Hall of Fame coach Gartman passes away at age of 64

By TIM GAYLE

Robert Gartman, one of the Alabama Independent School Association’s most recognizable names in the organization’s athletic history, passed away on Sunday night in a Selma hospital. 

The Hall of Fame coach, who coached at six schools over a 32-year coaching career, was discovered Thursday in his Camden home and rushed to a Selma hospital, where he died from medical complications. He was 64.

Gartman is the third winningest coach in AISA history, ranking only behind Robby James (298) and Mac Champion (247) with 243 wins. While his list of accomplishments includes 18 trips to the state semifinals in 28 years as a head coach, what puts him at the top of any list of coaches in the organization is that 23 of those 28 years were spent in the AISA’s highest classification as a Class AAA coach.

“When I first got into coaching (for four years as an assistant at Meadowview Christian), he was there all four years and those were their dynasty years and he was always super nice to me,” said Macon East Academy coach Glynn Lott, director of the AISA coaches’ association. “His teams were the best we ever played. The Meadowview-Morgan rivalry is something that’s hard to explain unless you lived in Selma.

“Nobody watched more film than Coach Gartman did. He tried to know everything you did before you did it. Back in the late 80s, early 90s, he was in charge of (the coaches’ association) and Morgan was the largest school in the AISA and was winning in every sport. He was pretty much the face of (the organization) for a long time.”

Gartman was director of the AISA coaches’ association for years and won in other sports – such as girls’ track – but was best known for his ability to put a championship-caliber football team on the field at every turn.

“He won pretty much everywhere he went,” Meadowview Christian coach Bob Taylor said. “If you told me you’ve got one coach to pick and you’ve got to go pick one game, I would pick Robert Gartman. He was so thorough with what he did.”

Taylor had hired Gartman as an assistant coach to start the 2019 season, but Gartman’s health continued to deteriorate and he did not last the season. It was an odd reunion for the pair as Gartman was the headmaster at Sumter Academy while Taylor was the head coach before Gartman took over both positions in 2010 and 2011. 

In 2010, he coached Sumter to the Class A finals; in 2011, he made his 18th and final trip to the semifinals, losing to Autauga 39-14 to finish 9-4. He finished his 28th year with a record of 243-90-1.

A graduate of tiny McIntosh Academy at a time when the Alabama Private School Association had 59 football teams, Gartman followed his dream of playing for Paul “Bear” Bryant at Alabama, joining the heralded 1974 signing class that included another tight end, Ozzie Newsome.

The discipline required to play in the wishbone offense for a championship-caliber program was a trait Gartman carried with him for the remainder of his life.

“He was very hard-nosed about what he wanted to do,” Taylor said. “They were going to run that veer, run his system, and you were going to know it frontwards and backwards. The thing, to me, that set him apart was his teams didn’t make mistakes. When we would sit down and talk, he’d say, ‘You can’t turn the ball over, you turn the ball over, you’re going to lose.’ Which is what everybody says, but for him you never made mental mistakes.”   

His first year as a head coach at Pickens Academy, all 13 AAA teams were grouped in one division and Gartman’s Pirates lost to Bessemer, Monroe and Marengo – three of the four teams in the AAA playoffs – and missed making the playoffs with a 5-6 record. It was one of only four teams he coached that failed to reach the playoffs.

By the next year, his Pickens team went 7-5 and reached the AAA semifinals, where the Pirates lost to undefeated and eventual champion Meadowview Christian.

A year later, in 1985, he was hired as the head coach at Morgan Academy and quickly established the Selma private school as one of the top high school football programs in the state. Over his eight-year tenure with the Senators, Gartman’s teams made eight consecutive trips to the semifinals and five to the finals, winning four state titles and 74 of their 80 regular-season games.

“Coach Gartman’s first state championship, I was a junior in high school (at Sumter),” Taylor recalled. “They beat us (43-13) for the state championship. They had Reid McMilion and Todd Cooper and that crowd.”

He won titles in 1988, 1989, 1991 and 1992, then stepped away and took a job at Jackson Academy to be closer to his family. Jackson made the playoffs in two of the three years he was there but never captured the magic Gartman had at other programs. 

A year later, in 1996, he was at Wilcox Academy and the team won the AAA state title with one of his finest coaching efforts, avenging regular-season losses to Morgan and Mobile Christian with wins over both in the playoffs.

Wilcox would lose to Morgan in the AAA finals in 1997 and 1999, but Gartman coached the team to a 47-15 record in five years before a second stint at Morgan.

He didn’t have the same magic at Morgan the second time around but his third team, in 2003, had a memorable run in the playoffs by beating three of the AISA powerhouses in the state – Macon East, Pickens and Faith Academy – in consecutive weeks to win the AAA championship.

Two years later, he may have saved his best coaching effort for his last title run, turning back a talented and favored Mark Freeman-coached Bessemer Academy squad in the finals 7-6. It was Freeman’s only loss at the school in four consecutive trips to the finals between 2004 and 2007.

That win came just a month after Gartman was inducted into the AISA Hall of Fame.

By 2008, his 5-6 Morgan squad that lost to Fort Dale in the first round of the playoffs was his third consecutive losing season and the coach who had led the Senators to six state titles was fired, leading him to the position as headmaster at Sumter.

While at Wilcox Academy, he coached his son John, the team’s quarterback. Like his father, John went to Alabama as a walk-on and lettered as a wide receiver in 2000 under Mike DuBose. He later joined his father in the coaching ranks and is currently the head coach at Springwood School.

Gartman’s favorite fan, his wife Kathy, passed away after a battle with cancer on March 23. 

Services will be held on Thursday at 2 p.m., at Pine Grove United Methodist Cemetery in Leroy with the Rev. Chris McCool officiating. Visitation will begin at noon at Lathan Funeral Home in Jackson.