Former longtime Nashua Athletic Director Al Harrington is shown during his induction intto the Nashua Lions Club Legends Of Holman Stadium Hall of Fame in July of 2022. He passed away on Wednesday. (Courtesy photo)

NASHUA – He succeeded a legend, and carved out his own place in history.

And the city lost a piece of its history on Wednesday as former longtime Nashua High School Athletic Director Al Harrington passed away after a lengthy illness.

Harrington was 35 when he succeeded the legendary Buzz Harvey, becoming the Nashua AD in 1977 and ultimately retired in 2001, three years before Nashua created two high schools.

Harrington was the athletic director during the period that included the nationally renowned Nashua girls basketball dynasty. His policies set the tone for Nashua athletics for more than two decades. In succeeding Harvey after working as the assistant athletic director in what was then Bentley College (now Bentley University) he became the model of consistency until he retired in 2001. He was inducted in 2022 into the Nashua Lions Club’s Legends of Holman Stadium Hall of Fame and was already a member of the Nashua Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2025 as announced in the late fall that will be inducted on May 18.

Harrington, a native of Cambridge, Mass., was the picture of stability for the Nashua athletic department that current AD Lisa Gingras has become today. When he retired in 2001 after 24 years as AD, Nashua soon found out what life would be like post-Harrington as the position became a revolving door. It was held by five different people – one on an interim basis – before Gingras was hired in 2013 to begin a tenure that is closing in on 12 years.

Harrington presided over one of the most glorious eras in Nashua athletics – the Nashua girls basketball dynasty orchestrated by the Panthers late coach, John Fagula. Before a 10-year tenure at Bentley in Waltham, Mass., Harrington had actually worked in Nashua from 1965-67 as a teacher and coach at Fairgrounds Junior High. The Nashua girls hoop dynasty served as the symbol of the rise of girls athletics during his time in the job, during a time when schools were adjusting to Title IX. In fact, during his tenure, athletic participation rose to new levels, exceeding 1,200 on an annual basis. By the time he retired, Harrington had overseen a pre-Split department that had a budget in excess of $300,000 and supervised 70 coaches.

When he was hired, Harrington did not fear the task of succeeding a legend in Harvey.

“It’s a challenge,” he told Telegraph reporter Joe Heaney in July of 1977 upon being hired as AD. “I have great respect for Buzz Harvey … Nashua has always been a great athletic town. I would like it to continue to be number one athletically.”

His duties at Bentley included assistant athletic director, assistant and associate basketball coach, tennis coach, intramural director and coordinator of physical education. He was inducted into the Bentley Athletic Hall of Fame in 1992. He Bentley men’s basketball’s top recruiter during his time there, and the Falcons were 179-73 during his 10 years on their bench.

At Nashua, Harrington’s ability to get local groups to provide funding for things like a new weight room, tournaments,etc was said to be a strength of his tenure. There are plans that were already in the works for a memorial bench on the campus of Nashua South dedicated to him, and that will now be in his memory.

“Just from the commitment of a man, the athletic director, who saw there was a need and he’d do anything he could do to get that need filled for the student athlete,” former Nashua athletic booster and friend Dennis Morrissey said a couple of years ago when lobbying for Harrington to be honored in some capacity at South. “He made that happen. That weight room was built because of Al Harrington. … He’d jump through hoop after hoop to get what needed to be done and he’d know how to motivate.

“Al harnessed the energy of adults who had the interest in the advancement of athletics by developing fundraising events.” He founded the NHS Athletics Booster Club and also the Friends of NHS Athletics.

Harrington was also known for making the tough decision, often rewarding loyalty. He asked Fagula to be the head football coach for at least a year in the wake of the retierment of longtime head football coach Ken Parady, who also succeeded Harvey. He often made the tough decisions and rewarded coaches based on that loyalty – an example was in 1994 when he hired the late Manfred Beyer to be the Panthers varsity girls soccer coach over another popular candidate from youth soccer ranks as Beyer had spent years as then longtime boys varsity soccer coach Roger Desmarais ‘ top assistant.

“He was a tough guy,” Morrissey said.

One school official during Harrington’s tenure, Morrissey recalled, said it best.

“If it couldn’t be done the way it needs to be done,” he remembered it being said, “Al would find a way to get it done.”

Gingras was a student at Nashua when Harrington was the athletic director – in fact she baby sat Harrington’s children from time to time – and also knew him as an opposing coach when she was teaching and coaching at Salem.

“I know there’s a lot of respect for him from ADs who worked with him when he was an AD,” Gingras said. “At the time when he retired it was ‘Are we building another Pinkerton (the state’s largest school) or are we building two high schools?’

“He was being inducted (into the Nashua Hall) before he passed, so hopefully he was able to know, and his family understands, the impact he had in the Nashua community.”