PANAMA CITY — As the physical education coach at Jinks Middle School for nearly 40 years, John Richard Post Sr. needed a way to deal with unruly adolescents.
What he came up with was a choice: either write verses of Scripture on paper, or take a whooping with the paddle.
Obviously nobody would choose the paddle right?
Wrong.
Mayor Greg Brudnicki once chose the paddle. It was seventh grade. He doesn’t remember what he did, but he knows he deserved what happened next.
“All I can remember is the pain, but I deserved it. I wasn’t a bad kid, but I was mischievous,” Brudnicki said. “You didn’t want to get paddled by Coach Post.”
Post died in his home on Christmas morning. He was 90.
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An online memorial page is full of testimony to his character, faith and physicality. Former students recalled how he would swim in the Gulf every day, no matter how cold the water was. He rode a bike everywhere he went.
“I thought the world of him,” said Bill Husfelt, superintendent of Bay District Schools. “He was just a good man to be around. I think one of the reasons I turned out the way I did was because of him.”
Husfelt was the new kid when he started seventh grade at Jinks after moving to Panama City. When his time came, Husfelt wrote the Scriptures. He remembered Post’s strength of faith, kindness and his fairness, and he lauded the man with terms more often used to describe saints than gym teachers.
“None of us is perfect, but he was as close to perfect as could be,” Husfelt said. “I was not a gifted athlete … but you could always tell I mattered to him.”
Everybody in town knew Post, Husfelt said. He had 15 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
After he retired in 1988, he was a volunteer teacher at Covenant Christian School for five years. He already had served as an elder at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church for nearly 20 years before he became an elder in the Covenant Presbyterian Church for 35 years, and he was on the board of directors of the Panama City Rescue Mission at the same time.
Visitation is Saturday at Covenant Presbyterian Church from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. A 1 p.m. service will be followed by interment at Greenwood Ceremony.