Ron Moyer was sitting in his guidance director’s office at Amherst Regional High School in the early 1980s when his secretary alerted him to six girls waiting outside to see him.
They were six seniors on the Hurricanes’ girls basketball team.
Moyer knew why they were there. Then-Amherst athletic director Charlie Abramson had been persistently asking him to coach the team.
He’d rebuffed the offers up to that point. Moyer had been a boys coach at Hopkins Academy and still considered himself one.
“He knew I wasn’t ever going to say yes to him,” Moyer said. “In his way, in inimitable fashion, he rounded up the girls that were going to be on the team and said, ‘The person you need to coach you is Ron Moyer, down the hallway.’”
Moyer agreed to coach the team and stayed on for 21 years, winning a state championship in 1993.
“In a sense he changed the course of my life,” Moyer said. “He was just a very sincere, honest, genuine person.”
Abramson, who dedicated his life to the students, athletes and community of Amherst, died Sunday. He was 89.
Abramson graduated from Amherst in 1945 then served in the U.S. Navy. He received a bachelor’s degree from Springfield College in 1953 and a master’s from University of Massachusets.
After stints teaching in New York City and New Hampshire, Abramson returned to his hometown and became a physical education teacher. He also coached both baseball and football.
“He was one of those people that you wanted to play for and you didn’t want to disappoint,” said Larry Briggs, who played both sports for Abramson. “You just wanted to do good to see that smile on his face.”
Abramson would let Briggs study in the locker room during his free periods, but the coach also kept his pupil in line. He’d spray Briggs’ locker with disinfectant about once a week to try and make it more sanitary.
“I was pretty grungy going through high school,” Briggs said.
As a football coach, Abramson wasn’t a yeller. He kept his desk organized and took his sideline frustrations out on clipboards.
“If a play would go bad or something he’d throw his clipboard down, and sure enough the clipboard would break in half,” Briggs said. “He must’ve had a supply of clipboards that must’ve been 50 per season. He broke a lot of them.”
He cared about his players and earned their admiration.
“He treated me with great respect as an athlete, and I really looked up to him,” said Tim Schmitt, who played baseball and football for Amherst. “He allowed me to flourish as a person.”
Abramson had a soft spot for “underdogs,” his son Mike Abramson said. “I’ve had people say to me that your dad was the only reason I finished high school,” he said. “We’re talking guys from their 30s to their 60s.”
Eventually Abramson became Amherst’s first athletic director. He excelled at filling rosters with students and persuading them to try sports.
Providing girls access to sports and supporting their teams equally became one of the hallmarks of Abramson’s career, which lasted 33 years until he retired in 1991.
“He couldn’t have been more supportive of women’s athletics at a time when women’s athletics were not front burner. He was champion of women’s sports without ever getting up on a soap box,” Moyer said. “He was quiet and had a sense of fairness, a man I really admired. This is a big loss.”
Abramson also served as a mentor to younger athletic directors and was one of the “founding fathers” of the Pioneer Valley Interscholastic Athletic Conference, former Northampton athletic director Jeff Boudway said. Former Hopkins Academy athletic director Gus Peobody would travel with Abramson to meetings and leaned on him for advice.
“I looked up to him as a mentor because he was just a great, great person,” Peobody said. “Charlie always did what was best for the students, the athletes and the community of Amherst.”
Among the several halls of fame Abramson has been inducted into, he is a member of the Massachusetts Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame and was part of the first class of the Amherst Regional High School Athletic High School Hall of Fame. He’s the only member in the Amherst hall of fame in two categories: athletic director, and coach of the 1959 Amherst football team.
“He expected everyone to be as committed as he was, and everyone followed through on it,” said Jim O’Donnell, who was hired by Abramson in 1966 to coach swimming. “Considering all the responsibility he had and the pressure he was under, he maintained a consistently calm personality. The guy just did it. He just did what he had to do to make sure everything was right.”
Abramson is survived by three children: Catherine Canales, Charles G. Abramson and Mike Abramson, and two grandchildren. One grandchild, Erik Abramson, felt especially close to his grandfather. They’d throw Nerf footballs and play whiffle ball in the backyard. Charlie Abramson would write his grandson motivational coaching quotes and send them to him before games at Frontier Regional. That tradition extended when Erik played at Assumption College.
“I went to check my student mailbox, and there was a crumpled up piece of paper with a quote from Vince Lombardi or somebody,” Erik said.
Before Erik’s first start as Frontier’s quarterback as a sophomore, he visited his grandfather in Amherst. Charlie told him two words that stuck with him. Erik said the same two words the last time he saw his grandfather.
“Stay loose.”