Service honors HRSM dean emeritus, former Elon coach
Family, friends, former players and colleagues gathered at the Greenlawn Funeral Home Wednesday afternoon to celebrate the life of Harry “Sid” Varney, a man as tough as he was caring and as competitive as he was compassionate.
Varney, dean emeritus of USC’s College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management, died Friday at the age of 83. Members of the Elon football team he coached from 1953 to 1959 shared stories of how Varney impacted their lives.
His toughness was evident in one particularly bad loss during Sonny Martin’s college career.
“We played at Mississippi Southern my senior year at Elon, and we got beat 30-something to nothing, but six or eight players got hurt on the kickoff,” the former football player recalled. “The bus went to the hospital to pick these players up. [The driver] rolls in, stops the bus, and very bravely he gets up and says, ‘Coach, I’ll go in and get them.’ Coach says: ‘Blow the damn horn.’”
But that intensity also changed the lives of those around him.
Martin also recounted a story he was told by Bob Nelson, who studied with Varney at Duke University as the two pursued Ph.D.s in education.
The two, along with a few other students, met for lunch every month at a Durham S&W Cafeteria to talk about their coursework and help each other out. At one such meal about two years into the program, one man in the group announced that he could no longer afford the tuition and he would be dropping out.
Varney’s response?
In the middle of a packed restaurant, said Martin: “Sid Varney dove across the table, jerked this guy up by his coat and he said, ‘You need to get your a-- out of education! We don’t need a damn quitter; that’s what’s wrong with education today! No one wants to fight for kids that don’t have a chance. If you’re going to be in education, you’ve got to be prepared and willing to do that.’”
That man, Martin went on, would go on to earn his Ph.D. and become the superintendent of Wilmington, N.C.’s school system.
Varney, who was honored with the Order of the Palmetto and an induction into the Elon College Sports Hall of Fame, certainly believed in the value of education, and he dedicated much of his career to that passion at the university.
Varney served as the director of USC’s Florence campus — now Francis Marion University — in 1968 and 1969 before serving as the Dean of Applied Professional Sciences from 1972 until his retirement in 1994.
During his tenure at USC’s College of Applied Professional Sciences (later renamed the College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management), Varney is credited with improving internship opportunities, accepting more international students and adding to the college’s offerings.
It’s also fitting that his efforts as Elon’s head football coach gave his players the opportunity not only to achieve athletic success but also to attend the college through scholarships.
Bob Stauffenberg, like several other players who spoke, was the first person in his family to go to school — and for that, he thanked Varney.
“I was born and raised in the hard coal region of Pennsylvania, and that is where Coach Varney found me,” he said, adding that his younger brother, three of his children and five nephews had since earned college degrees. “ ... The only way I know to express my gratitude to Coach Varney is to know in my heart that none of that would have been possible without his doing what he did for me.”
That legacy continues to this day, as students in the College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management still benefit from Varney’s memory; the Harry E. and Carmen S. Varney Endowment Fund has raised over $100,000 for scholarships and an award that each year honors a professor in the college.
Varney is survived by his wife Carmen, two sons, Dean and Kim, his brother, five grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.