Morro Bay High coach Jim Atchison remembered for giving back

James Atchison stood in the middle of a fired up Morro Bay High School football team following its 2013 season-ending win over Templeton. The team echoed each one of his raspy words.

“One brother! All brothers! Ride together! We die together! Hell yeah!”

It was a chant that Atchison had led countless times before and since, encircled both by players from the football team and cadets at the Grizzly Youth Academy. On Friday, when the Morro Bay football team takes the field against Mission Prep, there will be a void inside that circle.

After what his family called a complicated medical history that includes battling Type 2 diabetes, Atchison died early Saturday morning at the age of 47 at French Hospital Medical Center following complications from a Sept. 19 neck surgery.

His family — wife Elizabeth, son Niko and daughter Evelyn — along with the hundreds of people he touched during his 12 years on the Central Coast, have mourned his death in the days that followed.

“This has been the greatest pain and agonizing despair I have ever felt,” Elizabeth Atchison, James Atchison’s wife of 20 years, wrote on Facebook on Monday. “My heart breaks every second of every day. The hardest thing I ever had to do was to walk out of that hospital without him. I don’t know how I will keep going. My only comfort is the fact that he left me two beautiful babies.”

She said her husband — who went by Jim to most — had a checkup with his surgeon Sept. 29, and everything looked good. Then Monday he started feeling confused, his wife said, before he fell in the bathroom. He was rushed to the hospital where he had a “massive heart attack” Tuesday. On Saturday morning at 5:31, James Atchison died.

“It felt like a nightmare that whole week,” Elizabeth Atchison said in an interview with The Tribune on Wednesday. “Just one thing after another. He just kept getting worse and worse.”

Morro Bay head football coach David Kelley broke the news to the team Saturday.

“We came in and had a huge cry fest like you wouldn’t believe,” Kelley said at practice Wednesday. “The kids were just real and raw.”

Then the team had a 30-minute “roast” session. Team members, including James Atchison’s nephew, Luis Alvarez, told stories and joked.

“They laughed like I haven’t heard this team laugh ever,” Kelley said. “After that, we cried for another 30 minutes.”

Almost immediately, a Facebook page set up to wish James Atchison well on his post-surgery recovery turned into a memorial and filled up with well wishes from people whose lives he affected. Many came from former cadets at the Grizzly Youth Academy in San Luis Obispo, a voluntary program for at-risk teens where Atchison worked for the last 12 years.

“You turned my day from bad to good in a heartbeat. I’ll always remember going up to you trying to shake your hand and you would just say ‘no handshakes I’m a bear hug type of guy’ I’ll miss you Sgt Atchison rest in paradise you’re in a better place,” wrote Chris De La Mora.

Lieutenant Colonel Tim Vincent, director of the Grizzly Youth Academy, said James Atchison had a kind soul.

“He brought a lot of qualities from his time as a football coach. Just helping kids see the big picture and keeping them on the right track and helping them understand life,” Vincent said. “One of the nicest human beings you’ll ever meet. We are really feeling the loss.”

Elizabeth Atchison said she got to see her husband in action first-hand when she worked at the academy.

“He would tell them about his own struggles, and I think that’s why kids connect with him because he wasn’t afraid to talk about his past and his truth and say, ‘You know, I have been there, too. I know what you’re going through,’ ” Elizabeth Atchison said.

Close friend Brad Hudson coached football for more than 10 years with James Atchison, and outside of work the two spent time riding motorcycles together.

“The Facebook posts say it all,” Hudson said fighting back tears. “If you look through the whole thing, he was just a mentor, a father, a best friend, a coach, but he just embodied all that stuff. He loved being with the kids and working with the kids so much.”

James Atchison’s 20-year-old son Niko is taking the loss particularly hard, Elizabeth Atchison said. He has spent the past few days in the garage, where he used to work with his dad, putting on his father’s boots and going through his tool box.

James Atchison had been his son’s football coach since he was 8 years old and coached his daughter in every sport, from track to basketball to soccer.

“I think if my brother could be here, he would probably say we both agree that our best years with him was probably being coached by him,” Evelyn Atchison, a 16-year-old student at Morro Bay High School, said Wednesday. “Just being able to share those memories.”

“I always told him you are very lucky because not too many people find their niche,” Elizabeth Atchison said. “Not many people know what their purpose in life is. I told him, ‘You have always had this.’ ”

James Atchison felt lucky to be alive, according to his wife, following a 2009 lung infection that landed him in the intensive care unit.

“He made it through, and I think after that he just lived his life to the fullest even more,” Elizabeth, 39, said. “He wanted to ride motorcycles, he wanted to go do stuff, he wanted to coach football so he could live the way he wanted to.”

The Atchison family thinks James Atchison would want to go out big — just the way he lived his life — so they decided the perfect place to hold his celebration of life ceremony would be at the Morro Bay High School football field. The celebration, which is scheduled for 4 p.m. on Oct. 23, is open to all family and friends. Anyone who wishes to donate to the family ahead of the service can visit their Go Fund Me page. More than $7,000 has been donated in the last five days.

“People have been dropping off food and cards. I’ve just never heard of this before,” Elizabeth Atchison said. “They have rallied around us so much. I will forever be so grateful to everybody at his high school and his job.”

Though Elizabeth Atchison appreciates all of the donations and kind words, she hopes his legacy lives on through others.

“He felt a drive to help others. It was his mission. It was his purpose in life so he would want to see that again,” Elizabeth Atchison said. “He would want every life that he ever touched, for them to learn from it and for them to pay it forward. You can’t have somebody touch your life like that and not want to do it for another child.”

This story was originally published October 12, 2016 at 6:22 PM with the headline "Morro Bay High coach Jim Atchison remembered for giving back."