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Influencing a New Generation of Educators

During his 33-year teaching and coaching career, Sam Holt maintained an epic legacy, reaching his students and players on a level that would affect him and the area for years.

During his lifetime, Sam Holt has told many stories—stories of Egyptian kings, Roman empires, Founding Fathers, and the quagmires of war. He has spent the past 70 years learning, teaching, and telling; inspiring others with not just his words but his dedication, and genuine interest in those around him and the world in which we live.

During his 33-year teaching and coaching career, Holt maintained an epic legacy, reaching his students and players on a level that would affect him and the area for years to come.

“He Was the Role Model”

It was during the tumultuous late 1960s that Holt received his Masters from Temple University and began student teaching at Radnor Middle School. He helped to found and coach the middle school soccer and baseball teams, putting down the roots for the long-lasting influence he has had on Radnor sports. 

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By 1970, he was teaching 9th grade American history at and coaching at the high school level. And while Holt’s own life stories had been accumulating for years, it was here that his inspiration seems to begin.

“You’re hit with the optimism,” he said. “The innocence, enthusiasm, the positivity; it’s a gift to be able to grow up yourself and have this as a constant in your life.”

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But storytelling, like coaching or teaching, isn’t a one-way street. Those whom Holt has reached over the years are equally to thank for his unyielding inspiration, feeding his interest in humanity and his continuing dedication to those around him.

“He was one of my mentors,” said Mark Mintzer, founder and executive director of the Youth Mentoring Partnership.

Mintzer graduated from Radnor in 1981. Holt was his teacher and coach.

“He was the role model,” he said. “I was a kid on the surface, looked like everything was fine. I was president of my junior and senior class; three varsity letters a year.”

But family issues were prevalent.

“If it hadn’t been for people like Sam who took me under his wing… the way he led his life, being inspiring, his high expectations,” Mintzer continued. “He gave me someone to look up to at a very critical time in my life. It's one of the reasons I founded the Youth Mentoring Partnership. Because I’m the man I am today with a strong healthy family and a happy life, because of Sam.”

Holt was honored by YMP at an event this past week. And though he has never been formally involved in YMP, Holt is responsible for its creation, in a very direct way, said Mintzer.

“We felt it was important to celebrate those who are out there mentoring kids,” he said.

YMP is an organization started by Mintzer to do just that. Funded in part by an educational grant, YMP now helps hundreds of kids, year round, free of charge at what will soon be four separate sites around the area.

“This is part of Sam’s legacy,” said Mintzer.

His History

Holt’s story begins with a childhood in Ocean City and adolescence on the Main Line. He’s part of the post-WWII baby boom, and as such spent much of his childhood in the area moving from one new, or expanded school to the next, finishing his high school career in the first graduating class at Harriton High School.

His story continues as a collegiate athlete and short-lived meteorology major, before focusing on education at Penn State. Four years later, Holt had yet to graduate. 

So he left college and spent the next few years traveling the country, visiting all of the sun-kissed coasts he could manage. When finally, it hit him.

“If I was going to go to one more beach, I was going to go crazy,” Holt said. “I wasn’t ready to go back to college, I wasn’t ready to join the working world. I wanted to continue playing sports.”

So he joined the Army.

Holt enlisted for three years. While stationed in Maryland, he met Patty, a secretarial student in Washington and the woman he would marry. He spent the first year and a half in the ski infantry in Alaska, and the second in Vietnam.

When he returned to the United States the world seemed very different. Holt courted his soon to be bride, finished college at Penn State, and married on graduation day. But times were difficult.

“Here I am coming back from Vietnam, and the two people I liked most to affect change are both killed,” Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, he said. “An extension of the killing that I saw.”

“They Still Talk About Him at School”

Holt’s stories and influence have had far reaching affects, but back in the halls of Radnor High School, his name is still synonymous with teaching excellence.

“They still talk about him at school,” said Alan Mezger, a Radnor High School teacher.

Mezger is also a former soccer player, a Radnor alumnus class of ’91, and teaches History in Holt’s old classroom. Holt comes back once a year to speak to Mezger’s students about Vietnam.

“Coaching was a passion of his,” he said. “But education was first.”

Mezger remembers his days as a student. Holt was a very strict disciplinarian as a coach, but very laid back in his other capacity. Other than his father, Holt was, and still is, a very significant person in his life. And ended up being a driving force in Mezger’s career as a coach.

Holt was one of the founders of FC DELCO, a non-profit soccer club established in 1988. Over the years, FC DELCO has been a resource for elite players to better themselves on and off the field.

When he had to step away from his position coaching at FC DELCO for health reasons, it was Mezger that he recruited to fill his spot.

“Sam Holt has a really large coaching tree,” Mezger continued. “Whatever I learned from Sam I’m now teaching a whole new generation of educators.”

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