LYNN — Don Harp, who passed away Friday at age 74, could be found on Lynn softball fields and was infamous for carrying an old bucket to sit on.
St. Mary’s softball coach Colleen Newbury, who coached little league and high school softball with Harp, said he had “the biggest heart.”
“For every girl he’s coached and been around – that includes the farm leagues growing up and the high school kids – he knew who you were and you knew who he was,” Newbury said.
Newbury and Harp met in 1996 while his daughters, Jill and Jen, were playing softball.
“Jen played on a 12-and-under (Lynn Babe Ruth) team I helped coach,” Newbury said. “That’s how we kind of met and started forming a friendship.”
In 2001, Newbury accepted the head coaching job at St. Mary’s while Jen was a sophomore at the school.
“He had asked to be the field manager,” Newbury said. “This will be great… Everyone needs that person.”
Shortly after, he became an official assistant coach. The two clicked like it was nothing.
“We thought alike, for sure, on a lot of things,” Newbury said. “He could be totally on a different field or a different rotation, and when we met later on, we would have almost the exact same feedback to each other all the time. I think that’s what made it such a great relationship.”
Newbury admired how much he cared about character.
“It was really your effort and how badly you wanted it – that was his thing,” Newbury said. “I don’t care if you’re player one or player 20.”
He sprinkled in some humor, too.
“He would yell out, ‘We want to score’ while the kid was on second base,” Newbury said. “It was funny to everybody, but he was so serious and would yell funny things like, ‘There are sharks out there, you’ve got to score.’”
To say he was a fan favorite would be an understatement.
“I can honestly say this with sincerity that everybody who met him just instantly loved him. Then, people were just like, ‘Oh, it’s coach Don,’” Newbury said. “He really did get to know every single kid in all his years of coaching… They truly loved him and they’re going to miss him.”
The bond between Newbury and Harp continued off the diamond.
“He was such a good friend to my family and especially to my daughter (Catherine),” Newbury said. “When I was home with her, we would have breakfast with Don, and then it turned into lunch with Don once a week, then it turned into dinner with Don once a week based on how she was and what she was doing.”
Harp graduated from Lynn English in 1996 before attending North Shore Community College. He worked for Boyd’s Potato Chips in Lynn after high school and was a machinist at General Electric for more than 40 years.
