Faces Of Nantucket: Dick Herman

The year was 1966 when Dick Herman decided to leave Cambridge, Mass., to take a teaching job at Nantucket's Cyrus Peirce Middle School. At the time, he didn't know where Nantucket was. He didn't even know it was an island.

But as soon as he arrived, something clicked, and Nantucket quickly became Herman's home. A week after taking the seventh-grade math teacher job at CPS, Herman met his wife, Maureen. The couple decided to stay and raised three kids on the island, while Herman went on to teach math for 35 years, touching the lives of several generations of Nantucket students.

He also became the deputy for legendary Nantucket High School football coach Vito Capizzo, serving as his assistant coach for 15 years during the heyday of the program.

Herman recalled the day when he knew it was time to retire from CPS after more than three decades teaching math.

"I'd get students and they'd say, 'Mr. Herman, you taught my mother'," he said. "If I stayed one more year, there was a sixth grader, and I had her grandmother in my first year teaching. I said, 'I think this is time to leave.' I didn't want her to walk in and say, 'Mr. Herman, you taught my grandmother?' So I said that's it."

Since he retired from the middle school and coaching, Herman has stayed involved by calling countless Nantucket High School sporting events for local television and radio outlets. He ends each game with his signature sign-off: "Remember to put a smile on your face each and every day, even if you're laughing at yourself."

These days, if he's not calling a game at the high school, you can probably catch Herman riding his bike around town as he waves to his former students and friends with the big smile that he is known for. Or you might find him cutting lawns or having lunch at the Saltmarsh Senior Center.

"You're constantly bumping into them," Herman said of his former students. "But I love the schools, I love the community, and I love the kids."

Herman was raised across the Charles River from Boston in the Cambridge projects by a single mother. After graduating high school, he was working, coaching youth teams, and playing semi-pro football when a friend put an idea in his head:

"He said, 'If you're playing football and coaching, you ought to go to school for that'," Herman recalled. "I said, 'How do I do that?' He said go talk to the football coaches'."

So Herman banged on the doors of the coaches at Harvard, Northeastern, and Boston University. Only the coach at BU gave him serious consideration, and shortly after encouraging Herman to go back and take an SAT-equivalent exam, he was on the football team and enrolled at the university. Herman was the first of his family to go college and paid his own way by taking jobs parking cars at gas stations and shifts at the Welch's candy factory in Cambridge.

He went on to earn a degree in education and became certified to teach math and business. A subsequent job search ultimately brought Herman to Nantucket, and it wasn't long before he met Vito Capizzo, a young and hard-charging new coach.

"He was very focused on football," Herman recalled of his initial impression of Capizzo. "He ate, slept, and drank football. I could see it in his practices. He took nothing for granted, and he was always looking for an edge."

After volunteering for Capizzo for four years, Herman was offered the assistant coaching job. At the time, there were only two paid football coaching positions, and Herman quickly agreed to take it. He remained assistant coach of the Whalers from 1970 through 1985, helping to orchestrate one of the most successful runs the program has ever had.

"For Vito, the only thing good about the game was a win. A loss was horrible and certainly not a tie," Herman said with a laugh. "He used to say 'a tie is like kissing your sister'."

As Herman sat in the stands at the Nantucket High School football field, the name of his former coaching colleague hung on the field house behind him. There were so many stories, he said, but one instantly came to mind as he looked out over the 50-yard line.

"In those days, there were no bleachers, no field house, no houses, it was woods," Herman recalled. "Two kids were goofing off in practice, getting under our skin, and Vito says, 'Herman, go get me a stick.' I come back with a twig. He says 'For Chrissake, a stick!' He comes back carrying this thing with two hands. He tells the guys, 'Get down in your stance!' And they don't get down, and he starts hitting them over the head with the branch. I said Holy s--t'!"

Today, Herman is winding down his lawn-mowing business while staying busy spending time with family, riding his bike, and meeting up with friends at the Saltmarsh Center, the Knights of Columbus, and the No. 4s club. But most of all, he said, he tries to find the humor in most things.

"Laughter every day is important, he said. "I live by that, and I do it. "