HELDSTAB: Late Summerville High coach remembered,
Marlin Heldstab, a 44-year veteran of Summerville High School athletics, dies at 85
Almost every alumnus of Summerville High School knows the name Marlin Heldstab, the 44-year veteran of Summerville High School athletics who died in the early morning Nov. 1.
Besides looming large in the history of Summerville High School, whether it was on the freshman basketball court or the varsity football field, Marlin Heldstab loomed large in the hearts and memories of his family and the hundreds of players and coaches he met during his life.
“He loved his family, he loved the kids, he loved sports and loved competition,” said his son, Summerville Elementary School Superintendent Mitch Heldstab. “That came across to a lot of his players, so therefore he could get everyone fired up. He was a motivator, so I think that was one of the main factors in his caring so much.”
Marlin Heldstab died of heart failure and malnutrition at 85, Mitch Heldstab said. Prior to his death, he had come down with pneumonia and strep throat and spent five days in the hospital.
Throughout his distinguished and over four-decade career at Summerville High School, Marlin Heldstab was a freshman basketball coach, a defensive coordinator for the varsity football team and spent durations coaching junior varsity football, baseball and track.
“He had kind of a wide range of athletic abilities,” Mitch Heldstab said. “He coached a lot of kids, and he was very well loved by his players. He had a good sense of humor, but demanded a lot from them at the same time. He was very, very helpful to a lot of kids.”
Roger Canepa was coached by Marlin Heldstab in Pop Warner football in the late 1970s and later faced off against him in high school football while a varsity coach at Sonora High and Calaveras High. Canepa said he remembered Marlin Heldstab much like his peers: tough, but kind; disciplined, but funny — an all-around personality that motivated his players and his peers to strive for achievement.
“You think of Summerville sports, he's probably the one guy you think of,” Canepa said. “He coached me, and I coached against him. He was a player's coach, he was one of those guys you would run through a wall for. It was oldschool football back then.”
Something that everyone seemed to know about Marlin
Heldstab was his humor. Students needed to watch out when they saw him swinging a big set of keys on a lanyard, said former Summerville High School freshman basketball player Bobby Caldera, and he had a nickname for just about everyone.
Caldera said he forgot his own, but remembered a teammate who was known as Shaggy from Scooby-doo.
“Marlin was one of those guys you were friends with when you ran into him,” said Caldera, who graduated from Summerville High in 1986. “When you grew up in Tuolumne, you got to know him.”
Dave Urquhart joined the staff of Summerville High in
1985 as a grade-level coordinator, but was familiar with Marlin Heldstab as an opposing coach when Urquhart coached freshman basketball at Calaveras High in 1978.
Over Urquhart's 27 years at Summerville High (he served as principal from 2002 to 2012 before becoming Superintendent at the Big Oak Flat-groveland Unified School District), he watched Marlin Heldstab develop students not just as athletes, but as members of the community.
Urquhart said Marlin Heldstab hosted an evening auto repair class for students who often needed additional credits or guidance to graduate.
“The way Marlin coached was to be firm but encouraging,” Urquhart said. “He was able to be firm with his players when he needed to, but he had this great smile and when he smiled everyone knew things were OK. What I was encouraged by was his dedication to Summerville High School and the town of Tuolumne, because there was
nothing he wouldn't do for either of those for time or effort or financially helping kids out.”
Former Summerville High coach Darcy Wingo said he worked with Marlin Heldstab on and off for 17 or 18 years beginning in 1983.
“He had an uncanny feel for it in the game,” Wingo said. “He had a great way of relating with the kids too. From the Xs and Os part of it he had an uncanny ability to get a feel for it, but on the human side he knew how to put kids in places they could be successful.”
There was also his quiet generosity for which he was prolific, but humble, Mitch Heldstab said.
When students wrecked their cars, Marlin Heldstab would find his way to where they were at and get them running. On sports trips, he always kept his eye out if a kid wasn't eating. Silently and inconspicuously, he would slip them a bill for food.
“He was in positions like that when he was a kid, when he didn't have any money,” Mitch Heldstab said. “I think he was generous to a fault with kids. He developed a lot of kids not only athletically, but personally. He gave them skills to work with when they got out of school.”
Marlin Heldstab's generosity may have been borne out of his own tough upbringing.
He was born in the town of Mccloud and attended eight different elementary schools before entering into school in Tuolumne. The son of a sawyer, he spent most of his high school years excelling in various sports before playing football at Modesto Junior College.
Though he was a top athlete at Summerville High School, Marlin Heldstab did not often have his mother's support. He lived in the Standard area during his senior year and hitchhiked every day to the Summerville campus, Mitch Heldstab said.
“It meant that much to him to be in Tuolumne,” Mitch Heldstab said.
It was in high school that Marlin Heldstab met his future wife, Erline, and married her soon after.
Outside of sports, Marlin Heldstab was a local fixture at Westside and for decades at Kelley Motors.
Like he did as a sports coach as a younger man, Marlin Heldstab persisted through a series of tragedies in his twilight years.
On Dec. 16, 2017, his family home he shared with his wife on Woolworth Street in Tuolumne for more than 50 years burned down. Soon after, Erline Heldstab was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
Caldera was later hired to rebuild the burned house on Woolworth Street.
“He just had so much on his plate all at once,” Caldera said. “But the good part about Marlin, in my opinion, was that he was pretty healthy right until the end.”
The couple were displaced while it was being rebuilt, spending time in Erline Heldstab's childhood home until finding a more permanent spot in a studio apartment. They did not return to live in the home and instead spent their final years there.
Through his last days, Marlin Heldstab's friends and family all agreed he was “one of a kind” and will be long remembered in the community.
Marlin Heldstab is survived by his wife, children and grandchildren.