Frank Kapral, a fixture in the Coast Guard Academy athletic department for parts of four decades, including stints as head football coach, head wrestling coach and perhaps most notably as Hall of Fame quarterback Otto Graham's right-hand man during Graham's time as academy football coach and athletic director, died Tuesday at the age of 91.

Former Coast Guard athletic director Ray Cieplik called Kapral, who made the academy his home from 1958-84 in a number of roles, "fiercely loyal to Otto" and "doggedly determined at every task he took on."

"I'm sitting here writing an email to his daughter and I told her he really was the gearbox of the wheelhouse of athletics at that time," Cieplik said of Kapral, who resided in East Lyme.

"You've come to know the name and the reputation he had," current athletic director Dan Rose said. "He played football at Michigan State and for the Green Bay Packers, so he had some legacy there, and having been Otto's assistant ... his legacy is going to be forever intertwined with Coast Guard athletics."

Kapral was a 1946 graduate of Luzerne High School in Pennsylvania, a 1948 grad of Wyoming Seminary and played football and wrestled at Michigan State from 1948-52, including serving as an offensive lineman for the Spartans football team which finished 9-0 and was ranked second in the nation in 1951.

He played in the Blue-Gray all-star game and was drafted by the Packers, playing with them briefly before he was called to active duty as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army during the Korean War.

He found his way to Coast Guard in 1958 as Graham's line coach and was an assistant coach for Coast Guard's 1963 appearance in the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando, Fla.

He was head football coach in 1966 and 1967 and head wrestling coach from 1960-65. Kapral was assistant track and field coach in 1959-61, assistant director of athletics from 1966-80 and athletic department business manager from 1968-80.

Graham, after leaving Coast Guard in 1966 to coach the Washington Redskins, returned and spent several years as the school's athletic director before retiring in 1985, with Kapral "running interference" for Graham when needed, Cieplik said.

Kapral was named to the Coast Guard Academy Athletics Hall of Fame as an honorary member in 1979. He was named "Man of the Year" by New England College Wrestling in 1988 and authored two textbooks: "Coach's Illustrated Guide to Championship Wrestling" in 1964 and "Illustrated Guide to Championship Football" in 1967.

In 1962, he was appointed to the NCAA wrestling rules committee for the New England states and he served as wrestling commissioner of 18 high schools in southeastern Connecticut from 1972-84.

He rose to the rank of Coast Guard captain before his retirement in 1984. He and wife Doris Sidelko were married for 68 years and had six children, 10 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren, with identical twin grandsons sharing his birth date.

"Frank was a phenomenal wrestling coach, an outstanding line coach in football," Cieplik said. "He worked both sports. He would hold invitational wrestling tournaments in the fall after football was over and there were Oklahoma and Division I schools who came to the Coast Guard Academy. He was highly successful.

"... He was very well-known. Think of playing at Michigan State in the '50s. That was big-time."

v.fulkerson@theday.com