Al Thompson was a senior wide receiver for the Coast Guard Academy football team during the 1997 season. Chuck Mills, then closing in on 70 years of age, renowned for his gravelly voice and wry sense of humor as well as the Super Bowl ring he wore from his time as an administrative assistant with the 1966-67 Kansas City Chiefs, was Coast Guard's head coach.

The Bears were playing Springfield in the second game of the season and Thompson, who holds Coast Guard's all-time receiving mark with 24 career touchdowns, was being double-teamed.

Mills called him over and told him to line up at tight end instead to avert the defense, then sprint down the field as fast as he could when the ball was snapped. Quarterback Dan Warren found Thompson for the touchdown in a game the Bears won 26-20 in overtime.

"He literally drew that play up," Thompson said this week of Mills. "It was literally like he drew it up in the dirt."

Mills, who led Coast Guard to a 9-2 record that season and an NCAA Division III tournament berth, died Jan. 18 at a hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, at the age of 92.

Mills served as Coast Guard's athletic director from 1989-99, arriving at the academy following an eight-year tenure as head football coach and athletic director at Southern Oregon. He held seven head coaching positions, more than anyone except John Heisman, for whom the prestigious Heisman Trophy is named.

Mills is considered one of the fathers of Japanese football, first bringing his Utah State team to play in Japan in 1971, and since 1974 the Japanese version of the Heisman Trophy, going to the country's top collegiate player, has been named the Chuck Mills Trophy.

Former Coast Guard men's basketball coach Pete Barry called Mills an "underrated humanist" — "he cared about people," Barry said.

Thompson said if there was one word he would use to describe Mills, it would be "wisdom."

"After my sophomore year, I had a blazing start and a pretty rough finish," Thompson said. "He called me in his office (as athletic director) and gave me criticism in a way I could understand. It was just the wisdom. I've thought about it since his passing and it was just the wisdom.

"Time is an amazing thing. You appreciate that now when you don't get to play anymore. (Mills) left a mark everywhere he went. You don't forget him. He's a very good football coach. He's a great man."

'You don't forget him'

Mills, until his death, stayed in touch with hundreds of former players throughout the country and assembled them on several occasions for reunions in Las Vegas, including one such event just two years ago to celebrate the coach's 90th birthday.

Mills coached at Pomona College (1959-61), Indiana University of Pennsylvania (1962-63), Merchant Marine (1964), Utah State (1967-72), Wake Forest (1973-77), Southern Oregon (1980-88) and Coast Guard.

At Utah State, he coached five All-Americans, including defensive lineman Phil Olsen — the younger brother of Pro Football Hall of Famer and actor Merlin Olsen — who went on to play in the NFL for the Rams and Broncos.

At Wake Forest, Mills coached a defensive back named Richard Burr, now a Republican senator from North Carolina. Also at Wake Forest, Mills hired Bill Hayes as the first Black assistant coach in the Atlantic Coast Conference in 1973.

Hayes told the Winston-Salem Journal that he was once sent by Mills to a speaking engagement at a segregated country club — "And he said if you get there and they don't want you to speak, then the hell with them," Hayes said.

"I spoke to Sen. Richard Burr," said Thompson, originally from East Lyme, now the vice president of U.S. Government Relations for Intel, residing in Frederick, Maryland. "I said we have something in common. We played for the same college football coach. We were his last team. ... You get a different reaction bringing up his name."

Mills, who was elected to the athletic halls of fame at several of his coaching stops, and his late wife Barbara didn't have any children of their own and so his players were his sons. Barbara predeceased him in 1996.

"He was keeping in touch with his family of former players and colleagues, including every school and team," said former Coast Guard athletic director Ray Cieplik, who worked with Mills and then followed him as AD. "He had an email list that, God, had to be 200 people on it.

"People were just very loyal to Chuck. He gave many people a chance when other people wouldn't. (The reunions, which Cieplik attended once he retired from Coast Guard) got emotional at times because of how these people felt about Chuck."

Cieplik said Mills sprinkled in "pearls of wisdom" along with his bottomless encyclopedia of one-liners.

"He was just terrific at that, really," Cieplik said. "He was a breath of fresh air, really."

Link to Coast Guard

Born Morton J. Mills on Dec. 2, 1928, in Chicago, Mills spoke to both Barry and Cieplik on the telephone a few weeks before he died. Mills was frail — he told Barry, "I keep falling but I keep getting up" — but still sounded like himself, they said.

Mills promoted Cieplik, the longtime Coast Guard Academy men's soccer coach, to serve as associate athletic director alongside him, matching Cieplik's strengths with his weaknesses. That's how, seemingly polar opposites, the two became friends, with Cieplik and his wife Kathi once visiting Mills in Hawaii.

"Chuck, as he said, 'Whether it's coaching or administration, many people will have people around them because they think they're like them,'" Cieplik said. "'I need people who have the strengths where I have weaknesses.' He let me run with a lot of things. I really learned so much from him, how he dealt with people, how he did his oversight without being over your shoulder every minute of the day."

Barry was hired by Mills as the men's basketball coach at Southern Oregon, where Barry coached for six seasons. Mills then invited him to the East Coast, where Barry held the men's basketball job at Coast Guard for 19 seasons and reached the NCAA Division III tournament Elite Eight in 2007-08.

"The job was offered to me that summer of 1990. Chuck, he just sold you on it," Barry said. "Chuck left you alone unless he didn't like you. He liked what you were trying to do for the program. He was all over it but he didn't interfere. That was a part of his administrative mantra."

Barry and Cieplik describe Mills as outgoing yet somewhat of a loner socially.

"He always said, 'Pete, if you're ever in Hawaii, come by, but phone first to make sure I'm not home,'" Barry said. "That's how Chuck was."

The last season

Mills' final season came at Coast Guard in 1997, leading the team to a program record nine regular-season victories.

As assistant coaches, Mills brought in some of his old buddies. Jim LaRue, former University of Arizona head coach and assistant coach with the Buffalo Bills and Chicago Bears in the NFL; Dale Haupt, former defensive line coach of the Chicago Bears, winning a Super Bowl in 1985; and Tom Pratt, the defensive line coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers just two years before, all said yes.

Every coach on the staff had been to a Super Bowl, with Mills' ring coming from Super Bowl I (a loss to the Green Bay Packers, although losing teams also get Super Bowl rings).

"One coach coached (Hall of Famer) Reggie White," Thompson said. "This guy coached with the Eagles. This guy coached with the Buccaneers. It's like, 'If I can scheme against Bill Parcells' Giants, I'm not worried about (Coast Guard opponent) Westfield State.'

"(Mills) was calm. It was his last year coaching and he got to do it with his friends. At that stage of his career, it was just a game. None of them were really yellers. We had so much fun. We had a blast.

"There are things you don't appreciate when you're 22 that you do when you're 45. When I think of that time, I always think of wisdom. And fun. Wisdom and fun."

v.fulkerson@theday.com