Track and field created an opportunity at La Salle for William Barry, ’65. He spent his professional (and coaching) career finding ways to give back.

By Matthew De George

When William Barry, ’65, arrived on La Salle University’s campus for a track meet his senior year of high school, he had no way of knowing how pivotal the choice of locale would be.

Barry was then a senior at Monsignor Bonner High School in nearby Upper Darby, Pa. The meet was the Philadelphia Catholic League Championships, and Barry had high hopes. He had devoted himself to track in high school and did not know where the sport could take him, but he was excited for the meet that would culminate his high school career.

As the oldest of four children, Barry hoped track could help him reach college. He had avidly pursued the sport, though he had to skip his junior year while working to support his family. But before his senior year, Barry struck a deal with his parents.

“I told them, ‘I think I have a chance of getting a scholarship; I’d like to run my senior year,” Barry said. “And they said OK.”

Barry medaled in two events at the Catholic League Championships and returned home to a message from La Salle coach Frank Wetzler. His offer was a half-scholarship to La Salle. Given the financial pressures at home, any glimmer of aid helped.

Barry would go on to run at La Salle, winning a Middle Atlantic Conference relay title. He earned his undergraduate degree in industrial management and paid it forward as a coach for more than two decades, while leading a successful career that took him all over the world. So much of that success he can trace to the track.

That wasn’t always a sure thing.

When Barry enrolled at Monsignor Bonner, he thought he would try football, but an ankle injury in the fall of his freshman year scrapped those plans. As he recuperated, he fell in with the track and cross country teams. When he traveled to University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field to see the United States take on the USSR in a dual meet in 1959, his link to the sport was set in stone. “I was hooked,” Barry said.

At La Salle, Wetzler pulled Barry and two other rookies into his office. The coach, who spent more than 20 years at the helm of the Explorers, starting in the 1940s, handed index cards to all three.

“He said, ‘This is what you ran in high school. Flip it over. If you can run the times I have on the back, I will give you a full ride,’” Wetzler said. “And all three of us were able to hit the times that he put on there.”

Barry never used that particular motivational technique with his pupils, but the connection between excellence on the track and advancement off it stuck. Barry returned to Monsignor Bonner and coached for 10 seasons as an assistant, but with head coaching jobs reserved for teachers, he had to look elsewhere.

His industrial career started with Union Carbide, which brought him to Connecticut and then New Jersey. He spent the last 35 years of his career with Sealed Air, in both sales and management positions. He lived for two years in Canada and got to travel the world for the corporation, working directly for the company’s president for the last decade.

Sealed Air allowed him to pursue coaching. He started in the late 1980s at Don Bosco Prep, an elite private school in Northern New Jersey, where he stayed for 10 years. When he retired from Sealed Air in 2008, he was hired by Indian Hills High School, leading the school based in Oakland, N.J., to a state championship and earning coach of the year honors in the Garden State before retiring altogether in 2013.

At all of his corporate stops, Barry found ways to give back.

He was active in the United States Junior Chamber or Jaycees, which allowed him to meet his idol, Jesse Owens, when the Olympian spoke at a fundraising dinner in the 1970s that Barry had spearheaded. Coaching was always a way to help students find what he did, whether it was helping them improve their times or simply showing them what track had to offer. He’s donated to Monsignor Bonner in the name of his parents, who sent all four children there, and has financially supported La Salle University and its track and field program directly. A cornerstone of his coaching approach was traveling with his teams to major meets—including Penn Relays, which Barry has attended a grand total of 53 times as a competitor, coach and spectator—to show students what track has to offer.

“I wanted to give back,” Barry said. “Sealed Air allowed their people to get involved in the community, and they knew I was coaching. My bosses were always receptive to what I was doing. … And I’ve always believed in giving back.”