Jack Gastler ’74

from XAVIER Magazine 2020|2021, Connections & Bonds, Xavier High School, Middletown, CT

by Cheryl Gioielli, Gioielli Design

Racial Respect

Gastler and former NFL running back Floyd Little

Faith, Family & Friends

40 Years After Graduating, Jack Gastler ’74 Has Never Forgotten The Home He Found At Xavier

**Jack Gastler ’74 at the 2020 XAVIER Alumni Golf Classic**
Yolanda Christine Photography (YCP)

Jack Gastler ’74 was a football and track captain at Xavier, captained the football team at an Ivy League school, Columbia, and had a long and successful career in the financial world.

His football coach at Xavier, Larry McHugh, and his football coach at Columbia, Bill Campbell, were major influences in his life.

“I always tell people how blessed I was,” Gastler said.

He paused, breaking down for a second.

“Sorry … my dad and my mom … talk about being blessed. My dad was the cornerstone and my mom helped build the person I am, and then I had both Larry and Billy and Rich Feitel. … When you talk about being blessed by those three coaches … I have to raise my father up as No. 1.”

Gastler does not forget people. He rattled off the names of so many legendary players from that 1973 team, many with whom he remains in contact with and two, Matt Hoey ’74 and Kevin O’Rourke ’74, whom he calls best friends to this day.

“We were just together and realized that it was 50 years ago that we met at Xavier,” Gastler said. “The three of us have raised our families together and now we are celebrating children’s marriages, and in our case, grandchildren, together.”

He mentions the impact that Feitel, his pole vault coach in track, had on shaping him into the person he is today. Feitel and his wife Lauralane, and Gastler and his wife, Debbie, remain close all 10 XAVIER Magazine 20 20 21 these years later. “They were great role models for our marriage and as young parents,” Gastler said. Bind TheTies That

Gastler does not forget his roots. Faith. Family. Friends. Those three words came up a lot in a conversation that stretched into 1 ½ hours. Xavier means as much to him now as it did almost 50 years ago. His son Jay, a 2005 graduate, was married nearly a year ago, and five in the wedding party, including his best man, were Xavier graduates.

Now in retirement, Gastler is on his second tour of duty on the Xavier Board of Directors.

“We were so tremendously blessed by the leadership and faculty at Xavier during our time there,” Gastler said. “Brother John Kerr, Brother James Boyle, Bill McKenna, provided a leadership style that aligned discipline with incredible caring for each individual. A superb faculty enacted the same in the classroom and the various coaching and extracurricular activities in which they participated. Giving, selflessness, and high expectations were continually on display.”

Mercy means the world to him, too. His wife Debbie is a 1974 graduate. They hung out with the same friends and she invited him to the Mercy Junior Ring Dance. They’ve been married 42 years. One of their daughters. Connie, is a Mercy grad. At one point, Gastler was on the Mercy Board of Directors.

“I’m committed to doing anything to help those two schools,” Gastler said. “I’m a firm believer that our world is in desperate need of the product of a Xavier and Mercy education and experience.”

“I don’t know who coined the phrase ‘Good enough is never good enough if it’s not your best,’ but that concept has always driven me to do my best.” ~Jack Gastler

Gastler was on Xavier football teams that won 34 games in a row, a Connecticut state record at the time. The Falcons lost to West Haven in the second-to-last game of the 1973 season. “All those wins,” he said, “and that’s the one you remember more than anything else … I always say we didn’t lose that game; we just ran out of time.”

Still, he had the time of his life on the football field as a defensive back. … and on the track where he was a captain of the 1974 state champion outdoor team where fellow tri-captain, and still close friend, Pat Augeri, was dominant (“best athlete with whom I’ve been personally associated”). Gastler also excelled in another area: the classroom.

“Larry McHugh, to my mind, was the best coach in the state, one of the best in the country, and an even better mentor,” Gastler said. “He was a master motivator and phenomenal coach. We were better-coached, better-disciplined, and better conditioned than any team. When we walked onto the field … sorry, ran, you never walked on a Larry McHugh team ... we never, ever, thought we would lose. We were mentally tough, we were physically tough. We worked harder than anyone else, and we were better prepared. It was also about being a team. No one player was above the team.”

Even before practice began, the team would run part of the cross country course in full pads. There were crabwalks up the hill. Heck, by the time the game came, it was a relief.

Gastler ended up at Columbia because of McHugh, who was a friend of Campbell’s. Campbell had just been hired for the 1974 season. McHugh called Gastler into his office one day and told him he should look at Columbia, even though that school was nowhere on Gastler’s radar. Other Ivy League schools were, as was the Coast Guard Academy, the front-runner. “But if Larry suggested you do something, you definitely did it,” Gastler said.

He went for a visit and fell in love. It would change his life. He was captain of the 1977 team, started three years of varsity (freshmen could not start). Columbia didn’t win many games, but Campbell would become another lifelong friend and help launch Gastler’s career in the financial world.

“His leadership skills in being captain in both high school and college led him to an outstanding career in business,” McHugh said. “His success in life never changed Jack as a man. His loyal friendship is something I can always count on.”

Campbell, like McHugh, was more than a football coach. McHugh left the Xavier job in 1983 to become President of the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce, building that organization into one of the most powerful chambers in the country. Campbell left coaching in 1983 and eventually became known as the “Coach of Silicon Valley,” having joined Apple Computer, Inc., as Vice President of Marketing, later becoming the CEO and Chairman of Intuit and coaching many of the executives and management teams of then fledgling companies such as Google, Amazon and Adobe, to name a few.

“Billy always preached to give back to your community, your school,” Gastler said.

Campbell died in 2016, and Gastler flew to California for his funeral. “There were 1,500 - 2,000 people there,” Gastler remembers. “A virtual Who’s Who from Silicon Valley including former Vice President Al Gore and CEOs Tim Cook, Eric Schmidt, and Jeff Bezos, from Apple, Google, and Amazon, respectively … Everyone there was touched by Billy in some way.”

Gastler faced one of his biggest challenges when he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lymphoma in early 2017 and finished the chemo treatments in June of that year. His stomach didn’t feel right and his gastroenterologist, Stan Opalacz ’72, friend and outstanding football player in his own right, sent him to an oncologist.

“Faith, family and friends is what got me through,” Gastler said.

“God is in control and has a plan for each and every one of us. We are happy to accept His blessings; we must also accept the adversities and learn to lean on and trust Him.

“My wife, as she has always been, was incredibly supportive, courageous and never wavering in her faith that God would see us through this, whatever the outcome. The same with my children, their spouses and families, and Deb’s and my siblings and their families. My sister-in-law, Leslie (Cozzi) Logiudice and her daughter/my niece Lauren (Boule), both Mercy grads, are nurses, and were instrumental in guiding and helping me decipher and understand complex medical information and treatment regimens.”

And then there were the friends. “Richie and Lauralane were always checking in. Rich and I did some power walks together to keep in shape after some of my chemo sessions,” Gastler said.

Hoey would sit with him at some of the chemo treatments. McHugh was in touch, as were O’Rourke, Augeri, Steve Murphy and Dave Chapman, football teammates at both Xavier and Columbia. Dr. Opalacz, and Dr. Bob Fales, his primary doctor and fellow Xavier (’74) classmate were key members of his health care team.

“It’s all those Xavier connections,” Gastler said. “And then numerous other Xavier, Columbia, church and business friends offered support in so many ways.”

In retirement, Gastler finds ways to stay busy. He’s very much involved with Xavier. He golfs. He skis, as do his four grandchildren. He eats healthy, he says, thanks to Debbie. He works out to stay in shape, conscious of trying to keep cancer at bay. He spends time in the yard, making sure things are just so. In that regard, you might say he is a perfectionist, and where did he get that from? Well, for one, McHugh. “Larry was a perfectionist,” Gastler remembers. “We didn’t have a terribly complicated offense, maybe 10-12 plays, but we ran them to perfection. We’d run them over and over and over again in practice.

“I don’t know who coined the phrase ‘Good enough is never good enough if it’s not your best,’ but that concept has always driven me to do my best. My parents, Xavier, its leadership, its faculty, its coaches, athletics, extracurricular activities, provided a wonderful platform to do my best no matter the significance of the task. Most of the time it is not perfection, but great things can come from a process of doing all the little things to the best of your ability. Most of all, it leads to the satisfaction that comes from always striving to leave it all out on the field in everything you do.”

“My Dad always said ‘Talk is cheap. Actions speak much louder than words.’ How truly blessed I am to have been surrounded by people who lived by that creed every single day.”