Gene Bray 1/28/06
Football: East’s Bray remembered for his ‘fire’
By Scott Venci svenci@greenbaypressgazette.com
Gene Bray, who coached Green Bay East High School to six Fox River Valley Conference football championships from 1967 to 1982, died Saturday. He was 82. Bray, who was inducted into the Wisconsin High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1989, went 87-48-3 in 16 seasons with the Red Devils. “He was a very fine individual,” said Bruce Steinfeldt, an offensive and defensive lineman for East in 1968 and 1969. “Coach Bray would get on your case real good when you screwed up, but then he would pat you on the back. He was a very good coach, and a guy you enjoyed playing for.” East won the FRVC title outright in 1972, 1976 and 1978 and shared it in 1969, 1971 and 1979. Bray was named FRVC coach of the year in 1971, 1972, 1978 and 1979.
A native of Valders, where his father coached for 37 years, Bray began his football coaching career at Wabeno, compiling a 15-6 record over three seasons from 1949 to 1951. He was the basketball coach and an assistant football coach at Merrill for three years before being hired as an assistant football coach at East in 1955. He served in that capacity for 12 years before succeeding Al Mancheski as coach in 1967. “We got along real well together,” said former Green Bay West coach Earl “Mike” Miller, who coached the Wildcats from 1971 to 1986 and remained friends with Bray in retirement. “He was a competitor in football. He had fire.” There was nothing Bray and Miller loved more than the annual East-West game. “Gene and I try to keep alive a little bit of the old, even though it’s hard sometimes,” Miller said before the 1977 game. Bray’s son, Neil, who played for his father in 1966 and 1967, recalled from his home in Redding , Calif. , last September that “my fondest memories of the (East-West) game were … the ones experienced as a sideline rat with my dad.” After retiring from East with a career record of 102-54-3, Bray was an assistant football coach at St. Norbert College from 1984 to 1993.