Beloved Roosevelt High coach Forrest Ward dies

SEATTLE — Forrest Ward, a beloved coach and standout athlete at Roosevelt High School died Friday. He was 57.

Forrest and his brother, Wendell, were both Roughrider football and track standouts in the 1970s.

Forrest won the Metro League title in the low hurdles in 1977.

His brother won the same even a year later.

As a senior in 1975, Forrest led the Roosevelt football team with 21 catches, his friend Dan Raley recalled in a story for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Wendell Ward scored six touchdowns for the Roughriders as a senior in 1978.

Four months ago, Raley inducted Forrest Ward into the Roosevelt High School Hall of Fame.

Ward choked up speaking of his late brother, and that night said that the honor was shared with him.

Ward spent 23 years as a Roosevelt basketball coach, including 16 seasons with Ben Snowden, the legendary Roughrider coach whom Ward regarded as one of the best men he knew.

More recently, Ward returned as a Roosevelt football coach.

"I couldn't ask for anything better," Ward said of his time as a Roosevelt coach, holding back tears the night of Hall of Fame induction.

For many whom Ward coached, he was a compassionate, caring role model. And he was an exceptional leader.

In the season before Ward was inducted into the Roosevelt Hall of Fame, many on the football team hadn't played before.

Some weren't even sure how to put on their football pads, Ward said earlier this year.

By the end of the season, all of the offensive lineman were either fist team or second team All-Metro.

"What an important influence you have been for our family and many others in our community over the years," Roosevelt parent Jeff Dijulio wrote on Facebook Saturday morning. "You instilled so many critical life lessons on and off the field."

Dijulio wrote of his son whose last Roughrider football game was ended with an injury.

He shared a photo of Ward embracing his son on the sideline.

"This photo," Dijulio wrote, "has always touched me because it captured the spectrum of emotion, depth, of caring and bond between a player/competitor/leader/teacher/friend."

Ward went from Roosevelt to Spokane Falls Community College where he was part of the 1976 league champion team.

He attended the University of Puget Sound and Western Washington University, where he graduated in 1980.

He was an assistant on the 1982 Roosevelt state basketball championship team and on the 1987 team that took second. As an assistant at O'Dea, Ward helped the team that took third in state in 1994.

He lost his brother, Wendell, and 2-year-old niece in a logging accident near Carnation in 1990.

They had gone to look at animals, and chains on a logging truck broke loose, tumbling thousands of pounds of logs onto their car, according to a P-I story.

"All of the Wards have been tested more than most people and are a resilient bunch," wrote Raley, who said he felt lucky to have inducted him into the Roughrider Hall of Fame.

Nine years ago, Forrest Ward suffered serious injuries when an SUV drove on top of him as he was walking in an intersection, running an errand.

Emergency crews had to pull the vehicle off of him.

The accident caused health complications that Ward battled for the rest of his life.

But Ward stayed positive, and never lost his sense of caring.

In his last days at Swedish Medical Center, former teammates, parents and friends came to visit and say goodbye.

Ward's survivors include his sister, Debbie, and brother Greg -- both Roughriders -- and his father, Leo.

Joel Quiroz, who played for Ward and later coached and worked with him at Athletic Supply, wrote on Facebook that many of the people who Ward coached "would not be where we are today without some of this man's influence along the way.

"Truly a man of his caliber and character comes once in a lifetime."

KIRO