The story below is from our May/June 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
Photo above: Anthony Giorgetti
Joe Gaither celebrates his incredible history as athlete, coach and good human in his new book.
Coach Joe Gaither has been a fixture of the Roanoke Valley for decades, beginning with his time as a star athlete for GW Carver and Andrew Lewis as a youth, to his coaching ICAA and AAU teams at Roanoke Catholic to championships as a coach and time as a deacon at Shenandoah Baptist Church in Salem.
Now, he’s also the subject of a biography of his life, “The Coach Gaither Story: Strong Faith and Tough Love in the Star City.”
If all you knew of Gaither was the title of the book about his life, you might get the wrong idea about his personality. Sometimes the word tough makes people think “mean.” But the word tough, much like its close relative “strong,” has no need for roughness or cruelty. Like a plant that survives the winter, toughness is about resiliency.
Gaither has undoubtedly demonstrated that. His single mom, Laura Gaither, raised him to work hard and care for others. He remembers her love and excellent cooking and credits her for helping him become the man he did in the absence of his father.
As a teenage student-athlete, it took a lot of resilience to move from the all-Black school of GW Carver to his new one at Andrew Lewis when Roanoke schools first integrated. His grades were good, but he didn’t feel confident in his new environment—except on the court.
“Basketball was my saving grace,” he says. “On the court, everybody’s the same.”
Even so, when traveling, he wasn’t always treated that way. Gaither remembers traveling to Halifax and being the only Black person in the entire gymnasium. They wouldn’t serve him at a local restaurant, and a poster hung prominently in the school’s hallway read, “Join the clan. Save the land.”
He described the experience as “kind of threatening.”
But that adversity pushed him harder and also inspired him to be the role model the boys around him needed. Later when he began coaching basketball, he expected his players to push themselves too.
Gaither’s tough love descriptor comes from the high standards he set on and off the court for the boys he mentored. His teams had to work harder than any other teams in the area. He learned about how peak physical conditioning can improve performance when he was drafted into the army and played on the base’s team. As a result of Gaither’s standards for his players, the other teams couldn’t keep up with them.
Seeing Gaither speak in front of a group of youth hyped on coffee, interested but interruptive, the first word that springs to mind might be gentle. Or maybe patient.
When one young boy says he would have left the gym if he had been forced to do 30 suicides for being late (like Gaither and his teammates on the GW Carver basketball team), Gaither used the Socratic method to set him straight.
“But what if you were one of only ten players on the team? What if you were one of the top scorers? And what if your teammates were counting on you?”
The young man relented that he would stay, and Gaither told him that was the correct answer while pointing out the importance of teamwork over personal ego. Gaither feels that one of the problems with today’s youth sports is players’ focus on individual accomplishments over their teams.
Gaither credits everyone else who helped him and his players succeed in life, including teachers, coaches, his mother, God and his wife, Bernice, who was at his side every step of the way. His love for her shines through every time he brings her up. “I married up,” he told the kids.
Beyond his coach and his mother, another standard setter for Gaither was his high school typing teacher, Mrs. Julia Hoffler. Her typing standards led to Gaither getting a position as a typist in Germany when he was in the Army. He credits her with saving his life because it kept him out of Vietnam.
Watching Gaither interact with these youth, encourage them to get good grades, and use it as a step to achieve their dreams, it’s easy to understand how he inspired generations of Roanoke youth to become extraordinary student-athletes and upstanding young men.
He emphasizes that in student-athlete, student comes first, and his energy was infectious as the kids were excited to share their own goals with Coach Gaither.
“You’ve got to listen to them,” he says. “You can tell you’re reaching some of them by the spark in their eyes.” His own eyes lit up as he described theirs.
One former player, now an adult, ended his gym workout early when he found out Gaither was presenting and stopped by to thank Gaither for what he’d done for him. Dave Russo says it’s a common occurrence to have former players seek Gaither out at presentations to thank him.
The former player says, “Who knows how many of us would have ended up somewhere else without you?”
The player’s words ring true, and it’s a big part of why Gaither enjoyed and felt blessed by his time watching his players “go from boys to men.”
And that’s his legacy, even as he continues to coach more players at Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg with his former player and UVA basketball star Curtis Staples. He hasn’t been able to “hang up his whistle” yet.
Two of his former players are passing on his legacy in a new way. Staples and another former player, George Lynch, are purchasing a dormitory at Lakeway Christian Academy in White Pine, Tennessee. It will be used to house international students on scholarships.
Even if Gaither has no visible ego, the people he’s touched are proud enough for him.
The story above is from our May/June 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
