Earl James Helmbreck, 91, died March 22, 2017.
Longtime Brandywine High School teacher and coach Earl James Helmbreck Jr., whose wrestling and tennis teams managed only five losing seasons under his tutelage, died March 22 in Jennersville, PA, after battling heart disease for nearly fifty years. He was 91.
Helmbreck taught physical education for nearly 30 years at Brandywine, and generations of former students can still recall his instructions to “line up alphabetically by height” or “pair off in threes.”
He made his greatest mark as a coach of both Brandywine’s wrestling and tennis teams, guiding the tennis squad to multiple state victories and becoming the state’s longtime record holder for most consecutive tennis team wins with one 65-match winning streak that lasted from 1965 to 1970. In 15 years, his tennis teams lost only five matches and in 1968, he was named the state’s top net coach by the Delaware Lawn Tennis Association. His career tennis coaching record: 265 wins, 5 losses. He won the Ed Faulkner Bowl for the best high school tennis coach in the Middle Atlantic Region. In the 1970s, he was honored at the U.S Open tennis tournament at Forrest Hills as the most successful scholastic tennis coach in the nation.
Despite his achievements as a tennis coach, his great passion was for wrestling, which he coached at Brandywine for more than 25 years. His interest in the sport began in college, after he graduated in 1942 from Newark High School where he was a 5-foot-6, 135-pound football end and competed in track as a hurdler. Newark had no wrestling program but when he went out for football at Ursinus College, he was told he was too small. The coach suggested he try wrestling and he wrestled varsity at 126 pounds for three years and also ran track at the school in Collegeville, PA.
His university career was interrupted by a stint in the Navy, where he served as a Seaman First Class on the aircraft carrier the USS Bon Homme Richard from May 1944 until May 1946 in the South Pacific, and was part of the first American forces stationed off Japan in the early days after the surrender.
He returned to Ursinus to finish his bachelors degree and then moved to New York City to teach at Dobbs Ferry High School in Westchester County, where he coached football and baseball. He also attended Columbia University graduate school to get his masters degree in 1950 when he married the former Alice Juareen LaMastus. He taught in schools in Kingston, NY, Stanton, VA and Fairfax, VA, where he finished his course work on his PhD and began work on his doctoral thesis in education at the University of Maryland, in College Park, MD.
In 1963, he moved back to Delaware and began teaching and coaching at Brandywine High School. He was a member since 1955 of the American College of Sports Medicine.
His retirement in the early 1990s allowed him to devote more time to his passion for music. He played alto saxophone in several Wilmington-area jazz big bands and briefly led his own combo, the Top Hatters, for which he arranged and scored the music.
He was an avid fly fisherman, earning pocket money as a college student by tying flies. He also enjoyed gardening, collecting automobiles, spending time at his summer home in Maine and traveling with his wife of 64 years. They lived for more than 40 years in their home in Bellevue Manor before moving in 2010 to Jenners Pond in West Grove, Pa.
Helmbreck was predeceased by his wife in 2015. He is survived by his daughters, Alice Dewson (Thomas) of Greenville; Valerie Helmbreck Mascitti (Albert) of Hockessin; Gretchen Gates (Carl) of Lewes; and grandsons Carl III, Wilson and Taylor Gates; Dr. Alexis, Matthew and Ruben “Rina” Mascitti; and Thomas Dewson III; and four great grandsons.
Instead of flowers, the family suggests contributions to the Choir School of Delaware, 719 N. Shipley Street, Wilmington, DE 19801 or ccsde.org.
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