Bamberg (Germany) High School boys' basketball coach Charles E. "Chuck" Jordan, center, talks to his team during a timeout in last year's Division IV final against Menwith Hill. Jordan died following complication from surgery. (Michael Abrams / S&S)
BAMBERG, Germany — Hundreds gathered Tuesday at the Warner Barracks theater to mourn the loss of a coach, mentor, teacher and friend.
Bamberg American Middle High School students, Department of Defense Dependents Schools Europe faculty, soldiers and community members came together to say goodbye to Charles E. “Chuck” Jordan in their own way.
A member of the Bamberg High staff since 1988, Jordan was a well-loved and respected athletic director, physical education teacher, football, tennis, soccer and basketball coach. He passed away Feb. 18 of complications from surgery. He was 55.
“When I arrived from a rival school, the perception from outside [Bamberg] is that [Jordan] was hard, uncaring and tough on kids,” said school principal Dominick Calabria.
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Jordan was a man who loved to talk, to tell stories, but mostly he took time to listen to everyone he came in contact with, Calabria said.
When Jordan’s 2007 Bamberg Barons boys varsity basketball team won the DODDS-Europe Division III championship Saturday, the opposing coach said to Calabria after the game, “Coach Jordan beat me again, this time from up above.”
He was a fierce competitor during a game, but a friend afterward, said DODDS Bavaria District Superintendent Mike Thompson. “[Jordan] knew that winning and success are two different things.”
One of Jordan’s best friends, Allen Archie, is a rival coach at Patch High in Stuttgart. He tearfully recounted how he and Jordan would talk every day, and even spent time with each other after their teams would play.
“Coach, my son, you have coached some great teams on earth, but come on up here to the greater glory and coach the heavenly saints,” Archie said, believing that’s the reception Jordan received in heaven.
Kevin Daniels, a Bamberg junior and player on this year’s championship team, spoke for the student body.
“[Jordan] was more than just a PE teacher; he was a friend, a mentor and a father.”
Daniels recounted how Jordan referred to any and every student as “scrub,” eliciting a rare laugh from the somber students in attendance.
“Every kid who came through the doors of Bamberg High School and could dribble a ball wanted to play for Coach Jordan,” Daniels said.
Another student, 15-year-old sophomore Joshua Clifton, said, “[Jordan] was a really good friend to me, like a father when my stepdad wasn’t around.”
“Coach Jordan, you’ll always have a place in my heart, in our hearts,” he said.
Delivering Jordan’s eulogy was friend and DODDS peer Dauria D’orsi, who spoke of a man who was once a semi-pro tennis player with a love for photography and jazz music.
A father twice over and a brother to five siblings, Jordan was a proud ex-soldier who served in Berlin and Garmisch from 1975-1982. He received his bachelor’s degree in South Carolina at Benedict College, and a master’s in education from National-Louis University in Illinois.
Jordan will be buried in Georgia near his family, and funeral arrangements are being made at a Darien, Ga., funeral home for later in the week, Calabria said.
