Charles L. Lampson

Charles L. Lampson, known to generations of Billerica students as Chuck, was the town's football coach and athletic director for nearly four decades. A graduate of the University of Maine with a master's degree from Boston University, he came to Billerica in 1941 to teach history at the junior high school and serve as assistant football coach at Howe High School. Before the year was out he had been named head football coach, when Rodney C. Dresser left for military service.

He was soon in uniform himself. By 1943 he was on military leave in the U.S. Army, and he returned to the school department after the war. In 1946 Principal Cyril D. Locke appointed him coach and director of athletics, and the high school reported that the appointment had helped football, baseball and basketball alike; that fall Howe won permanent possession of the Chelmsford-Howe football trophy. His Howe teams won the Lowell Suburban League title in 1942, 1951 and 1952, and the 1952 team went undefeated to win the state Class D championship. He did not leave field work to others: in 1950 he and his high school baseball players enlarged and improved the infield at the Kohlrausch Playgrounds themselves, at no cost to the town.

He taught mathematics, history and civics, moved to the new Billerica Memorial High School when it opened in 1955, and signed the school's athletic reports as Athletic Director. The class of 1961 dedicated its yearbook to him, crediting his bleacher fund drive with paying for new bleachers at the baseball field and his athletic scholarship fund with helping future student athletes go on to college. He gave up coaching football in 1965 but stayed on as athletic director.

By the early 1970s the town's football field on Campbell Road carried his name; the 1973 town meeting voted $10,000 to light the "Charles E. Lampson Memorial Field" for night football, as the town records styled it. Over the following years the Park Department cleared land there for softball fields and eight tennis courts, and the site grew into the Lampson Recreation Complex, later dedicated in honor of Peggy Hannon-Rizza. When he retired as athletic director in 1979, the school department's annual report said that "Chuck was an institution," and the football captains presented him the game ball at a school pep rally.

He died on October 2, 1995. The town's memorial list credited him with teaching in the Billerica schools from 1946 to 1979 and coaching for 39 years. A Chuck Lampson scholarship fund is among the endowed scholarship trusts held by the town.

References

1. 1941 Billerica Town Report: appointed junior high history teacher and assistant football coach.
2. 1941 Billerica Town Report: named head football coach.
3. 1943 Billerica Town Report: on military leave, U.S. Army.
4. 1946 Billerica Town Report: appointed coach and director of athletics.
5. 1950 Billerica Town Report: his baseball players improve the Kohlrausch Playgrounds infield.
6. 1961 Billerica Town Report: athletic report signed as Athletic Director.
7. Warrior 1961: yearbook dedication.
8. 1973 Billerica Town Report: lights for the Charles E. Lampson Memorial Field.
9. 1975 Billerica Town Report: softball field and tennis courts at the Lampson field.
10. 1979 Billerica Town Report: retired as Athletic Director.
11. Warrior 1979: game ball presented to the departing athletic director.
12. Warrior 1976: history of Howe High School athletics.
13. 1995 Billerica Town Report: In Memoriam, died October 2, 1995.
14. 1998 Billerica Town Report: Chuck Lampson scholarship fund.
15. Howe HS/Billerica Memorial HS Football History, by Jim Haines.