The man with the friendly smile and the twinkle in his eye is gone. Gil Adams died Sunday morning, April 15, 2018 at the Presbyterian Home in New Hartford. He was 94 years old. Born in Newark on December 23, 1923, in God’s Country — New Jersey, for the uninitiated – Gil spent his first 40 years in the Garden State: 24 in Caldwell, his hometown, and 16 in Livingston. He graduated from Caldwell High School, and subsequently followed his older brother to Hamilton College in the fall of 1941. Pearl Harbor cast its shadow over the future; Gil enlisted in the Army Air Force to study meteorology at New York University in 1943. He maintained that one of the three most important events of his life was his commission as a First Lieutenant in the Army Air Force. He served as a weather officer at Offutt Field near Omaha and Lowry Field in Denver. Gil came back to College Hill in Clinton in 1946, and received his diploma in mathematics in 1947. His first teaching job was at Bethlehem Central in Delmar, New York, where he also coached freshman football for four seasons. It was the beginning of 52 seasons of sports he would go on to coach at four secondary schools in New York and New Jersey. The second important life event came in June of 1948 — his marriage to Margaret “Mickey” Brant of Columbus, Ohio. Their union resulted from a fortuitous blind date after Hamilton’s football team visited the University of Rochester in the fall of ’46. While they lived in Delmar, Gil completed his Master of Arts in Education at Albany State in 1951. They decided to move back to New Jersey to be near Gil’s parents. Teaching jobs at East Orange High School and West Essex Regional High brought more football and a new sport — ice hockey – to Gil’s repertoire. He began the hockey program at East Orange, and in 1962, he took over the West Essex Knights hockey team. It resulted in the third of Gil’s important life events. His team upset Chatham and won the Gordon Cup — a New Jersey state championship. His five year record at West Essex included 65 wins, 24 losses, and seven ties. These three life events were instrumental in forming the themes of Gil’s life and career: Education, Family, Service to Others and Athletics.
