The legacy of great coaches, of great mentors, is often most evident in the way the men and women they touched and tutored live their daily lives; how we conduct ourselves, how we relate to one another, how we choose to see the world.

Such a mentor was Shaker Heights High School track coach and longtime NFL official Bob Rice, who passed away Tuesday, June 6, at the age of 80 and who influenced members of the Quicken Loans family. He is survived by Shirley, his wife of 57 years, along with his daughter, Susan Olevitch, of Wellington, Florida and sons Jeff of Fort Myers, Jim of Lyndhurst and Robert of Coral Springs. He is also survived by eight grandchildren.

Coach Rice served as a sideline judge for NFL games for 19 years, including two Super Bowls, retiring in 1987 before returning to the NFL in 1989 as an assistant supervisor of officials. He worked out of a New York office where he scouted, hired and trained officials until retiring from that position in 1996.

Born in Mansfield, Ohio, his family eventually moved to Cleveland where he graduated from East Tech High School, playing football, basketball and competing as a middle distance runner for the track team. Coach Rice subsequently served as a pilot during World War II before attending Denison College, where he played end on the football team coached by future Ohio State legend Woody Hayes.

He went on to teach at Kiski Prep in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania, coaching Olympic decathlete Bob Mathias, a Gold Medal winner in 1948 and 1954. Coach Rice then went on to earn a master's degree in education at Western Reserve University in 1950 before joining the Shaker Heights' coaching staff, running the track and cross country programs while also assisting the basketball and football teams and teaching mathematics. He retired in 1986.

"From East Tech High to Denison College and on to the high school ranks at Shaker, he was the paragon of 'what a man should be,'" recalls Brian Clarke, a former protégé of Coach Rice. "His 57 years of marriage to Shirley, and his 54 years in the same, small home (raising four kids, three of them BIG men!) in Lyndhurst, are testament to the 'simple virtues' that he so embraced. By the same means, he loved all of us, his protégés, no matter what our own 'human imperfections' might be; he simply tried to redirect them."

Coach Rice served as past president of the Ohio Association of Track Coaches and the Ohio Association of Track Officials. In addition to serving as past president of the Cleveland Football Officials Association, Coach Rice was inducted into the Ohio Track Coaches Hall of Fame in 1970 and the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame in 1992.

During his career, his track teams won several Lake Erie League championships and individually he coached Olympians and high school All-American track athletes. He also was a starter and meet referee at many state and college competitions, including the former Knights of Columbus indoor track meets held at the old Arena.

“Coach Rice was as good a man, and as steadfast a friend, as any man I've ever known," wrote Brian Clarke in his recollections for his mentor's guestbook at Legacy.com. "Like uncountable thousands, I benefited enormously - immeasurably - from the humor, the perspective, the insight, and the example that he lent to what is, more often than not, a life of profound uncertainty and confusion. I learned that even 'the best' have moments (and more) of extreme doubt. That life does not always 'play out' the way that one anticipates or desires. You simply adjust, adapt, and refocus on the new incarnation of 'your race.' Coach Rice had to do much 'adjusting and adapting' of his own, and yet he never revealed anything other than a resolve to do 'the best that he could.' As a man, as a husband, as a father, as a mentor, he was 'a frontrunner.'"