The Gardiner football team opened its season with a convincing 31-0 victory over Oceanside, but the game ultimately was a footnote Friday night.
Members of the tight-knit Gardiner football community turned out in force to honor two late legends of the program – John Wolfgram and Brad Carleton.
Wolfgram, the winningest high school football coach in state history, passed away last month due to Parkinson’s disease. Wolfgram’s football teams won 309 games and 10 state championships in more than four decades. He coached at Madison, South Portland, Cheverus and Gardiner.
Carleton graduated in 2008 and was a key player on the 2007 state championship winning team. He committed suicide in October 2023.
The ceremony Friday began with scores of Gardiner High alumni, coaches, students and community members forming a tunnel for the Tigers to run through. Standing at the end was Wolfgram’s wife of 58 years and high school sweetheart Adin Wolfgram, as well as their daughter and Gardiner field hockey alum, Beth Wolfgram.
“It’s such a great honor for our family,” Beth Wolfgram said. “We spent 11 years here in Gardiner and really loved the community support, the families that we got to know. The impact that my dad had on this school and this community was amazing. To have so many people come out to honor him and to support us and be here for us during this time when we’ve lost him, is just, it’s so fantastic. I can’t put it into words, it’s a really special night.”
After the team ran through the tunnel and broke the paper banner, everyone filed onto the field for a special surprise plaque dedication presented by Burgess and Palmer, who both played for Wolfgram on the 1985 state championship team. They surprised the Wolfgrams with a plaque from that team that was given to John, signed by the players when they were in high school.
“It’s half a helmet of an old school helmet that’s mounted on a plaque, and so it’s been refurbished,” Gardiner coach Pat Munzing said. “My son happened to find it and gave it to my dad a couple weeks ago and said, ‘maybe you recognize the names on the back of this.’ Nobody even knew that it had ever been signed, it had just been kind of left (behind) and we had in our coaches room for years, and none of us ever noticed it, either. My dad started reading the names and he’s like, ‘this is the ‘85 state championship team, that was John’s last team here,’ so pretty special to give that back and have it go to its final place.”
Another alum, Bobby Rosso, made and donated two signs that hung on fences behind each end zone. The signs featured one of Wolfgram’s famous quotes, “championship level.”
Coach Munzing knew Wolfgram since he was 5 years old. He added that Wolfgram had a profound impact on him as a person and a coach.
“For the last 50 years, every coach at Gardiner High School has had a direct link to Coach Wolfgram,” Pat Munzing said. “So whether it was myself or Joe White that was before me, or Matt Burgess or Jim Palmer, those guys all had coached or played for either my dad or John Wolfgram. There’s things that we have had so ingrained in our program directly from him.”
For Munzing, the ability to gather as a community to both grieve and celebrate Wolfgram’s legacy in a place he loved proved to be the most powerful part of Friday. The relationships and connections the players built through decades extend beyond their high school playing days.
“I’m just thankful that we have a community that is so supportive of our kids. I think they look back at, really, the roots of high school football in Maine and what it really is about, and being able to share that with our community, turning the lights on at Hope Field on Friday night and having our community there to support these kids … is just something that a lot of communities don’t get to experience,” Pat Munzing said.
After the game, with a big smile on his face, Munzing said he was ready to carry out one of Wolfgram’s best traditions — buying the team donuts to celebrate the “0” in Friday’s shutout score.
For Beth Wolfgram, her father’s legacy as coach is just a fraction of the man who raised her.
“He was a coach and a teacher and a leader to so many people, and yet to our family, he was our dad, my mom’s husband, the grandkids’ grandfather,” she said. “He was a special guy outside of his coaching and teaching, and he impacted our lives in a way (where) he was so humble and authentic, and he led a life with integrity and really just embraced life. I think he could teach a lot of us how to live life and have a life full of meaning.”
Bill Kelley, who was on the 2007 state championship winning team, grew up with Carleton. He said he had no idea his best friend struggled with mental health challenges until getting the call that his friend had died. The silver lining through nearly two years of grieving has been the reprioritization of staying in touch with his teammates, 17 years since they touched the field at Gardiner.
Kelley spearheaded a campaign to fundraise and build a bronze Tigers statue that now resides at the entrance of the field. Carleton’s family was there to pull the rope off the statue to unveil it. That moment was extra special for his brothers and program alumni Logan Carleton, class of 2020, and Alex Lapointe, class of 2015.
“This brotherhood, just because you graduate and go different directions, it’s always there,” Kelley said. “It’s always strong; Brad could have called me and said, ‘need you tomorrow,’ and I would have been on a flight from Florida, and that would have been all it would have taken. Same thing for all of us, for each other … whether it’s today or 60 years from now, if I said, ‘hey, I need you,’ they’d be on a flight down for me too. Knowing that it’s got no expiration date, that brotherhood, it’s forged in those four years, but it lasts forever.”
