Former Algonquin Regional High School athletic director, coach and teacher Richard “Dick” Walsh died on Sept. 14 at the age of 92 after over 65 years of dedication to the school community.
Walsh was born on Dec. 5, 1931, and is survived by his wife, Doris A. Walsh; his four children, Michael J. Walsh, Maureen A. Dalton, Dianne M. Pinto and John J. Walsh; one brother, Thomas Walsh; 11 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He left a lasting legacy of humble teaching, strong mentorship and unwavering friendship with friends, family, colleagues and students who are grateful for his impact.
Walsh began his career at Algonquin during the school’s establishment in 1959 after playing baseball at Boston University on a full scholarship. Over the years he was employed as a physical education teacher, football coach, baseball coach and athletic director. Previously, he worked at Southborough High School, transitioning to Algonquin when the Northborough and Southborough high schools were combined. According to his son Mike Walsh, Dick Walsh’s commitment to Algonquin was how he chose to spend almost all of his free time.
“He probably was the person who was most committed to Algonquin ever,” Mike Walsh said. “He was at Algonquin as long as he could stand up.”
Most recently, Walsh was a presence helping in the school cafeteria and connecting with faculty and staff, until he took ill last spring. Beyond his commitment to Algonquin, it was Walsh’s character that stands out to his coworkers and family members alike.
“He was a champion for the underdog,” Mike Walsh said. “He expected everyone to perform to the best of their abilities everywhere and at all times.
Mike, who had his father as both a baseball and a football coach, recognizes the impact his father had on his players.
“All of those principles that he instilled in all of us kids and his expectations made us successful,” Mike Walsh said. “I went on to play college football and play on the baseball team; I coached college football for 17 years, and it all goes back to those things that I learned from my dad.”
Walsh’s students often went on to coach, play sports or teach physical education. Former Green Bay Packers head coach Mike Sherman and 1976 American League Rookie of the Year MLB pitcher Mark “The Bird” Fidrych both had Walsh as a major influence during their time at Algonquin. He impacted countless other athletes, such as 1961 graduate Dave Fouracre, who credits his 52-year baseball coaching career at Brockton High School to Walsh’s influence.
“It was him who helped me to become the person that I was in terms of being a teacher and coach myself,” Fouracre said. “My whole operation as a coach for football and baseball resembled his approach to the game.”
Fouracre appreciated Walsh’s positive coaching style.
“He coached with ease,” Fouracre said. “He took everything as it came; he let anything negative roll off his back rather than getting upset.”
Walsh’s lasting impact on the Algonquin community is largely due to his care for the school and his students. Throughout his employment, even after his official retirement, he was often at the school seven days a week, tending to the fields or recycling cans and selling candy to fund the school’s athletic equipment and activities. His dedication and love for the school led many to call him “Mr. Algonquin.”
“I understand how wide-ranging his impact was on the larger community and that he represented this unbroken linkage back to our school’s most distant past,” Principal Sean Bevan said. “That kind of legacy is something most schools don’t have.”
Bevan, who previously served as an English teacher and coach at Algonquin, saw Walsh as a fountain of knowledge.
“He was a really good person to go to when I had a question about something that preceded me in my tenure,” Bevan said. “That was always helpful. I just think he was such a steady presence and was also a funny guy, so if you got to know him, he was really sharp-witted and had a really dry and self-effacing sense of humor that everybody enjoyed.”
Walsh’s humor always stuck with long-time friend Social Studies teacher John Barry.
“[I liked] getting to the point where you knew him so well, you could give him some good-natured clapback,” Barry said. “Once you could give it back to him and tell him that he was full of it, you opened up a deeper relationship with the guy.”
Barry also valued Walsh’s caring nature and saw him as a great friend to the Algonquin community.
“I left the school for three weeks when my first child was born back in 2013, and he sent me this Hallmark card,” Barry said. “It didn’t have advice, but it just basically had a couple of comments from him about how, ‘It’s stressful now, but you’re gonna be great at it.’ I’ll never forget that card. He mailed it right to my house. “When you were Dick Walsh’s friend, you had an instinctive sense that you were loved, and I feel like he really gave that intrinsic love to the entire Algonquin community.”
Walsh left a lasting impact on Algonquin’s football program, as he coached the team to their only two Super Bowl wins in 1973 and 1976. Current head coach Mark Allen was inspired by Walsh’s dedication to the school.
“For a guy to be 92 years old, still coming to school; he’s in the cafeteria every day, he’s here on the weekends in the school, he’s coming to sports events,” Allen said. “You don’t see that too often. There are thousands of people who got to interact with him and thousands of people he had a positive impact on.”
Walsh’s humility made an impression on Allen.
“I think he never wanted personal accolades,” Allen said. “Here’s a guy who has accomplished so much and done so much for a school yet at the same time doesn’t want any recognition. I think unselfishness really played a part in who he was and really rubbed off on a lot of people in a positive way. To me, that’s something that’s a really great attribute for someone to look up to.”
Bevan believes it is important to honor and celebrate Walsh in a way that aligns with this humility.
“We need to think about what he’d want and he’d want kind of a humble send-off, and he’d want us to carry on and enjoy our school experience,” Bevan said. ”At the same time, now that he’s not here to prevent us from doing things like really making a lot of fanfare out of it, I think we have an opportunity to have it be a celebration of his life in a way that I think he would have been a little bit shy about.”
While the stadium field was named in Walsh’s honor in the late 1990s, Walsh turned down invitations to be inducted into the ARHS Athletic Hall of Fame. He will be honored as a member, posthumously, this November. JV football head coach Jonathan Cahill, like many others, believes Walsh’s Hall of Fame-worthy impact went far beyond football.
”Where we are today as a school with such great athletics, I think in all aspects we have him to thank,” Cahill said. “He was involved with everything, it wasn’t just football, it was every sport… He helped create this culture of great sports that we know today at Algonquin.”
Cahill’s memories with Walsh go back to when he and his sister were students at Algonquin. After Walsh noticed that his sister had been creating bracelets out of soda tabs to raise money for Relay for Life, he started taking every single tab off the cans he collected in the cafeteria.
“He came to my sister one day and gave her a bunch of gallon freezer bags full of soda tabs,” Cahill said. “I’ll never forget that and what it meant to my sister at the time. It was something nobody asked him to do and he just did it because that’s who he was. He was such a kind person and wanted to see students be successful.”
Cahil believes Walsh lives on through the impacts he had on the Algonquin community.
“He’s not gone,” Cahill said. “He will live on through different memories, different stories, and I’m sure there will be different things we will be doing over the next few weeks and months and years to honor him. Legends never die. He will live on in these halls and with our athletic program and with our school.”
Health and Fitness teacher Melissa Arvanigian met Walsh on her first day at Algonquin. Since that moment, she said they bonded over their love for animals and would catch up with each other frequently.
“As a community, we have been blessed for such a long time by having this amazing person in our lives,” Arvanigian said. “I think he only spread kindness and goodness, and he’s taught so many lessons to all of us as educators and to the students, too. He never asked for anything in return. He just always wanted to do what was good and right for the community and for Algonquin.”
Social studies teacher Renee Moulton believes Walsh’s reliability and presence were powerful for the student body.
“I think for students, consistency is key,” Moulton said. “He was absolutely a consistent figure that was always in the building. Even as he started to get older and maybe a little less mobile, he was still a visual person that people could see and he would always be kind to anyone.”
Above all, Walsh was a coach, teacher and friend to all.
“Dick Walsh taught me how to be a good friend, and I think he taught that to a lot of people,” Barry said.
