Ecker, Ernest J.

Ernie Ecker

Obiturary

Altamont Enterprise Jan. 21, 2010

Both strict and caring, Ernest J. Ecker taught and coached generations of Hilltown kids.

“I always remember Mr. Ecker would say to us, ‘Stop talking or I’ll staple your tongue to the bulletin board,” reminisced one student. “He was one of my favorite teachers.”

“He was gruff but sincere, warm, and supportive,” said Helen Lounsbury, a retired Berne Elementary School teacher who now serves on the school board. “I knew him as a teacher, as an administrator, as a school-board member, and I knew him as a friend,” she said.

Mr. Ecker frequently called Mrs. Lounsbury to give her advice about serving on the school board. “It’s very difficult for an educator to be a school board member,” she said.

“He was legendary for what he called ‘the board of education’; it was a paddle with a handle. He kept it on his desk…He was a man’s man,” said Mrs. Lounsbury.

Mr. Ecker died on Sunday, Jan. 17, 2010, in Delray Beach, Fla., where he had lived in his later years. He was 87.

He was born in Knox into a farming family. It wasn’t an easy life, but he was a hard worker.

“He lost his father when he was 9,” said his wife of 59 years, Elena Ecker. “They worked the land.”

Immediately after graduating from Berne-Knox High School, Mr. Ecker joined the Army. He served during World War II in a tank battalion with the 7th Army. He didn’t talk much about his war years, his wife said; he was on the front lines in Europe for three years, repairing tanks as a mechanic.

Elena Martin, the future Mrs. Ecker, first laid eyes on him when Mr. Ecker was home on furlough. She was a high school student from Mechanicville who worked at General Electric over the summer as part of the wartime effort. Mr. Ecker’s sister worked at GE, too, and asked Elena Martin to visit the farm.

“Ernie met us when we got off the bus,” Mrs. Ecker recalled. “I thought he was drop-dead gorgeous — so handsome.”

Mr. Ecker came home from the war in the fall of 1945 and went to the State Teachers’ College at Brockport, majoring in physical education. He surprised Elena Martin by writing to her from college, she said. “He was looking for a pen pal,” she said. “I hated to write. He wrote to me, ‘Did you break your arm?’” she recalled with a laugh.

“Then, when he was home for the summer, he drove out to Mechanicville to see me…The rest is history,” said Mrs. Ecker.

Mr. Ecker graduated from Brockport in June of 1950 and the Eckers were married in October of that year.

It was a happy marriage, Mrs. Ecker said. “He was very loving.”

For the love of children

Mr. Ecker’s first job was teaching fifth grade at his alma mater. In a teaching career that would span nearly three decades, entirely at Berne-Knox-Westerlo, he went on to teach all of the common branch subjects in elementary, junior high, and high school. Mr. Ecker served wherever he was needed, teaching social studies, reading, English, math, consumer economics, and high-school equivalency.

“He would say, ‘I’ve taught everything except a foreign language,’” said his wife.

Mr. Ecker also coached several sports, including track, cross-country, and basketball. But his primary love was soccer, which he coached for 20 years, leading his team to several league championships.

“They won the sectionals one year,” said his wife.

Mr. Ecker enjoyed watching sports, too, but didn’t root for a particular team. “I’d say, ‘Who’s your team?’ and he’d say, ‘I don’t care. I like to see how they play,’” his wife recalled.

Mr. Ecker also filled in both as an elementary-school and high-school principal when he was needed. He earned a master’s degree in education from The College of Saint Rose in Albany, and also earned credits towards an administration certification.

“He liked the kids,” said his daughter, Gina Slater, summing up her father’s passion for teaching.

“He knew them all,” said his wife. “He could tell them who their mother and father was; he had gone to school with them,” she said.

Mr. Ecker and his wife raised four children of their own — two boys and two girls. The family enjoyed traveling and camping together. “You’re a lot closer in a tent than in a house,” said Mrs. Ecker. “You can’t run and hide upstairs in your room.”

Later, after their children had grown, Mr. and Mrs. Ecker enjoyed traveling together, both in the United States and abroad. They visited the Caribbean, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

Their last big trip was to Italy, where they visited a grandchild who lives there. “He loved our grandchildren,” said Mrs. Ecker.

Pride in his work

Throughout his teaching career and well after he retired from the school in 1984, Mr. Ecker worked as a groundskeeper at the Altamont Fair. From 1955 on, he was the superintendent of buildings and grounds at the fair, which involved months of work each year, not just the annual Fair Week.

Mr. Ecker said of his work at the fair, “You take pride into it. People from different parts of the country come, and they tell us it’s one of the cleanest fairs they’ve ever been to. And during weekend events in the summer, people remark how well the grounds are kept up.”

In the summer of 1990, when the late Dick Munroe was working with Mr. Ecker as a carpenter at the fairgrounds, he said that Mr. Ecker had taught his children and his grandchildren. “And he was one instructor they learned from,” said Mr. Munroe. “The kids knew what Ernie said was law. They respected him and all talked about him when they got out of school.”

“Anytime I had a new class,” Mr. Ecker said then, “I’d tell them, ‘I’m your father, your mother, and God.’”

He commanded the same respect from the ever-changing crew of kids who worked for him each summer at the fairgrounds.

“He had a rough exterior,” said his wife. “But he was actually a very mild man.”

His daughter agreed, “He’d scare the kids at first. People would say his bark was worse than his bite….He was a quiet man, but, when he spoke, you listened.”

Mrs. Slater had her father as a reading teacher when she was in junior high school. “He was fair,” she recalled. “He was hard on everyone because he wanted you to succeed.”

Mrs. Lounsbury described similar qualities in Mr. Ecker. She particularly enjoyed the year that he served as the elementary school principal. “Ernie always kept his word,” she said. “He was fair. He was not one for idle comment. If he said it, he meant it…He had integrity.”

Mrs. Lounsbury went on, “There was an energy around Ernie that said, ‘I mean business.’…He had a very tender heart.”

He also had a rare gift for helping struggling students, she said.

As a youngster, she said, “Ernie was not much of a student. He really understood. He could really work with a child who was struggling. He helped them and didn’t think less of them…He was right there for people.”

She concluded, “He is a force to be reckoned with wherever he is.”

Ernest J. Ecker is survived by his wife of 59 years, Elena Ecker, née Martin; his four children, Michael Ecker and his wife, Patti; Vaughn Ecker and Rita; Gina Slater and her husband, Tom; and Mary-Chris O’Hearn and her husband, Ted; and nine grandchildren.

An interment will be at 10 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 29, in Schenectady Memorial Park followed by a calling hour from 11 a.m. to noon at the First Reformed Church of Berne, then a memorial service at noon. Arrangements are by the Fredendall Funeral Home of Altamont.

Memorial contributions may be made to a charity of one’s choice.