Longtime Herculaneum High School basketball coach Bill Stotler didn’t suffer fools gladly.
Robin Guidicy, 57, of Nashville, who played for Stotler in the late 1970s, said he learned that lesson vividly and thoroughly.
“I made a pass, and he hollered, ‘Hold it!’ and asked me what in the world I was doing,” Robin recalled. “I told him I thought my way would work.
“So Coach says, ‘Well, here’s the fundamental problem with what you’ve done: You thought.’ And he reaches in his pocket and pulls out a paycheck stub, waves it and says, ‘Now, as far as I know, I’m the only one in the room who is paid by the Dunklin School District to think.’”
Mr. Stotler died Sept. 6. He was retired after a four-decade career as a teacher, coach and administrator at Herculaneum High.
He grew up in a poor but loving family in Bonne Terre, said his daughter, Dana Pannett, 55, of Chesterfield.
“My dad was adopted,” she said. “His father was a miner and his mother took in ironing.”
Mr. Stotler was tall and athletic, and a neighbor recruited him for basketball, Dana said.
“He was active in every sport, really – basketball, baseball, track,” said his high school sweetheart and wife Barbara, 77.
Mr. Stotler played basketball at Moberly and then at Flat River Junior College. After that, he went to work for the local Woolworth store, where he was recruited into a management trainee program.
“We got married in 1961, and he got transferred to Sikeston,” Barbara said. “He and the manager didn’t get along. He came home one day and I asked him what he was doing home in the middle of the day, and he said, ‘Well, I quit.’ And that’s when he decided to go back to school.”
Mr. Stotler headed to Southeast Missouri State University for a bachelor’s degree and then took a job teaching and coaching at Marquand.
“He taught PE and coached all the sports, girls and boys – girls volleyball, boys basketball, track,” Barbara said. “He started the baseball program there.”
The first two of their four children had arrived by the time the Stotlers moved to Herculaneum in 1966.
“He was looking for jobs in St. Louis, where he could make more money,” Barbara said. “Somehow he found out Herculaneum needed a teacher and freshman coach. The plan was to stay a year or two, but we just never left.”
It wasn’t very long until Mr. Stotler moved up.
“Gene Myers was head coach, and he wanted to move into administration,” Barbara said. “They asked Bill to take over his spot. At that time, there were kids going to school from the Antonia and Barnhart area. He had some pretty talented kids. In 1970 they made the quarterfinals.”
There was a certain cachet to being one of “Stot’s” players.
“When you became a varsity player, you got a red sport coat, and you wore it on game day,” Robin said.
“Those red coats – oh my gosh, they were a privilege and an honor,” Dana said.
Mr. Stotler had a vast knowledge of the game.
“His basketball IQ was off the charts,” Robin said. “He was such a tactician – he knew the game in ways I hadn’t seen before and haven’t since.”
Dana said much of that talent was innate.
“Although he watched a lot of ball,” she said. “Even when his team wasn’t playing, he was watching other teams play, reading about it.”
Both his son, Doug, and son-in-law, Todd, became coaches, and Mr. Stotler enjoyed sharing his knowledge and advice with them, Dana said.
He also spent time staffing camps and clinics to teach young players, and refereed games throughout several decades, she said.
Sadly, Mr. Stotler battled alcohol addiction for some years.
“I was in high school when it was its worst,” Dana said. “Some mornings he came in and he was still under the influence. Kids knew it, and they’d say, ‘Oh man, there’s going to be hell to pay!’”
“It got hold of him,” his wife said. “That was a difficult time. But then God gave him the direction of what he needed to do.”
In 1982, Mr. Stotler did a stint in rehab and returned a changed man.
“He dreaded going back to school, but he knew he had to,” Barbara said. “He had to face the music and he did. He told his kids in class, and I think they respected him for being so honest.”
Mr. Stotler came through his ordeal stronger in faith than he had been before, and with a renewed sense of obligation toward his students. Although he never coached again, he served as the school’s athletic director and assistant principal.
“He had a compassion for kids,” Barbara said. “As assistant principal, he often had to deal with kids in trouble. Some of the situations would just tear him up.”
His family says Mr. Stotler will be remembered as a disciplinarian but also someone who sent a clear message of caring
“He made an impact on so many people,” Dana said. “He made them feel that what they were saying was important, that he was listening and that he cared – and always with that huge smile on his face.”
“To me, he was the last of the great lions,” Robin said, his voice breaking. “He is woven into the fabric of that school system.
“I’m so thankful I played for him, but even more thankful I knew him. The respect and admiration I have for him, especially the older I get, is enormous. He was just priceless.”
“Life Story,” posted Saturdays on Leader Publications’ website, focuses on one individual’s impact on his or her community.