.

And while Loftin made sure his players were ready for the game on the field, he also stressed the intangibles that lead to success, both on the field and off.

Keith Leenhouts is a retired Royal Oak Municipal Court judge (1959-69). He and Loftin became friends in the ‘60s through Lions Club meetings. Before the big Dondero-Kimball games, respective coaches would bring their team captains to the Lions Club to talk with members about the game. Leenhouts said he liked Loftin from the onset and the two formed a friendship that would last decades.

“I was impressed with Ivy,” Leenhouts said. “He didn’t talk big at those gatherings. He always talked about what he’d hoped his kids could do. There was nothing bragging about him. I took an immediate liking to him.

“After each game, win, lose or draw, I’d say to him ‘Ivy, what did you do? And Ivy would say, ‘I passed the ball,’ and I would tell him ‘You should’ve run it!’ We had a real cordial relationship. We laughed a lot and would kid each other a lot. I knew kids who played for him and they loved him. Ivy was more relaxed and I think his kids played better because of that.

“I loved the guy.”

Stan Babinski was a fullback and defensive end on Loftin’s team in 1977-78. He recalls Loftin fondly.

“He made all of the young men that played for him play with integrity and pride, as a team and for the school we represented,” Babinski said. “Ivy was also my gym teacher and he was always smiling off the field. As serious as it was when it came to game time, he treated everyone with respect, players or non-players.”

He also had a knack for filling crucial voids in the lives of young men who didn’t have it as good as some of their classmates. Reese recalled that Loftin would oftentimes spend additional time with players with troubled home lives.

“He was a character builder,” Reese said. “He mentored kids who came from broken homes. We had a couple of guys on that unbeaten teams and both came from rough backgrounds. Ivy took them on as sons, and they became co-captains of that team.”

Barich said that responsibility comes with the territory, especially in those days.

“When you’re a football coach in Royal Oak, especially in the ‘50s and ‘60s, you were a leader in the community based on the title you held.”

It sounds as if there may have not been anyone more qualified for the job than Ivy Loftin. 

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