On Tuesday, October 29, the Michigan Jewish Sports Hall of Fame will be honoring Brother Gary Gerson (Vanderbilt, 1985) with a Pillar of Excellence. How did a self-proclaimed “pipsqueak” and high school “band geek” end up here? In typical Gary Gerson fashion, he took the road less traveled and in his own inimitable style.

After walking onto the Vanderbilt football team in 1981 (after walking away from his career in the marching band), Gary’s devotion to his teammates and Vanderbilt Commodore football became legendary. While on one of Vanderbilt’s most successful football squads (the 1982 team played in the Hall of Fame Bowl and represented the school’s first winning season in ten years), he had an inside look at what it took to be a successful athlete and how best to coach them. He later detailed that experience in a fantastic article in the Vanderbilt University alumni magazine which was excerpted from his 2016 book, Scoring Points: Love and Football in the Age of AIDS.

Following graduation, Gary traveled to Europe and ended up as a player/coach on an American football team in Amsterdam. “This pre-dated the World League of American Football. I called up the Amsterdam Rams and told them that I was living in Amsterdam right now and they were excited because they were looking for American football players. You know, I was terrible at Vanderbilt. I was the worst football player on one of the worst teams in the Southeastern Conference for a time, but I had learned a lot about where your hands and feet go. I ran a route, and they were all like, ‘Oh my g-d, look at this guy!’ because I knew to put my hands in the right place, the way they taught me at Vanderbilt. I ended up being their coach, too and it was really very fun.”

After returning to the U.S., Gary looked up his Tau chapter fraternity brother, Andy “Coach” Cohen in Detroit who helped him get settled in as a teacher and assistant football coach at Cranbrook Academy in suburban Detroit. “I spent seven years as an assistant football coach there and I kept getting passed over for the head coaching job. I had started teaching earth science and geology and moved into teaching physics because I like that quite a bit.”

After being passed over for the head coaching job again, Gary decided to move on and enrolled at the University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario (just over the bridge from Detroit) to get his master’s degree. “While I was coaching at Cranbrook, I had gotten in great shape. I was playing in a touch football league and lifting weights, and all of my skills came back to me.” Because he had had a broken leg while at Vanderbilt, he discovered that he still had two years of college eligibility left so he contacted the coach at Windsor. “I’m sure the coach was expecting someone very different than what I look like. I’m under 6-foot tall, kind of slow looking, and very Jewish. You could see he was very disappointed when he saw me.”

But, between being in great shape and having had so much coaching experience, Gary not only made the team, but he was the starting wide receiver his first year of graduate school. “The guys on the team called me ‘Grandpa’ and it was a fantastic – seminal – experience for me.” After catching a touchdown pass during his second year, his injuries caught up with him and he knew his playing career was finally over. Gary returned to Cranbrook and was offered the position of head football coach. “Those kids that I coached, they didn’t go on to play football later. They became doctors and lawyers, but they loved to strap on the helmets, and I absolutely loved coaching them.”

“I imported the spread offense from my days at Vanderbilt and we had great success. I had a quarterback who threw for 2,500 yards and 34 touchdowns. We had a three-year stretch where we went 25-2 and in 2004 we went undefeated. The quarterback of that team is now a neurosurgeon. They are all doctors now. All 11 seniors were accepted into Ivy League or equivalent schools.”

After 13 years as head coach at Cranbrook, Gary left Cranbrook to start a new career as a consultant and a transportation specialist. He was one of the first Uber drivers in the Detroit area and wrote a book about that experience, I’m Light.

Gary’s latest book was another personal passion project. In 2020, he published The Jews of Hamblen County, Tennessee, detailing the history of the small, tight knit Jewish community his family came from in East Tennessee. “I wrote that book sitting in my car during COVID. I had to get in the car because my kids were going crazy in the house!”

Gary and his wife, Shelly, have adopted three children and built a life around them. “Two years ago, that Hall of Fame Bowl team from Vanderbilt had a reunion in Nashville and I was able to bring my boys back with me and their eyes were just huge. I took them on the field at halftime and, of course, I stopped by the AEPi house.”

“I never had a desire to be in a fraternity I hated that whole scene. I didn’t drink and I just thought it was debauchery and horribleness and I didn’t want any part of it. Andy Cohen kept inviting me to events and to work with him doing radio for the women’s basketball team. I got to know some of the other guys and once you got to know them, they were all great. And, of course, I became deep friends with Andy and his wife, Sheila, and they are how I got to Cranbrook.”

“I loved my time there at AEPi. The fraternity was the hub Jewish organization on campus. There was partying and a lot of fun but there also was an acknowledgement of my holidays and with bagels and brotherhood.”

Brothers are invited to attend the Michigan Jewish Sports Hall of Fame dinner and award presentation on Tuesday, October 29, 2024, at the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield, MI. Click here for registration information and information about sponsorships and the tribute journal.

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