Local coaching legend hits the century mark

BREMEN – The man who brought football back to Bremen is turning 100 on Saturday.

Don Bunge came to Bremen in 1952 to teach science and coach basketball. When the Lions decided to re-instate football after a 50-year hiatus in 1957, Bunge was tabbed as the first head coach, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Bunge went on to coach the Lions for the next 29 years compiling a 160-102-10 record in the tough Northern Lakes Conference where Bremen was the only Class A school. In 1980 he was voted the IFCA Coach of the Year in District 1 and in 1982 he was an assistant coach for the North All-Star team. Bunge was inducted into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame in 1988.

Bunge’s name is also on the field he literally helped build when starting the program.

Bunge served as a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne and took part in the Allied landing on Luzon during WWII.

After the end of the war, he returned to Indiana Central (now the University of Indianapolis) where he was a three-sport athlete and captain of the baseball and football teams.

Along the way, he was honored by the state of Indiana as a “Sagamore of the Wabash” in 1974.

The Bunge family will be celebrating Coach Bunge’s 100th birthday on Saturday and are welcoming former players, students, colleagues, rivals, and community members to send a note expressing their well wishes and appreciation for the impact he has made in their lives.