Willard Gildersleeve

Willard Harvey Gildersleeve (September 17, 1886 – July 19, 1976) was an American college football coach. He served as the head coach at the New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, Massachusetts Agricultural College, and Westminster College.

Early life and college Gildersleeve was born on September 17, 1886, in Gildersleeve, Connecticut. He graduated from Middletown High School in 1903, and attended college at Wesleyan University, where he played baseball and football. The Meriden Daily Record called him a "star" athlete at Wesleyan.

Coaching career Gildersleeve coached the 1909 New Hampshire football team and amassed a 3–4 record. He coached the 1910 Massachusetts Aggies (now known as the UMass Minutemen) and amassed a 1–6–2 record.

In 1913, Meriden High School hired Gildersleeve as a teacher and head football coach. He also coached baseball at the school. In 1917, he coached baseball at Hyannis High School, and in his one season tenure, guided the team to the Cape Cod High School Championship.

Personal life Gildersleeve married Gertrude Isabell née Sugden in 1909, and as of 1921, the couple had two children, a son and a daughter.

During the 1930s, he wrote to a number of distant Gildersleeve cousins to share his knowledge of their common ancestors, Richard Gildersleeve and his wife Joanna, pioneers who arrived at Boston in 1634 on a ship of the Winthrop line, and of their descendants. In 1941, he published Gildersleeve Pioneers, "a series of sketches and biographies, with an appendix of lineages", beginning with their pioneer ancestor, Richard Gildersleeve.

He died in July 1976 at the age of 89 in Wayne, New Jersey. He is interred at the Portland Burial Ground in Portland, Connecticut.

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