Obituary

Patrick J. Filley, 77, a coach and an administrator for 39 years, died April 13 in Winter Garden, Fla., after a long illness.

Filley retired from Cornell in 1984 and continued to work boarding horses on his Nelson Road farm in Ithaca and helping his daughter Ann and her husband with their chicken farm. He also worked with the Cornell lightweight football team for two seasons.

A native of South Bend, Ind., Filley attended the University of Notre Dame after starring in football and winning state championships in wrestling at Central High School in South Bend. Because Notre Dame had no wrestling team, the football coaches recruited him, and he played four years for Coach Frank Leahy on teams that lost a total of five games. He was a two-time captain of Notre Dame and was a consensus All-America guard, playing on the 1943 national championship team.

Filley came to Cornell in 1945 as an assistant football coach under Ed McKeever, who had served as backfield coach at Notre Dame. Filley became the freshman coach in 1948, and his teams were undefeated in 1948 and 1949. He also assisted in wrestling under Cornell Hall of Famers Walter O'Connell and Jimmy Miller.

In 1955, because an arthritic condition had worsened, Filley left coaching and began an administrative career that lasted 29 years. He held five different titles that called for innumerable duties: assistant to the athletic director, ticket manager, athletic business manager, associate director of athletics in charge of operations, and associate athletic director in charge of scheduling.

Filley was a master at staging events. Probably his most memorable was the 1959 "March of Champions" when, on successive weekends in March, Cornell was the host for the Heptagonal track championships, the Eastern wrestling championships, the Minto ice show and the national wrestling championships.

When he retired in 1984, at his testimonial dinner, the late Bob Kane, former athletic director to whom Filley reported for 21 years, said: "In a world too populated with insincerity, Pat Filley stands out like a glistening star. His naturally cheerful disposition was often challenged, but he never succumbed to complaining or despair. He is and has been a fine gentleman. We are -- all of us -- better persons for having been associated with him."

Filley was inducted into the Cornell Athletic Hall of Fame in 1988.

He is survived by his wife, Ruby, of Ithaca; daughters Anne of Ithaca and Shawn of Winter Garden, Fla.; and sons Michael of Trade, Tenn., and Kevin of Orlando, Fla.