Remembering Richie Meyers

“The career has been a dream,” he said upon retirement in 2012. “It has just been a blessing. If someone had told me as a teenager that I would have this kind of career, I never would have believed it.”

Before joining RCS in 1965, Richie was coaching football at his alma mater, Western Colorado State in Yuma, Colorado. Mentally preparing himself to enlist in the Vietnam War, he took what he thought would be a quick trip to his boyhood home of New Rochelle for a pre-service physical. Waiting for deployment orders and the results of his physical, he applied for a part-time physical education job at what was then called the Bedford Rippowam School. Headmaster Walter Wyeth hired Richie to help out for a month. 

Recognizing early on that Richie had more to offer than just his athletic ability, and without his knowledge, Headmaster Wyeth wrote to the Draft Board and stated that Richie Meyers was needed at the school, and was irreplaceable. Richie’s month on the job turned into months, and then years, and ultimately decades. The Bronx native made RCS and Bedford his home, all the while keeping in touch with his New Rochelle roots. 

Bill Barrett, RCS former Upper School division head, athletics director, teacher, and coach, said in 2012 that Coach Meyers “created a level of excellence in our athletics program; he challenged generations of RCS students to live life to the fullest, to never quit, and to embrace life’s challenges head on, with an optimism that demands we give our all.”

  

We remain forever grateful to Coach Meyers for the tremendous impact he had on the entire RCS community, and our thoughts are with his family and friends. We do not yet have information on the plans for a memorial service, but we will share those details as soon as we receive them.