Monday I received an Email from a student’s parent regarding a reschedule due to the mother needing to leave town for her cousin’s memorial service in Chicago. I responded with a few words of condolence, and learned shortly thereafter that her first cousin was famed college football coach, Randy Walker, who recently died of a heart attack. Yesterday afternoon, following my student’s lesson, I spoke with her mother for some time, and shared with her a few words in an Email from my brother regarding his respect for Randy as a coach, more importantly, as a teacher. I learned from the parent that Randy and his wife were eagerly awaiting the arrival of their first grandchild.

From the internet…

Northwestern University football coach Randy Walker has died of an apparent heart attack, the school announced early Friday. He was 52.

Mike Wolf, Northwestern’s assistant athletic director for media services, said Walker died suddenly at about 10 p.m. Thursday after experiencing chest pains at his suburban Chicago home.

“This is a devastating loss, not only for our athletic program, but for the entire Northwestern community,” Northwestern Director of Athletics Mark Murphy said in a statement released by the school.

“Randy truly embraced Northwestern and its mission, and cared deeply for his student-athletes, both on and off the field.”

Two months ago, Northwestern gave Walker a four-year extension through the 2011 season. He joined the school in 1999 after nine years at Miami of Ohio.Walker’s Wildcats posted 37 wins, going 7-5 last season. He led the team to three bowl games since 2000, including a 50-38 loss to UCLA in Sun Bowl in December.Northwestern shared the Big Ten title in 2000. Walker was the first Wildcats coach to guide the team to four seasons with at least six wins since C.M. Hollister in 1899-1902.

In October 2004, Walker checked himself into a hospital after experiencing chest pains before his weekly football season news conference. He was hospitalized with an inflammation of the heart muscle, known as myocarditis, that usually is caused by a virus.

When Randy Walker was hired as Northwestern’s football coach in 1999, one of his goals was to field a team that could regularly contend for a postseason bowl berth. Now in his eighth year, and coming off three successive seasons of six or more wins — the first time Northwestern has accomplished that in 74 years — Walker has the Wildcats achieving one of his program’s missions.

“We want to be competitive on an annual basis and put our program in position to play for something in November, whether that be for a Big Ten title or a bowl berth,” says Walker. “We’ve been able to do that the past few seasons.”

Here are some of the other firsts for Walker, who is now the second winningest coach in Northwestern history:

• first NU football coach to own victories over all 10 Big Ten Conference foes
• first NU coach since C.M. Hollister (1899-1902) to record four six-or-more win seasons
• first NU coach to beat Ohio State in Evanston since 1958, and the first to beat the Buckeyes since 1971
• first NU coach to beat Penn State at Beaver Stadium

Perhaps more important than his on-field achievements, Walker has accepted the AFCA’s Academic Achievement Award three of the past four years (2002, 2004 and 2005). Northwestern, which annually touts a graduation rate of 90 percent or better, had 100-percent rates for those years.

Walker came to Northwestern after serving as the head football coach at Miami (Ohio) University for nine seasons. The 51-year-old departed Oxford as the winningest head coach in school history with a mark of 59-35-5 (.621) — a great honor considering the list of coaches who had gone before him. Dubbed the “Cradle of Coaches,” Miami has produced such football legends as Earl “Red” Blaik, Paul Brown, Carmen Cozza, Sid Gillman, Weeb Ewbank, Woody Hayes, Bill Mallory, Ara Parseghian, Bo Schembechler and Dick Crum, to name a few.

While at Miami, Walker did not shy away from scheduling quality competition. In his last two seasons at Miami, the RedHawks recorded nonconference wins over Army (38-14 in 1997, 14-13 in 1998), Virginia Tech (24-17) and North Carolina (13-10). In 1995, Miami handed Northwestern its only regular-season loss when the RedHawks upset NU, 30-28, during the Wildcats’ Rose Bowl season.

Prior to his assistant coaching days at NU, Walker spent 10 seasons (1978-87) at the University of North Carolina. In 1985, he was named offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for the Tar Heels after spending the previous seven campaigns as the running backs (1978-81) and quarterbacks (1982-87) coach. Walker coached in six postseason games at UNC, and the Tar Heels went 4-2 in those games, beating Michigan in the Gator Bowl (1979), Texas in the Bluebonnet Bowl (1980), Arkansas in the Gator Bowl (1981), and Texas in the Sun Bowl (1982). The two losses came at the hands of Florida State in the Peach Bowl (1983) and Arizona in the Aloha Bowl (1986).

A native of Troy, Ohio, Walker graduated from Miami University in 1976 with a B.A. in social studies education and, in 1981, earned his master’s degree in education administration.

Following his graduation from Miami in 1976, Walker was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals, and after a short stint with them he returned to Oxford to help as a graduate assistant. The following year he became a full-time assistant in charge of running backs.

Walker is married to the former Tamara Weikert. The couple has two children — Abbey, 28, and Jamie (NU, ’04), 25, who serves as a football recruiting assistant at Northwestern, and a son-in-law, Brian Boudreau. They reside in Evanston.