Longtime high school basketball coach in Michigan and California became ferocious fundraiser and Aztecs backer
Al Schaffer, center, is honored at the ALS Fiesta in May with former Aztecs coach Steve Fisher, right, and ALS representative Steve Becvar, back. When Al Schaffer turned 5 in 1939, his first hero was his cousin Art Guse. He was a basketball coach in New Troy, Mich., knee-deep in the game that was beginning to fascinate a young and impressionable boy.
“Many Germans denied the atrocities because it was hid by Hitler and the Nazis,” Schaffer said. “A lot of people were in denial. But I saw the pictures of it at a dinner in 1945.” When Schaffer lost his wife Lillian in 2010 to a rare, incurable disease called amyloidosis, Aztecs coaches Steve Fisher and Brian Dutcher vowed to keep him involved with their program.“My wife said I was obsessed with the game,” Schaffer said. “She would say, ‘I’m No. 2.’ I said, ‘For two hours a day, you are No. 2. I’ll admit it.’ She would ask me something at 10 at night and I was thinking about how to beat Torrey Pines or El Camino.
Think about how many basketball miles Schaffer has logged. He was there as the jump shot was gathering its newborn legs like a baby giraffe. Schaffer’s first head coaching gig at Litchfield High School seemed an exercise in tilting at windmills. The team owned the longest losing streak of any school in the state with 700 or more students.
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