Wilder
Steve Ward, the head football equipment manager, would drive the vehicle away from places such as Worcester, Mass., Philadelphia or Providence, R.I. Riding shotgun would be assistant equipment manager Ernest C. “Ernie” Gour. They’d work their way out of town and hit the open road, headed back to Hanover and the washing machines and dryers at the Floren Varsity House.
And then … silence.
“There wasn’t a lot of conversation with Ernie,” Ward said recently, recalling with a laugh his occasional efforts to pull words out of the White River Junction native. “He was a man of very few words.”
Gour was known as such by many at Dartmouth, where he worked for the last dozen years of his life before dying on Dec. 5, 2017, at the age of 61 at his home in Wilder. The ironic part, however, is that his family saw him blossom socially once he began working there.
“He was really quiet and didn’t do a whole lot,” Ernie Gour Jr., an only child, recalled of his father’s activity as he was growing up. “Over time, after he got to Dartmouth, he transformed.”
Gour primarily monitored and laundered the equipment for various women’s sports, including softball, squash and track and field. He also was Ward’s sidekick during spring football workouts, preseason practice and for the first half of the game schedule. Once the Big Green hockey teams started up, however, the equipment staff was spread thin, so Gour would take over primary duties at the home base in Davis Varsity House.
His previous organizational and detailed-oriented experience as an automotive parts manager came in handy there. “Ernie was just incredibly steady and you never had to wonder if he’d gotten done what had to be done,” said Mike Bissaillon, head equipment manager for all Dartmouth sports. “He was always one step ahead of where he needed to be.”
Jacob Goldberg, a former student manager, added: “It can be a tedious job, turning over laundry and making sure everything is stocked. I don’t know that all the student athletes appreciated the work that not just Ernie, but the whole staff did.”
Gour’s love for sports began when he and other kids in his downtown White River Junction neighborhood would play pickup baseball and football in a large, vacant space off South Main Street and behind an Agway store. The oldest of five children and the only boy, Gour would often be joined by Karen, the family’s next-oldest child. Together, they’d roam the area to fish, sometimes wading into the White and Connecticut rivers.
The Gours’ father, Harold, was a native of Newport, Vt., and worked as a railroad brakeman. Their mother, Jackie, came from such a large, local family that it was often hard for the Gours to be out and about without bumping into a Scelza relative. Jackie’s mother lived next door and Ernie Gour spent considerable time there, often staying the night.
Gour was a star catcher at Hartford High and, despite being only about 5 foot 9, played on the football team’s offensive line. The Hurricanes football and baseball teams won state titles during his time with them.
During the last seconds of a 1973 football game at Woodstock, Gour pounced on a fumble when quarterback Johnathan Potter was clobbered deep in the Wasps’ end. Instead of falling on the ball, Gour scooted into the end zone with it to give the visiting Hurricanes the winning points. “You could not manufacture a more unlikely hero,” said Potter, who later attended Brown University and lives in Easton, Penn.
Behind the plate, Gour exhibited a take-charge personality in contrast to his usual, muted demeanor. He was a deft backstop, scooping low pitches out of the dirt and able to withstand collisions with runners because of surprising core strength, said Mike Stone, a Hartford freshman when Gore was a senior. Also a catcher, Stone grew up watching and emulating the older boy, and was grateful when Gour took him under his wing when they were both in high school.
“I had a really good experience practicing with the varsity as a freshman and he made it that way,” said Stone, now Lebanon High’s athletic director. “He attacked the game and played it hard and I really appreciated that.”
Gour graduated in 1974, and he and his wife, Sandra, welcomed Ernie Jr. later that year. The father worked jobs at a downtown newsstand and a wholesale fruit and vegetable business before landing at the parts counter for Smith Auto, located across the street from Leba non High.
The Gours lived in Wilder and Ernie Jr. graduated from Hartford in 1993, playing football, hockey and baseball. His father had transitioned almost immediately from catching to umpiring and one day worked the plate behind his crouching son during a Hurricanes game. One of the older man’s calls irritated the boy and on the next pitch, he called for a high fastball and allowed it to tip off his glove and slam into the arbiter’s mask. “That was on purpose,” the father, Gour, said calmly. “I know, because I taught you how to do it.”
The Gours would hunt and fish, both in open water and on ice — sometimes locally, sometimes on Lake Memphremagog, which spans Northeast Vermont and Quebec. Gour would tow a portable hut up Interstate 91 in the winter, and he extended his love of outdoor recreation by teaching hunter safety courses and helping with fishing jamborees.
Gour endured Sandra’s 2001 death and joined the Dartmouth athletic equipment room in 2006 after Smith Auto closed. He enjoyed the job more than his previous one because it called for more social interaction, leading to bonds with players and coaches.
He became known for expertise lacing baseball and softball gloves and occasionally traveled with Dartmouth’s football team, flying to Indianapolis and Washington, D.C. Goldberg, the former student manager and now a Colgate University chemistry professor, remembers Gour lending him neoprene ice fishing gloves to wear when dunking footballs in a bucket of ice water for a quarterback drill.
Reinvigorated, Gour startled his son by calling up and inviting him on various outings, and began a streak of attending the NCAA Division I hockey championships at various sites around the country. He took a niece on an Alaskan cruise and they stopped in Seattle to visit with former members of the Dartmouth softball team. Gour took his first grandchild, Jacqueline, fishing and hunting.
“He was much more outgoing; it was like night and day,” said Ernie Jr. “The day Jacqueline got her first deer, he called me up so excited I couldn’t understand what he was saying at first.”
Gour and his distinctive Vermont accent were a welcome, calm harbor during the storms of Dartmouth football practices or games. He occasionally offered wry, deadly accurate observations about the characters and happenings swirling around him, often punctuated with a loud honk into a handkerchief that would have done a goose proud.
While Ward, the head football equipment manager, is a former U.S. Marine known to holler and heckle during Big Green contests, Gour could usually be found standing silent, arms crossed, at one end of the Big Green sideline. Ball cap on and stocked fanny pack around his waist, he would scour the players coming off the field for any sign of a broken helmet snap or a busted shoulder pad strap.
“He was the nicest guy, never got excited or depressed,” said Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens. “He was a level person and a good man.”
Gour, who didn’t smoke, began losing weight and having respiratory problems during 2016. By the following spring, he was on medical leave with emphysema and tethered to portable oxygen tanks.
“He hated to give up Dartmouth, but he just couldn’t handle the stairs and the carrying and lugging,” Karen Gour, his sister, said. “By last Thanksgiving, he had a hard time getting out of bed.”
Gour also developed lower leg pain. Karen took him to receive a cortisone injection in his joint on Dec. 5, then headed out to shop for her brother. She returned to find he had passed away in bed.
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 603-727-3227.