When she started her job as PE teacher with the Festus R-6 School District in 1987, Judy Rosener, 56, of Festus was nervous. But Bonnie Davenport, whose spot she was taking, gave her a shot in the arm typical of him.
“When I first came aboard, he handed me a whistle with my name and the year on it,” Rosener said. “I thought, ‘Okay, I guess he believes that I’m in charge.’ I still have it today.
“He was one of a kind. You don’t meet too many people like that.”
Bonnie Davenport, a longtime Festus teacher, coach and administrator, died Jan. 2 at age 76.
Mr. Davenport grew up in Poplar Bluff and went to college at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau. He taught several years at Jefferson R-7 before coming to Festus in 1966, teaching PE at the elementary school and coaching junior high volleyball and basketball for the first few years. He also was high school baseball head coach for more than 20 years.
“He was my freshman volleyball coach, then I did my student teaching in 1986 under him,” Rosener said. “When he got hired for assistant principal the next year, I replaced him, then worked under him.”
Mr. Davenport’s decision to go into administration wasn’t easy.
“He was not ready to give up coaching,” said his daughter, Christi Martin, 52, of Festus. “He had gotten his master’s degree, and he knew administration was ultimately what he wanted to do. But he didn’t know the opportunity would come up so soon, and he went back and forth about it for a while before making up his mind.”
“A lot of people had their doubts about a PE teacher becoming a principal,” Rosener said. “He was best friends with everybody, always joking around, and they wondered if that would change. It didn’t.
“But he just didn’t have any problem (navigating) being a boss and being a friend. He had a lot of perspective about what went on in the classrooms, and he had teachers in his office all the time getting his advice.”
Don Buechting, 61, of Festus played baseball under Davenport, then played college ball at SEMO before taking over coaching duties at Festus when Mr. Davenport moved to the assistant principal position. (Mr. Davenport was named principal in 1999).
Buechting would spend 22 years at the helm before retiring in 2008 and leaving the program in the hands of current baseball coach Jeff Montgomery.
“(Mr. Davenport) was such a figure in the community,” Buechting said. “He was a disciplinarian and a competitor, but he was one of the most kindhearted men you’d ever meet once you got to know him.”
Martin said for her father, school was pretty much life, along with helping others.
“He and my mom didn’t go out much, but he was always there for anyone who needed help,” she said. “He was not one to like attention He was very humble.”
Buechting said his former coach was a mentor.
“As far as X’s and O’s, we didn’t get into that part so much,” he said. “But he helped me in handling athletes and dealing with parents. He guided me.
“Lifelong lessons are what he taught me. He understood that, when you’re a teacher, you’re a role model and wins and losses aren’t the most important thing.”
He also had an easygoing personality and knew how to handle discipline with a light touch.
“Oh, he was a big jokester,” Rosener said. “He’d come in the gym and mess with the kids all the time.”
She recalled the time her son, a kindergartner, threw another child’s backpack out a bus window.
“Bonnie stopped me and said, ‘Hey, I need to talk to you.’ We went in his office and talked about it. He knew we would handle it and there didn’t need to be a big deal made.”
Rosener said Mr. Davenport went the extra mile, literally.
“If kids didn’t show up at school, he’d go to their house and get them and bring them to school," she said. ”He helped a lot of people through a lot of difficulties, like me when my dad died.”
Mr. Davenport and his wife, Beverly, a third-grade teacher, both retired in 2001.
“That was the year I graduated from college,” said younger daughter Jennifer Gillam. “They always said that when I was done with school, they’d be done with school.”
In 2002, Buechting and Montgomery inaugurated the Bonnie Davenport Classic, an early-season baseball tournament that has grown to include local teams as well as some from the St. Louis Metro and outlying areas.
Both of his daughters said Mr. Davenport never gave up the teaching mindset.
“Even when he wasn’t teaching or coaching, he was somehow teaching or coaching,” Martin said with a laugh. “He could run into someone at Walmart, and next thing you know he’s giving some little life lesson. So many people have told us, he wasn’t just a coach. You could go to him with a problem, and he’d help you work it out.”
They spoke of his helping out athletes who couldn’t afford the equipment they needed to be on a team.
“If a kid needed shoes, he would fix that,” Martin said. “He would make sure that any kid who had the heart and the will would get to play.”
“Life Story,” posted each Saturday on Leader Publications’ website, focuses on one individual’s impact on his or her community.