Charles Delker

1946 - 2023

News story
By Mark Zaborney
Blade Staff Writer

Charles Delker, a Toledo high school football standout who became a respected Waite High School football coach and teacher, died Sept. 20 in his South Toledo home. He was 76.

He had Alzheimer's disease, his stepson, Mark Kachenmeister, said.

Mr. Delker closed his career July 1, 2004, when he retired from Waite, where he'd taught science since the 1982-83 school year.

He stepped down as Waite head football coach at the end of the 2003 season after 16 years. When he was named head coach at the end of 1987, he'd been a Waite assistant football coach the previous seven years.

"He was a great man and a great mentor to those kids," said Terry Reeves, retired Bowsher High School athletic director who for 13 years was offensive and defensive coordinator for Mr. Delker's Waite teams. "It was always kids first for him."

Mr. Delker previously had been an assistant wrestling coach at Waite and at Scott and Maumee High Schools, where he'd also been an assistant football coach.

"He loved to get these kids motivated," stepdaughter Lori Paterwich said.

The foundation he provided allowed his Waite players to leave the program better young men than when they arrived, said Romules Durant, Toledo superintendent of schools, who played for Mr. Delker from 1991-94, becoming a star linebacker there and at the University of Toledo.

"He had a true appreciation for kids on the east side. He was able to build rapport," said Mr. Durant said, who related that when he stood 5-feet, 7-inches tall and weighed 145 pounds, before a later growth spurt, Mr. Delker started him as a middle linebacker.

"[He] was open in recognizing the intensity I played at. I appreciated the opportunity," Mr. Durant said. Later, in Mr. Durant's junior year, the coach asked him if he'd be willing to play in the offensive line guard spot as well, to fill a need.

It was a conversation, not an order.

"Coach Delker was a players' coach. He was very passionate about the O-line," Mr. Durant said. Mr. Delker also was known for creating a power lifting team that competed regionally and across the state, the superintendent said.

The coach's message was that lessons acquired at Waite "you are going to continue [in] your adult life. That's what I learned. I still work out," Mr. Durant said.

He was a master of one-liners, Mr. Reeves said.

"He was the funniest guy. He always kept the room light," Mr. Reeves said, adding that in disagreements among his assistants, "he'd always step in and say, 'Guys, we're in this together.' Whenever we walked out of the meeting, it was Charlie's decision, and that's what we went with."

Over summers, his duties extended to maintaining the Waite football field - and that included fertilizing and cutting the grass, Mr. Reeves said.

"Kids who were a little down on their luck he would hire to do the weed whacking and pay out of his own pocket," Mr. Reeves said.

Mr. Delker also had a fence installation business for years and often hired his football players to help.

He was a 2006 inductee to the City League hall of fame, selected as an honored coach.

"That was a super proud moment for him," Mr. Kachenmeister said.

He was born Dec. 29, 1946, to Irma and Howard Delker and grew up in South Toledo. He attended Libbey High School and then the new Bowsher High School, where he was an all-City League defensive end. He played middle guard at Bowling Green State University, from which he received a bachelor's degree.

He taught at Scott High School from 1976-82.

Mr. Delker also was an inventor, receiving a patent for a tackling dummy he devised with an attachable arm, meant to simulate a player carrying a football, so that defensive players could practice tackling and stripping the ball from a ball carrier's grasp, he told The Blade in 1994, when the patent was granted.

Family members and associates did not know whether he'd gotten his invention produced.

He and his first wife did not have children, but when he remarried, he gained grandchildren.

"The grandkids became part of him, and he enjoyed going to their sporting events," Mr. Kachenmeister said.

He and the former Katherine "Kitti" Clemens married April 1, 1972. She died July 16, 1999.

Surviving are his wife, the former Sharon Beam Kachemeister, whom he married Dec. 21, 2000; stepdaughter, Lori Paterwich; stepson, Mark Kachenmeister; sisters Pat Lay and Diane Delker; brother, Joe Delker; six stepgrandchildren, and three step-great-grandchildren.

A celebration of life event will be held later.