LCMR community mourns loss of Bill Garrison, iconic coach and educator

Posted: March 25th 2026

Legendary former Lower Cape May football and wrestling coach Bill Garrison with current LCMR football and wrestling coach Billy Damiana after the Caper Tigers beat Caldwell to reach the state Group II championship match in wrestling in mid February. Garrison passed away earlier this month.

By BRIAN CUNNIFF

CapeAtlanticLive.com

Bob Bonner was a skinny 130-pound freshman at Lower Cape May Regional High School in the spring of 1980.

He had played football earlier that scholastic year, but because of his diminutive size and his strong interest in basketball he considered not playing the sport the following fall as a sophomore.

Bill Garrison, the Caper Tiger head football coach and a strong personality around the school as a health and physical education teacher, heard the rumors that Bonner might be hanging up his football cleats.

One quick comment from the coach changed Bonner’s mind.

“He shook his head and I’ll never forget how he said it,” Bonner said. “He said, ‘Bonner, how are we going to win the Cape-Atlantic League if you’re not going to play?’”

Bonner wound up becoming one of the team’s best players. He was an all-star wide receiver and later played college football at American International.

“I thought he was joking,” Bonner said, further recalling that interaction with Garrison as a freshman. “I said to myself, ‘Who am I?’ I wasn’t that good. But then my sophomore year we won the CAL and my senior year we won the CAL. Coach Garrison did things like that all the time. He told a lot of kids stuff that sounded crazy, and then the stuff came true.”

Bonner is one of many from in and around the Lower Cape May Regional school and sports community sharing stories and reminiscing about Garrison, who passed away earlier this month at age 78 after a long illness. Hundreds turned out for Mr. Garrison’s funeral Saturday morning in Cape May and more than 200 more showed up for a memorial service in his honor in the school’s auditorium later that day.

Mr. Garrison was an icon at Lower Cape May, building a legacy through success not only as a coach but also as an educator and a leader. A graduate of Lower Cape May, Mr. Garrison returned to his alma mater as a teacher in the early 1970s and eventually became heavily involved in coaching football and wrestling, as well as track and tennis. He later became the school’s athletic director.

Mr. Garrison led Lower Cape May to four CAL titles and the 1982 South Jersey Group III championship in wrestling and two CAL titles in football in 1980 and 1982. He coached 28 district champions and two region champions in wrestling.

Mr. Garrison was inducted into the New Jersey Coaches Hall of Fame, the South Jersey Coaches Hall of Fame and the Lower Cape May Regional High School Hall of Fame.

In addition to his teaching and coaching career, Mr. Garrison also earned a reputation locally as an avid and successful fisherman and boat captain. Mr. Garrison presented Lower Cape May with a boat anchor that was mounted onto a plaque that served as the first Anchor Bowl trophy that goes to the winner of the annual football game between Lower Cape May and Middle Township.

Jeff Wunder experienced Mr. Garrison in a variety of ways. Wunder’s father, Bob, hired Mr. Garrison as one of his assistant football coaches at Lower in the early 1970s. It was Mr. Garrison’s first coaching job at the school. 

Wunder later played on the two CAL title football teams in the early 1980s when Mr. Garrison was head coach. Like Mr. Garrison, Wunder later returned to Lower Cape May as a teacher and coached various sports at Lower, including a long stint as football coach from the early 1990s into the early 2000s.

“I had a lot of different phases with him,” Wunder said. “I knew him as a little kid when he coached with my dad, then I played for him and then I came back and became a colleague of his as a teacher and coach.

“I had a whole lot of experiences with him. We even fished together a lot. He was definitely a one-of-a-kind person, that’s for sure. He really lived an amazing life.

“We all would have run through a wall for him if he asked us to. … He was a tough person and he demanded your best and he pushed you to give your best. He did that by being tough. He was on you all the time. Sometimes you thought, ‘When am I going to catch a break with this guy?’ But once you got things done and you were doing things the right way he was always on your side. As a kid, you think you don’t need that kind of treatment, but looking back, you definitely did. Every one of us did.”

Although retired for more than 20 years at the time of his death, Mr. Garrison is still admired around the athletic program at Lower Cape May Regional High School. Current wrestling and football coach Billy Damiana, too young to have been coached or taught by Mr. Garrison, often reminds his current players of the standards set at the school by Mr. Garrison and other coaches of his era such as Bill Porter and Jack Donaldson.

“Coach Garrison has been around my entire life,” Damiana said. “My dad (Bill) had worked at Lower since the mid 1980s and Garrison was his wrestling coach. I’d always hear the stories of the legends of yesteryear and the days gone by. The way he carried himself, even when I met him 40, 45 years after he started, he was just larger than life.”

“Bill Porter and Jack Donaldson and Bill Garrison, we always held them in the highest regard and have revered them. It’s always been important to me as a coach to make sure the kids now and our community know what these guys put forth around here. I don’t think people can put into perspective the amount of winning that went on in the ‘70s and ‘80s at our school and the standards those men set.”

Mr. Garrison made one last appearance at Lower Cape May in mid February, about three weeks prior to his death. Confined to a wheelchair, Mr. Garrison sat matside and beamed with pride when the Caper Tiger wrestling team beat Caldwell to reach the state title match for the first time in program history. After the match, the wrestlers and their coaches gathered around Mr. Garrison for a photo. He couldn’t stop smiling at the experience.

“The man was on hospice and wasn’t supposed to be out and about but he came to that Caldwell match,” Damiana said. “Our kids know about Coach Garrison because we as coaches talked about him all the time, along with Coach Porter. In our pre-match speech before Caldwell, we told the boys that Coach Garrison was here and that we need to go do it and put on a show and, man, did our kids perform. 

“The biggest memory I’ll take with me from that night is that gigantic smile he had on his face and that he still had that death grip in his handshake to the end. He couldn’t have been happier to see us get to a state final.”

Frank Riggitano, the former longtime football coach and later athletic director and principal at Middle Township, played for Mr. Garrison at Lower Cape May in the late 1970s.

“One of my funniest memories with him actually came when I was coaching and we were playing at Lower and he was working the chains,” Riggitano said. “I got on somebody about not making a play. I said something like, ‘That’s why you have shoulder pads.’ He yelled over to me, ‘You’re starting to sound like me.’ Well, I definitely learned from one of the best.”

Riggitano said Mr. Garrison had a major influence on him not only as an athlete but also as a coach and educator.

“It was all old-school stuff with how he handled situations and how he handled different people,” Riggitano said. “I took a lot of the things he did and used them. I owe a lot to the way I was treated by him as a 15-, 16- and 17-year-old. I always tried to tell kids I didn’t get paid to be their buddy and make sure they’re comfortable. I got paid to make them a better athlete and a better person and I didn’t care if that upset people. I got that from Coach Garrison.”

Mr. Garrison is survived by his wife, Barbara, two children and two stepchildren and many grandchildren, along with hundreds of former players, students, colleagues and friends.

He also leaves a legacy that may never be forgotten in and around the Lower Cape May Regional High School community.

“The highest compliment I ever receive is when people say I’m doing as a coach exactly what coach Garrison did,” Damiana said. “It takes a special human being to get a teenager motivated and getting them to believe in themselves and reach their potential. Coach Garrison was able to do that. He was the best.”