Grace Gulick
Information and images courtsey of the Hells Canyon Journal
Ask any local resident about Grace Gulick, and they will recall with great fondness the longtime teacher and coach at Pine Eagle High School.
Grace was so cherished, in fact, a majority of citizens recently voted to name the planned new track after her.
“I think that’s perfect. She touched a lot of people in her lifetime,” Roger Gulick, Grace’s son, said. “She just loved every minute of it, and she sent a lot of kids to state.”
Gesturing to participants of the Track and Field Fun Day held last month to raise funds and awareness for the track project, Roger added, “It’d tickle her to death, but she would not want anything for herself, she would not want this interview. She was quiet, to herself, reserved.”
“I think it’s great that it was named after her because she was well loved by the community, and was just a great PE teacher, volleyball coach and track coach and advocate for students,” Cammie deCastro, Pine Eagle superintendent, agreed. “Her team won the state championship one year, and I went to state with her in track my freshman and sophomore year.”
Early Years
Grace Gulick was born Nellie Grace Goodwin in 1932. She grew up near the sawmill on Goodwin Sawmill Lane and attended school in Jim Town.
Her family was originally from Cornucopia and Grace enjoyed visiting the old mining town where her dad remained caretaker after the mine shut down and her brother manned the lookout at Copia Peak during summers.
Grace (early on she eschewed her given name for her middle name) attended high school in Halfway and graduated a year early from Pine Valley High School, in 1949.
She spent the next semester at Oregon State University in Corvallis, but returned home to marry her high school sweetheart, Charlie “Buzz” Gulick, on November 24, 1951.
Grace and Buzz had two sons, Roger and Kerry, and together the family ran a successful ranch.
Grace began working as a substitute teacher at Pine Eagle School District in 1965 and went on to obtain her teaching degree by attending summer school at Eastern Oregon University.
“She drove to La Grande daily for five days a week to get her degree,” Roger said.
He also recalled, “She subbed when I was in school, about sixth, seventh and eighth grade. Once she subbed for a teacher who was out for six weeks with medical problems, and I flunked the entire six weeks!”
After earning her degree, Grace was hired to teach physical education and health, and coach volleyball and track at Pine Eagle.
“She never took anything home,” Roger said of his mom’s career. “I think that’s where I learned you don’t take work home. You can think about it, but don’t bother the family. She was really good about that.”
Roger said his mother was a successful coach because of her close connection to students.
“She’d be walking around and say, that kid could throw the javelin, or that one can sprint,” Roger said. “She just read people, and she was just phenomenal about reading kids.
“I don’t think she ever had a kid quit in her entire career. She was very good, and she knew how to get the best out of you.”
Roger went on to say Grace had some very talented athletes on her teams, adding, “There’s still a ton of them here.”
He noted expectations were always high for his mother’s student athletes, and said, “If you wanted to compete you had to be a student first and out here [on the track] second.”
Roger continued, “Back then she was always gone because there were three track meets a week – on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday – and they had some cold, miserable days. Mom had a red coat, it went clear to her knees, and she’d wear it to twilight meets. Some nights she came home absolutely frozen.”
Roger said Grace led numerous volleyball teams to state playoffs, but she was most proud of her state track and field athletes.
“She liked the game of volleyball but oh, she loved track and it was all self-taught,” he remarked.
State Champions
In 1993 her girls team won the state track title and Grace was named the OSAA (Oregon School Activities Association) track coach of the year.
Michelle (Curtis) Homan was a Pine Eagle junior and member of the 1993 team along with sophomore Venus Butler, senior Laurie Gulick, junior Didi Elguezabel and Cambria Curtis, Michelle’s cousin.
“Winning the state title is one of my fondest memories, especially since there were only five of us that made it to state,” said Michelle, who was state champion in the 1,500 meters and 800 meters, a part of the state championship 1,600-meter relay team with Butler, Gulick and Elguezabel, and part of the state runner-up 4x100 relay team with Cambria Curtis, Elguezabel and Butler.
Michelle added the team championship was all the sweeter because it was unexpected, and she explained, “Back then points were all tallied by hand, not computer. Mrs. Gulick had been keeping track of our points all day, but had accidentally added them up wrong. She thought we had ended up in third place. So, during the announcements, we were waiting to hear Pine Eagle called and when we heard State Champions we were all completely surprised. I think that made it that much greater of a win, since none of us were expecting it!”
Michelle began training with “Mrs. G” in seventh grade and credits the beloved coach for helping her hone in on the 1,500 and 800.
“Her knowledge of track and field was impressive, and she worked hard to teach all of us everything she knew about our events,” Michelle said, adding Grace spent many hours outside of practice designing event-specific workouts for each athlete.
“Her workouts were tough, but we knew she was helping us achieve our best. We all respected her very much as a coach and a person so we never wanted to let her down,” Michelle said. “She expected all of her athletes to be good representatives of the school and track program [and] we were expected to be respectful of other athletes while at meets.
“I think the combination of her knowledge and her coaching personality was the key to her success.”
Michelle, now a music teacher and coach at Joseph Charter School, says she was fortunate to have Mrs. G and Chuck Peterson “as my biggest influences in my decision to start coaching,” while her dad, Dennis Curtis, “was an enormous influence in my decision to become a music teacher.”
Michelle added she would always be on the lookout for Mrs. G whenever she was home and attended a Spartan sporting event, and recalled, “Whether about track or anything else, she was always there for all of her ‘kids.’”
From Cinders To Asphalt
Grace Gulick lost her husband to cancer in 1984 (her fellow teachers shared leave so Grace could be home with him during his illness) and she retired from teaching and coaching in 1994.
Roger said during most of Grace’s coaching years the track behind Pine Valley High School was made of dirt; however, a cinder track was installed in 1969 after the high schools in Pine Valley and Eagle Valley combined to become Pine Eagle.
“They put in a cinder track with boards around the outside,” Roger said. “It was supposed to have been state-of-the art, but it only lasted a few years. Everybody went away from it because they weren’t any good.”
In 2005, well after Grace’s retirement, then-superintendent Tom Crane arranged to have a new football field and track installed with the help of the Army National Guard.
“The construction company that I was involved with came in and we dug this whole thing up, took all the cinders out and put all the drains in,” Roger said.
Pointing to the south end of the football field, Roger continued, “This end out here was a total swamp and we finally got it all down into a main line that goes out to the highway. Not to brag, but we’ve done the entire school over the years and that’s why it looks as nice as it does.”
Roger said the National Guard finished the grading and laid asphalt for the track before work came to a halt due to finances and other issues.
“It turned out really, really well to get all this stuff done, and mom would have been so tickled with this. But mom never got to use this, never got to train her runners on it,” Roger said of the asphalt track.
Roger noted class sizes were four times larger back when his mom was teaching and coaching and he and his brother attended school.
“It was when they were building the dams in Hells Canyon,” he said. “My freshman year was here at the high school when it opened, and I had 101 kids in my class. I graduated in 1971 and Kerry graduated in 1973.”
Roger added neither he nor his brother was coerced by their mom into joining the track team; they were both more interested in football and basketball.
But Roger, Kerry and their extended family members are thrilled to have Grace honored with her name chosen for the planned new track, and he chuckled about the long list of relatives for whom he needed to purchase commemorative Field Fun Day T-shirts.