By Jennifer Eisenbart
If there was one person in the world who always seemed to have time for everyone, it was Elkhorn’s Dean Wilson.
A coach, a teacher and finally an athletic director before his retirement in 2015, Wilson died May 10, at Aurora Lakeland Medical Center. He is survived by his wife, Kathi, and six children.
Wilson’s memorial service was held Saturday at Elkhorn Area High School (see Travis Pipe’s column on page 8). It started with a meet-and-greet at the school’s agility center, then moved to the football field – a place where Wilson made a part of his impact with the Elks, but certainly not all of it.
As Dean’s son, Craig, explained, his father was someone who made an impact everywhere.
“We always said we shared our dad with everyone,” Craig said. “He was that person who was just able to do that.”
Long-time Elkhorn wrestling coach Ken Reynolds took it a step further.
“He is considered one of the most influential men of his generation in Elkhorn,” Reynolds explained. “I don’t know who else could come close to comparing to him.”
Teaching, on and off the field
After attending college at Northern Illinois University, Dean Wilson spent his first few years after graduation teaching and coaching in Illinois.
But in 1970, he and his wife moved to Elkhorn, hoping to find a place where he could get to know students and athletes better.
It turned out to be a near-perfect match. Dean Wilson started out coaching baseball, then moved to wrestling and football.
In addition to that, he ran the summer recreational program for Elkhorn.
“He was always involved in the community in so many ways,” Craig Wilson explained.
In fact, it was as a wrestling assistant coach that Dean Wilson first met Reynolds.
Reynolds moved to the Elkhorn area permanently in seventh grade, and Dean Wilson – who also helped coach the middle school as well as the high school wrestlers – recruited him.
“No one ever really said no to him,” Reynolds explained. “You just wanted to be good for him. He was just electric that way.”
Reynolds wrestled for Dean Wilson in seventh and eighth grade, then wrestled for him at the high school as well.
Reynolds was with the Elks when the school won its first two conference titles – in 1978 and 1980. He was one of only two wrestlers on both teams.
“I just loved wrestling for him,” Reynolds said.
Reynolds went on to attend the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He was asked to come back and coach at Elkhorn’s youth wrestling club when a coach quit unexpectedly.
“I was talking with Dean all the time,” Reynolds said, who went on to run the youth program for 10 years.
Wilson then became the athletic director at the high school in 1998. As a result, he had to give up his job as a wrestling coach.
“He came to me and said, ‘I want you to be my head coach,’” Reynolds said. “I applied and got the job – and here we are 24 years later.”
It wasn’t an easy road for Reynolds. He was the first non-teacher coach hired at the school, which was a huge deal for the time.
“Dean just said, ‘do the job, you’re doing fine,’” “And he coached me through it.”
Reynolds said that he and Jim Henriott – hired as girls’ basketball coach – were the first to fill coaching roles and not be teachers, something that has become common enough now at Elkhorn High School.
“If I took heat, he sure did,” he explained. “Dean saw something, and saw something in me and saw something in Henriott.
“That’s who Dean was,” he added. “He did the right things. He just did things the right away. It was about the kids. It was about the program.”
Dean Wilson’s coaching career resulted in his induction into the Wisconsin Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame, and he held the athletic director position in Elkhorn until 2015.
Husband and father
Craig Wilson is now 48, but remembers growing up with a father who seemed to have time for everyone – whether it was family, friends or members of the community.
“The fact that he was always there for anybody,” Craig said. “He found a way to influence, to support, to encourage anybody. It didn’t matter if it was on he football field, or in the classroom, or in life.
“He knew he didn’t have all the answers, but he listened,” Craig added. “He always found time to be available.”
Craig recalls many important lessons from his father – the importance of communication, how to listen and finding a way to reach out to everyone.
“He knew how to work with his kids to the point where he could work with his coaches to work with his kids,” Craig said. “He was always fair. He just mentored coaches. I think there’s a lot of coaches who’d say they became a better coach because they worked with Dean.”
One of them is Reynolds. “My career is what it is because of Dean,” Reynolds said.
Dean Wilson taught for about a year after becoming athletic director, Craig said, before focusing fully on the athletics and the summer recreational programs. But ironically, Craig is now a teacher himself, though it wasn’t the career path he originally wanted.
“I always fought the idea of becoming my dad. I respected my dad, loved my dad, appreciated all he did for us,” Craig said. “But I was like, ‘I’m not going to become my dad.’”
In his 30s, though, Craig realized he wanted to make the same kind of impact his father did. He went back to school and became a teacher.
Now he lives in Busan, South Korea, where he teachers social studies and serves as the athletic director at the International School of Busan.
He now teaches students from literally all over the world. As athletic director, though, he finds himself in a different role than he would in the states – stressing the importance of having athletics as an outlet for the students in his school, versus a focus on winning.
That lesson, Craig said, is at the heart of who his father was.
“Being in athletics is a really important thing,” Craig explained. “Dean was never about winning. You learn more from losing than you do from wining. Win gracefully, lose with dignity.”
And, as Dean Wilson would have wanted it, it was always about other people.
“Life isn’t always about yourself,” Craig said. “It’s about everyone else. He just happened to make it about everybody else.”
