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Profile
Garry Hamilton ’85
Turning challenges into opportunities
G
arry Hamilton chooses
his words like a picky
eater, as befits a man for
whom diplomacy is a core
value. As head of the Fort Wayne Police
Department’s community relations
division, there is no more useful tool than
the well-considered word.
for the Spartans were not covered in glory. He
did not star, and the team did not prosper. In
four seasons, the Spartans won just six games.
Little wonder that when you ask him about
playing football at Manchester back in the
early 1980s, there is first an interval of
silence, and then a brief chuckle.
So what did the 1985 graduate get out of it?
“Oh, my,” he says. “Football at
Manchester …”
And then, after another considered pause
or two: “The career wasn’t as stellar as high
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school. But it was fun.”
Which is Hamilton’s gentle way of saying
that his four autumns as a running back
“It was challenging to play there at
Manchester (because) your team was not
always used to winning at the end of the
game,” Hamilton says, again gently.
“Just meeting other athletes from around the
country,” Hamilton says when asked about the
best part of football at MU. “A lot of people
had their beliefs about a certain race of
people, but you were able to get together and
form friendships with some of the athletes
who didn’t look like you.”
It was that possibility – or at least that
challenge – that brought Hamilton to
Manchester from Northrop High School in
Fort Wayne.
“I saw it as
a challenge to
me to take me out
of my comfort zone,” says Hamilton,
who was Fort Wayne’s police chief from
2014 until August of this year. “I thought
Manchester would be a challenging thing
because there wasn’t a large AfricanAmerican population there at the time.”
Along the way, he absorbed Manchester’s
unique culture of service to community, an
impulse that guides him to this day in his
work as a police officer and bridge-builder.
“I remember taking a class with (Professor
of Sociology, Social Work and Criminal
Justice) Brad Yoder, and one of the things
was problem solving,” Hamilton says. “I
think it helped me in my job now, because
my job now is problem solving.”
By Benjamin Smith
Director of Development Shannon Griffith,
who was head football coach when the sensors
were introduced. “It would have a time stamp
on it, and we could go back to the point
of time on video and evaluate how he hurt
himself. So maybe you go back and look at
technical issues, maybe the technique is wrong.”
By Benjamin Smith
Vince Cashdollar (left), assistant football coach, and Nate
Jensen, head football coach, examine a helmet liner with
sensors designed to prevent concussions.
Manchester | 43