Longtime Everett HS coach ailing

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, August 20, 2005

EVERETT – Bill Dunn, a longtime coach at Everett High School who helped develop Snohomish County’s fabled football-coaching fraternity, is in failing health.

Dunn, who coached Dennis Erickson, Mike Price and Jim Lambright at Everett High School in the 1960s, is suffering from metastatic melanoma, a form of cancer.

His son, Bob, said Dunn was diagnosed with the disease approximately 10 weeks ago and was given two-to-five months to live. Dunn was still alive as of last night, but Bob Dunn said, “he could go at any time.”

Bill Dunn is 82.

He was the head football coach at Everett High School from 1961-69, when he coached Erickson and Price as players. Erickson went on to win two national titles as the head coach at the University of Miami before earning head coaching stints with the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers. Price became the head coach at Washington State University, where he guided the Cougars to two Rose Bowls, and is currently the head coach at the University of Texas-El Paso.

Bill Dunn also was an assistant coach when Lambright, the former University of Washington head coach, played at Everett.

“When they call Everett the cradle of coaches in the 1960s, Bill Dunn was a central part of that,” said Larry O’Donnell, Snohomish County historian and a friend of Dunn’s.

Bill Dunn has a long history of athletic involvement in the Everett School District. As a 1942 graduate of Everett High, he was a lineman on a Seagulls team that lost just twice in three seasons.

After serving in the military during World War II and continuing his playing career at both St. Martins’ College and Washington State, he returned to Everett in 1951, where he worked for the school district for 31 years before retiring in 1982.

In addition to coaching the football team at Everett High, Bill Dunn also became the head coach of the wrestling team in the mid-1950s and remained in the position for 10 years.

After his coaching career he remained heavily involved in the Everett School District as both a teacher and an administrator.

“Whenever Bill Dunn was involved, you knew it was going to be a quality job,” O’Donnell said.

“Everybody who ever woked with Bill knew that if Bill Dunn was your friend, he was a friend for life.”