Today I had the opportunity to talk with former Hazel Park and Birmingham Seaholm football coach Chuck Skinner. I was on the trail of setting up a Birmingham signing event when I caught up with Coach Skinner. It turns out he actually purchased Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries two days ago from a Barnes & Noble after a former player called to let him know he's now famous because of my book.

I'm kidding.

But seriously, Chuck Skinner, the toughest screw to ever march the sideline of Maple Field at Seaholm. The coach who went to college at Eastern Michigan University, who played football for Hurons with former Royal Oak High assistant coach and longtime Royal Oak Kimball head coach Paul Temerian. The man who is responsible for former Central Michigan University football coach Herb Deromedi being enshrined in the Collegiate Football Hall Of Fame in South Bend, Indiana.

Huh?

OK, it's a stretch, and I fear that Skinner told me the story better than I'm going to tell you, but here goes. It was 1976 and Seaholm is working on it's fourth coach in eight seasons (or so it seemed) when a handful of applicants applied for the position at Seaholm. It went to Skinner, and therefore Deromedi stayed at Central Michigan University as assistant coach under Roy Kramer for the 1977 season instead of returning home to South Oakland County. Skinner turned Seaholm into the biggest league rival of Ferndale, Kimball and Hazel Park overnight. Deromedi? He was left in the dust when Kramer went to Vanderbilt University, and went on to become a Top 10 coach in the history of Division - I football for winning percentage, all because Skinner got the job at Seaholm 30 years ago.

Coach Skinner had plenty of good stories to recant, like his 1974 Vikings, the top-ranked team in the state according to the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) paper playoff. The '74 season was a test run for a football tournament that became official in 1975.

"I had the No. 1 ranking in '74 in the Free Press and AP until Week No. 8 of that season, when for no good reason, Birmingham Brother Rice went ahead of us. We crushed Center Line 42-0 on Friday. Rice played Madison Heights Bishop Foley the next night (Saturday). Foley had Fracassa's son at quarterback and my son playing in the backfield, so what happens? His own kid throws five picks and Rice won 35-0 to steal the state championship from us," Skinner remembers with a laugh.

Football was really important back then with huge crowds and larger-than-life memories of the games, but it wasn't a live-or-die situation, either. Today what would be the outrage if an undefeated, top-ranked team didn't win the state title, much less didn't make the playoffs? In '74 The Vikings shutout seven of their nine opponents by a 214-25 margin while Rice tallied a 270-48 point differential. Among the victims of that Hazel Park campaign was a 6-0 whitewash of Lake Orion (6-3, Oakland-A North champions), a 20-0 triumph over Royal Oak Dondero (6-3, Metro Suburban Athletic Association champion) and an 8-0 shutout of Southeastern Michigan Association rival Royal Oak Kimball (7-2 in '74, 2nd SMA).

A different era to be sure. So were the rivalries, as Skinner remembers heartily.

"Pin Ryan was the coach at Kimball in the 1960s, and he hated to lose -- you couldn't even joke about it with him," Skinner recalls. "So competitive he was, but one week, Kimball gave up 40 points (most likely Kimball's 38-27 loss to Birmingham Seaholm on September 20, 1963), which never happened to them back then. Now back then, we would swap film with our opponent from the last week, and we (Hazel Park) were getting ready to play at Kimball. I called Ryan at his house and asked, 'Is this the Kimball defensive coordinator?' He was still so mad he could barely speak.

"Well, a few years later, we're playing Dondero and we botch three punts, and the Oaks pick up all three and take them in for touchdowns -- we got walloped. The next day, sure enough, the phone rings, I pick it up and I hear, 'Is this the Hazel Park special teams coach?'

"He got me back good."

Today Skinner spends summers up north on or around the golf course and remains in Oakland County during the cold season. The stories of motivating his Maples and Vikings, the championship tilts involving Dondero, Kimball, Ferndale, Hazel Park and Seaholm remain his fondest memories.

"You know, when I was at Hazel Park, we would play Dondero in the second game of the season every year, and if they won the game, his players would carry (head coach Ivy Loftin) off the field on their shoulders singing 'Happy Birthday'," Skinner said. "So 10 years later, I'm playing Dondero in the second-to-last game of the season before we would play Groves and they would get Kimball, and if he beat me there, they would carry him off the field singing 'Happy Birthday' and I couldn't figure it out.

"That was (Dondero assistant coach) Fred Fuhr, who told all those Dondero players to win the game for Ivy Loftin because it was his birthday, against two different schools six weeks apart on the schedule for over 10 years and not one Royal Oak kid ever figured it out!"

Like so many other coaches, life has slowed for Skinner, but the fire remains.

Content updated at 9:28am on September 16, 2008

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, available at Barnes & Noble, Border's Books and The Varsity Shop in Birmingham, Michigan

(Photo courtesy Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries/Gary Caskey)

Fred Fuhr never asked for glory and he never asked for pity, either. All he asked for was a chance. He got his team to the cusp of success it had enjoyed for several consecutive years and watched a rival ruin it. A year later, his team took it right back.

Fred Fuhr did what some unlucky sole will be asked to do at Clarkston High School when Kurt Richardson steps aside. Believe me when I say there will be a day when Al Fracassa is no longer on the sideline at Birmingham Brother Rice. Basketball coach Al Poynter did it at Berkley when Steve Rhodes said goodbye. Poynter has since landed on his feet successfully at Oxford High School.

Fred Fuhr followed a legend, the icon of the football program at Royal Oak Dondero High School, a man named Ivy Loftin. That's Fuhr on the right of Ivy Loftin in front of the regal, main doors of Dondero High in 1993, when first published in The Daily Tribune.

Fred Fuhr passed away last week in Jupiter, Florida. He was 69. A small obit in the Tribune, still Royal Oak's unofficial city bible, carried a simple, one-line tribute: Mr. Fuhr was a long-time teacher and coach at Royal Oak Dondero High School.

I guess the North won the Civil War and John Glenn was a pilot, too.

In Fuhr's first season the Oaks went 1-8, but that one win was a 14-0 decision in the Pontiac Silverdome against hated rival Royal Oak Kimball. His second season was a winless 0-9 and the grumblings around 709 North Washington Avenue suggested replacement, not resolve. Fuhr did what any good coach did. He didn't stray from the plan, kept his nose to the stone and kept the faith.

Sound familiar? Isn't that what us sage, old adults impart on our own children? Guess what? It worked, because in 1986, Fuhr's Oaks did what most well-coached teams do. They responded resoundingly. After dropping a 17-0 opener to Ferndale's Eagles, the Oaks blanked Bloomfield Hills Lahser 18-0. The next week Dondero lost 35-6 to West Bloomfield, but responded with three shutouts over Rochester, Birmingham Groves and Southfield Lathrup by a combined count of 63-0. After pasting Rochester Adams 26-6 and surviving Troy Athens, 14-11, the Oaks had captured their first Metro Suburban Activities Association (MSAA) title in five seasons and were poised to earn the school's first invite to the MHSAA football tournament if they won the Oak Stump Game in week nine. The Oaks would certainly 'Kan Kimball' into submission the next week.

It didn't happen. A highly-motivated Kimball team came over to Dondero's Cass Field on a gray, dank November day and ruined Fuhr's coronation by punching the Oaks in the mouth for four quarters in a 14-6 upset. Trailing 14-0, Dondero roared to a fourth-quarter score only to miss the PAT. When they pinned Kimball in the shadows of the train tracks on 3rd and 16, quarterback Mike Siwajek found receiver Danny Holeton for 18 yards. First down, Kimball. A few plays later the clock expired and it was game, set and match, Kimball.

It was then that Fred Fuhr earned his school's respect. He shook hands at midfield. He consoled his team before meeting with reporters. Did he complain, offer excuses or say it was anyone's fault? Nope. He told reporters that the better team had won the game. He explained he had smelled trouble all week, that too many Oaks believed winning would just happen when Kimball came to push.

What did Fred Fuhr do after that game? He went back to work. So did his Oaks.

After another tough, one-possession loss at Cass to Ferndale to open the '87 campaign, Dondero rattled off eight straight wins. They authored an undefeated 7-0 chapter in the MSAA and overwhelmed Kimball in the Silverdome, 27-7. Fuhr would go on to win the MSAA in '91 and went to the playoffs in both '90 and '91. Three league titles, the only two playoff appearances in school history and 33 wins in six seasons after starting 1-17.

Fred Fuhr isn't going to be mentioned with Charlie Jestice, Tom Mach or Al Fracassa as a legendary metro area coach. He wasn't the man who was the one constant, like the lighthouse at the end of the pier standing tall year after year while the never-ending crash of waves passed by, representing one class after another, year after year. Fred Fuhr was the guy that took over at a school and made it his own without you knowing it.

Sometimes the glory, the pity and the headlines go to someone else. Schools open, close and get renamed. Years from now some old codger with more miles in the rearview mirror than a '57 Chevy will sit in a McDonald's -- whatever those look like in another 30 years -- and the word Dondero will be screened on his sweatshirt. By then it might as well say Mars to most people, because Dondero will be something heard of but never really seen with flesh and blood.

Here's to a man who did something great at Dondero, a school that had already seen better days and made it seem like nothing had ever changed.

That was Fred Fuhr.

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, due August 25, 2008 from Arcadia Publishing

(Photo courtesy The Daily Tribune/Craig Gaffield)