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CLEMMONS -- Skip Prosser, the boat driver from Pittsburgh who re-created Wake Forest basketball in his own image, began his farewell voyage home Tuesday night. We may never see another like him.

People poured into a small town to pay their last respects to a basketball coach who made them feel bigger, to a humble man who made them feel proud, to an old Merchant Marine who left a modern mark on an old-money university that once struggled for notoriety outside its own campus.

When he arrived six years ago, Wake still was a school of bow ties and khakis. While they eulogized him at two locations Tuesday, toilet paper blew from the branches of the tree-lined campus quad and people all over Winston-Salem wore brightly colored tie-dyed T-shirts.

Prosser made Wake Forest cool, and that was once thought to be impossible.

He was a family man, the straight-talking son of a railroad worker who taught George Edward Prosser III to play hard and to play hurt. His mother called him "Skip" at birth, and that's what everyone called him until he died Thursday at the age of 56.

Prosser was a high school history teacher first and a high school basketball coach second when he took a job at tiny Linsly Institute in Wheeling, W.Va., in 1977. He compared every coaching job he held to his first, and never was one of his teams associated with even the hint of scandal.

"Coaching isn't wins and losses," he once said. "It's teaching. That's the reason I got into coaching and the reason I've stayed in coaching."

He coached a program at Wake that had enjoyed success through the years but had never achieved the in-state influence needed to compete consistently in basketball-mad North Carolina. Prosser never wavered from his goal to change that. He recruited against the most successful programs in the country and took his pick of talent once reserved for other schools.

He brought noise to an alumni base more comfortable in the role of audience. He arranged for loud music to be piped through arena sound system, organized light shows that created a carnival atmosphere. And he introduced the ACC to the wide-open blast of a Harley-Davidson, basketball through straight pipes at staid old Wake Forest.

"Heaven must have a really bad basketball team," former Deacons star Chris Paul said near the end of the traditional Mass of Christian Burial held at Holy Family Catholic Church. "God must've needed someone to push the ball up the floor."

Prosser was praised as the consummate father who quietly gave his oldest son a hug and a kiss when the lights went out before home games at Joel Coliseum and who proudly proclaimed that his youngest son followed him into coaching. He was happiest, it was said, alone with wife Nancy.

He enjoyed reading and would constantly ask friends and acquaintances which book they'd last read. His reading tastes ranged from history and biography to modern novels and textbooks. During a particularly bad time for his Wake Forest players two years ago, he pulled out a copy of "Common Sense" by Thomas Paine.

"These are the times that try men's souls," he read to them.

Each basketball practice began with a scholastic update.

"He opened practice every day by gathering the team around and talking about academics," athletics director Ron Wellman said last week. "That was the message he sent to them, that basketball was a means to the end, and he wanted to drive that home on a consistent basis."

He taught his players to respect the game and the opponent.

Every coach in the ACC came to pay respects Tuesday along with dozens from across the country. Bill Cowher, the former coach of Prosser's beloved Pittsburgh Steelers, came along with former players and students and dignitaries and fans dressed in tie-dyed shirts. The current Wake players came in as a team, holding hands and fighting back tears. Assistant coach Dino Gaudio said he wanted it to be a celebration, but he, too, broke down in the emotionally charged service that overflowed from Clemmons to Wait Chapel on the Wake campus.

"He would've been really upset with all this," Gaudio said. "It was never about Skip."

Prosser once joked he was qualified only to be a boat driver. He was at home in many towns and cities, unpretentious and humble to the end. Despite the bright lights and noise of game nights, he was more at ease with a turkey sandwich and a bowl of soup in Cincinnati, a chipped beef sandwich and a beer in Pittsburgh or a Caesar salad with grilled salmon and tomato bisque at the Loop Pizza Grill in Winston.

"Those of us who were privileged to see him and interact with him on a daily basis cannot begin to express the impact he has had upon us, the impact that he has had upon the Winston-Salem community, the impact he has had upon our university, our athletics department and our basketball program," Wellman said. "I told our players that I don't know that I've ever known a stronger man."

They sent him home Tuesday night, all his family and friends, all his players and all his rivals, and we might never know another like him.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ehardin@news-record.com

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