Dan Kellams: A writer inspired by his high school coach

KENT — As a teenager attending high school in Marion, Iowa, Dan Kellams had about as much appreciation for his strict coach as any high school boy would — close to none. Years later, Kellams found himself so influenced by his coach that he decided to immortalize him in writing. “He was, without question, aside from my parents, the dominant authority figure in my life,” Kellams said. “He taught the vital importance of hard work and doing your best at whatever you do.” Kellams’ book, “A Coach’s Life: Les Hipple and the Marion Indians,” tells the story of coach Hipple, who was known in his day as the strictest coach in the state of Iowa. Hired in 1945 to bring order and discipline to Marion’s sports teams, Hipple was eventually fired in 1965 for being too strict. “He didn’t change,” Kellams said of Hipple. “The town changed, the school changed, the people changed and society changed.” “A Coach’s Life” is only half biography. It is also a social commentary. It details how the values of the people of Marion and the country as a whole changed over two decades as the structured lifestyles of the post-World War II era faded into the relaxed attitudes of the progressive 1960s. Kellams began writing his book about 10 years ago, while working as a freelance writer and editor and dividing his time between South Kent and New York City. He said his purpose in writing was to share with others the story of a man who had affected his life and the life of many other boys. After many slow years of writing, however, not much progress had been made. “I got to the point where I thought I’d never finish this thing, so I took a sabbatical and worked full time on it until I got it done.” Kellams said he felt an immense pressure to finish his book, since many of the people he was interviewing were getting older, and some had already died. For the same reason, Kellams made the decision to self-publish rather than take the time to find an agent and publisher. “Some of the people I knew who are in this book died while I was writing it,” Kellams said. The self-published route held other advantages for Kellams, too. “I wanted to control the content. I wanted to write this book for the core audience — the people who lived in Marion and knew this coach,” he said. Though Kellams wrote with the people of Marion in mind, reviewers have said the book has a broad appeal. It tracks Hipple from his birth and childhood, through his education and all of his jobs before he landed at Marion High School. Many of the stories came from Kellams’ own experience.Kellams’ first meeting with Hipple was in sixth grade, when all of the boys who were interested in playing high school basketball trained under Hipple’s close direction. Hipple wanted to be sure the boys learned the fundamentals “his way.” Once they made the high school team, the boys had to follow strict rules. They were not allowed to drink or smoke, drive a car on any day except for a few hours on Sundays, go steady with girls or go to bed late. The parents were supportive of Hipple and informed him of any transgressions. This intense structure ended up making the so-called “Hipplemen” better prepared to enter the adult world. Kellams said that many, like him, found this out when they joined the military.“They realized that they had the strength to go through it better than most of the other recruits,” Kellams said. Later on in life, Hipple’s ideals retained their influence.“There was a voice inside my head that kept saying, ‘You can’t quit.’ I realized that this was Hipple’s voice,” Kellams recalled. “A Coach’s Life” was finally published in 2010, and Kellams is now working on promoting the book. He has done radio interviews in Iowa and will speak and sign books at the Kent Memorial Library on Saturday, March 12, at 2 p.m.