He was called “coach,” but he also served as a principal, assistant principal, athletic director and teacher. B.C. Rain High School’s longtime educator (1965-1990) Ben Glover died Tuesday at age 89.

Coach Glover had already been honored in a sort of “celebration of life” while he was still alive. B.C. Rain High School’s new on-campus stadium was named for Coach Glover at a ceremony on September 29, 2023.

The ceremony preceded Rain’s homecoming game against visiting Davidson High School. It was B.C. Rain’s first-ever homecoming at a stadium that is actually their home.

They had been playing home games at Trimmier Park and Ladd-Peebles Stadium. Now, they have a home on campus at Coach Ben Glover Stadium.

At age 87, Coach Glover graciously accepted the naming ceremony along with his son, former Mobile State Senator Rusty Glover, an athlete and educator himself.

Coach Glover’s influence in athletics extends throughout Mobile County, where six of 25 coaches played under or coached under Glover when he was inducted into the Alabama High School Sports Hall of Fame in 1992.

Coach Glover is a continuing subject of legendary stories from former B.C. Rain students. They tell of the time an intruder on school grounds happened to be a fast running back from another high school — and Coach Glover ran him down.

They also tell about “National Skip Day” when Coach Glover took a bus and a canoe to Dauphin Island and caught B.C. Rain truants on Sand Island, ferrying them back to the bus and back to the school. Though widely-talked-about, this tale apparently never happened.

Coach Glover graduated from Leroy High School and Mississippi State University, where he went to school on a baseball scholarship. He later earned a Master’s Degree from The University of Alabama.

His early coaching jobs were at Repton High School and Washington County High. He later was assistant football coach and head baseball coach at Mobile’s Murphy High. There, he met his wife, Anne McMillan Glover. She remains alive and at home at age 89.

In 1965, he was named head football coach at B.C. Rain High and became a B.C. Rain Red Raider for life.

Services for Ben Glover will be on Friday, December 19 at Mobile’s Dauphin Way Baptist Church. Visitation is at 10 a.m. and the funeral is at noon.

Jim Zig Zeigler is a contributing writer for Yellowhammer News. His beat includes the positive and colorful about Alabama – her people, events, groups and prominent deaths. He is a former State Auditor and Public Service Commissioner. You can reach him at [email protected].