Remembering Ken Carter, the Gentleman With a Gym Named After Him At Hersey
While Ken Carter didn’t seek the spotlight it’s fitting his name continues to be in it in the main gym at Hersey.
Which would be the Ken Carter Gymnasium, which honors the man who devoted so much of his life to Hersey athletics and passed away on Wednesday, March 27 at age 87. Carter was a coach, teacher and athletic director at Hersey from the school’s opening in 1969 until his retirement in 1994 and he also taught and coached at Wheeling High School and Central School in Mount Prospect.
Retired Hersey head boys basketball coach Don Rowley started coaching in the program in 1971 as the freshman B coach when Carter was the freshman A coach for Roger Steingraber. Rowley said when Carter came up from his second home in Arizona to visit his daughter for the holidays he would stop by the school for a game and make a donation to the athletic program.
“He was a good guy,” Rowley said in an email. “Along with Roger Steingraber, they were a big influence on my coaching career.”
Carter built the foundation for Hersey’s successful boys golf program as the first of four head coaches along with Al Kintzle, Pat Tuttle and Dan Caporusso. Carter’s 1973 team ended St. Viator’s streak of 59 consecutive dual tournament victories, finished first in the Mid-Suburban League dual standings at 10-1 and went on to win the first of the program’s six MSL titles as Jeff Kollman, Bruce Conroy, Ray Peterson and John Haack all shot between 76 and 79.
“It’s good to finally win one,” Carter told the Herald’s Jim Cook. “The kids had this one coming.”
Carter’s Hersey boys teams were 61-18 in dual competition from 1969-74.
The Hersey boys golf Twitter/X page paid tribute to Carter by saying, “His passion for high school golf was unmatched. He was steadfast in his belief that high school golf was important in both the development of the student-athlete and promoting the game itself.”
One of the basketball players Carter coached at the freshman level was Dave Corzine, who led Hersey to the MSL’s first Elite Eight berth in 1974 before playing at DePaul and in the NBA. Carter was also the head boys cross country coach at Wheeling.
Carter, who was born in Grafton, Wisconsin, met his wife Sue at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse and they were married for 62 years. After his retirement they split time between their homes in Mount Prospect and Arizona.
The Hersey gym was dedicated as “Ken Carter Gymnasium” on Dec. 7, 1996. At the end of Carter’s speech celebrating the honor, he said, “when this place is no longer a classroom, take my name down.”
A celebration of life will be private. But for more about Ken Carter’s life, it’s safe to say legendary Daily Herald prep columnist and longtime friend Bob Frisk aced this tribute the day before Carter had the Hersey gym named after him.
Carter Puts Golf Clubs Aside for Hersey’s Night of Recognition
Between rounds of golf, Ken Carter returns home this weekend.
He has a very special ceremony to attend.
A man who gave so much of his life to young people will be on center stage at 7 p.m. Saturday as Hersey High School officially names the gymnasium in his honor.
The ceremony will be held prior to the varsity basketball game with St. Viator. There also will be a halftime reception in the faculty lounge and special events later in the evening.
Ken Carter Gymnasium.
That sounds so good, so appropriate.
As athletic director for 20 years, it was Ken’s job to oversee not one team, but every team at Hersey.
He was the man who really had to take responsibility for everything that happened both on and off the field.
This was a man without whose encouragement, support, and leadership the teams and programs at Hersey simply would not have functioned properly.
He was a quiet man in his job who dedicated his life to work for others without the attention and glory.
Fortunately, he’ll get that attention and glory in a big way Saturday night.
“I’m so very honored,” Carter said from his Arizona home of Sun City West. “I have to be excited. I had the advantage of being around a lot of good people in my 20 years at Hersey.
“It was so satisfying because it got to the point where everybody kind of expected success at Hersey. It’s easy to look at the three downstate trips in basketball and the great ride to the state football championship, but there was so much more, so many other sports that did well.
“Not only did we have fine coaches and athletes,” Carter added, “but we had such supportive parents, boosters, a great school spirit.”
The days are very relaxing now for Ken and his wife, Sue, at their winter retirement home in Sun City West.
Ken may get in four (or more) 18-hole rounds every week and plays to an 8 handicap that’s “creeping up.” Sue joins him for at least one round every week.
The Carters spend November through April in Arizona and then return home to Mount Prospect for the summer.
Son Doug is the new director of golf at Key West (Fla.). Golf and Country Club, and daughter Jeanne and her family live in Crystal Lake. There are four grandchildren.
After years of maintaining and effective athletic program and working with budgets and athletes and parents and coaches and administrators, Ken Carter’s main concern now is over club selection and whether he should hit a slight draw into the green.
That, folks, is what retirement really is all about.
“There are nine golf courses around here for a population of about 17,000,” said this native of Cedarburg, Wis.
Carter, who has degrees from Northeastern Illinois, the University of Wisconsin and UW-LaCrosse, worked at Central School in Mount Prospect before going to Wheeling High School.
He was head cross country coach for three years and an assistant in track and moved when Hersey opened, working in golf and as a basketball assistant as the Huskies charged to the Elite Eight.
Carter became athletic director at Hersey in 1973 and even went back into coaching for 10 years as the frosh-soph golf coach at Prospect.
He officially retired in 1993.
Now, three years later …
Ken Carter Gymnasium.
I hope every current and future student at Hersey takes time to learn a little about the man behind the name.
A very humble and private person, Carter has earned all the good that can come his way in these retirement years.
He treated the athletic director’s position not as a job but as a vocation, putting in hours and hours beyond those required to make certain our youth had the best facilities, the best training, the best chances for improvement that it was possible to have.
“Kenny always had the kids and programs in mind,” said Larry Travis, who took over the athletic director’s position when Carter retired and had worked with him since Hersey opened its doors. “He was very dedicated to athletics and when I got the job, he had many conversations with me about ways things could be done as athletic director without actually saying this is how you have to do it.
“He would just make suggestions and tell me to take whatever I wanted from that. He was very helpful and made the transition very easy for me.”
As a newspaper editor, I have been in this job long enough to recognize quality and to applaud personal commitment to our area youth.
I certainly know what an inspired, dedicated and highly competent man Ken Carter was in all those years in education. I was at the Herald when he arrived in the district.
Everyone in this area’s high school sports family was honored to have a man of his abilities and character work and live among us.
He had a calmness under pressure that was very special to watch, even from my newspaper role.
He is a man we all can emulate, a man we obviously respect, and, most important to me, he is a man who I am proud to call a friend.
Welcome home, Ken Carter, and my sincerest congratulations.
By the way, Ken, this obviously isn’t Arizona. It will be pretty cold around here over the weekend.
You won’t have any problems getting a good tee time.