LIMON — His death was by accident, but Dave Grimes’ life and times had purpose.
The 51-year-old, a teacher and coach who knew every feeling from tragedy to joy, was remembered Friday at Limon High School as a private man, one who probably would have wondered what all the fuss was about at his own wake.
A native of Colorado Springs who was drawn toward the state’s eastern plains, Grimes’ memory attracted enough people to the school gymnasium who stood, sat and prayed under some of the state-title banners he helped to secure and probably exceeded the small town’s population by a couple of hundred. Of course, there were few strangers.
Everyone knows everyone else around the area. Grimes was among them and prominent with the hardworking families that have kept Badgers sports relative for decades, from the dusty days of legendary football coach Lloyd Gaskill in the 1930s to the current Limon regime of which Grimes was a major contributor.
If we have a high school sports program that has one-room, schoolhouse values yet seems to just as easily operate under prep sports’ bright lights and win when it counts, it’s Limon’s.
Fittingly, there was a stubborn irony to Grimes’ death, although it remains a shock beyond Lincoln County. On May 16, while installing carpet in a locker room at the town pool, he was struck in the head by a beam. Grimes was knocked unconscious, then later refused to accept medical help. Friends say he wanted nothing to interfere with the soon-to-be state track meet — he headed Limon’s girls team — or, more important, son Cameron’s graduation.
Grimes only made it to the state track meet, but by early the past week turned slower, with slurred speech, and wasn’t the figure he had cut. The damage had been done — he passed away May 27 at Swedish Hospital in Englewood.
Limon hasn’t been — or won’t be — the same.
“He had a great heart for kids,” said departing Badgers athletic director Don Bailey, whose final acts included opening the doors to the school cafeteria one more time for Grimes’ family and friends to have one last meal on him.
Don’t be surprised to learn that most of Limon’s teachers and coaches graduated as Badgers. After his first two years of high school at Stratton, Grimes switched to Limon, where a couple of his more notable accomplishments were starring in basketball and excelling at track and field’s jumps, notably the triple jump.
“I was in eighth grade and he was in high school,” a solemn Limon head football coach Mike O’Dwyer said. “I looked up to him.”
It took Grimes, an imperfect father of three whose problems with alcohol led him to a deeper faith, more than a decade to secure his Badgers career, but what followed were 20-plus years of teaching and coaching — also on the junior high level — that produced six girls track titles, three more in football as an assistant and who knows how many relationships full of fun and impact.
Grimes, a brother of Patty Childress, who heads big- school volleyball power Grandview in Aurora, also is in the core sports group that has suddenly left the school. Warren Mitchell, the 87-year-old boys track coach and national hall of famer who had been in command for some 57 years, officially retired and has moved to Denver. Bailey, like other Badgers leaders, taught, coached, was an administrator and did whatever else was needed for 37 years.
So this is easily the most significant summer of change for Limon sports in memory. It’s a new era with lower enrollment that will only be overshadowed by Grimes’ death and fretted about from now until the beginning of fall practice in August.
“I don’t know what we’ll do without him,” O’Dwyer said.
Neil H. Devlin: 303-954-1714 or ndevlin@denverpost.com
