Jerry Mortimer spent more than 35 years in education, the bulk of it in the Black Hawk school district. He was a teacher and a coach, and later took on the roles of principal and athletic director.

He taught and oversaw hundreds of teachers and thousands of kids. He coached his small rural school team at a high level for decades, winning seven regional titles and is a Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Famer.

Beginning in 2010, he began to step back a bit. First he stopped teaching and coaching, then gave up the principal duties two years later before finally retiring from the athletic director position in 2016.

But he didn’t give up the call of helping people. For 25 years he has worked for Green County EMS as an EVOC, an ambulance driver. When he started, he volunteered to drive on weekends, even while still teaching, coaching and being in school administration.

“I don’t know how I did it back then,” he said. “Black Hawk was my family – I would go to the school at 6 or 7 in the morning, get back at 9-something at night, and then on the weekends coach youth basketball and drive for EMS.”

Nowadays, he works 300-400 hours each quarter driving ambulance. He stays active in prep sports, too, as a color commentator for football and basketball with Big Radio, covering games all across southwestern Wisconsin. He said he has gotten the urge to coach again, but doesn’t know that he could go back to the all the hours it took to put in.

He said he enjoys the low-pressure atmosphere of being on a microphone away from the bench. He was a high-intensity coach, but now he can take his time to explain the game to listeners, giving insight while also finding time to laugh.

“Kent McConnell told me, that as a color commentator, I should make the buttons pop off of grandma and grandpa’s shirt by speaking so positively about these kids. Nothing negative,” Mortimer said. “The radio is special to me. I’m so grateful to Kent and Scott (Thompson) for letting me do this. And I work with a great partner too in Doug Wagen. They have it really nice down there with Doug and Mike Zweifel on the calls.”

As an EMS driver, he oftentimes finds himself helping someone on one of the hardest days of their lives.

“I really love helping people,” he said in a 2018 interview with the Monroe Times. “I see people during their most vulnerable times – and I pride myself as a driver to help EMTs but to also help care for the family members.”

Now 68-years-old, and nearly 69, he said he appreciate everything he has even more because of his job. Last week he was called to SSM Health Monroe Hospital to transport a man to hospice.

“This man is going to die, and he knows it. He’s upbeat and thankful. It’s just a reminder to recognize what you have in this life – and I have a great life,” he said.

During his free time, he has been a Wisconsin Badgers football and basketball season ticket holder, and finds solace after years of stress by sitting on his deck, reading sports-related material and taking in the downtime. He occasionally takes day trips when he’s not on-call to drive an ambulance – though, he said he hasn’t taken an actual vacation since he retired from Black Hawk.

Mortimer was the middle child in his family, born in Reedsburg. His family farmed, and he graduated from Wonewoc-Center in 1973. He went to UW-River Falls for one semester before his father unexpectedly died of a heart attack. He returned home and worked at the Juneau County Sheriff’s Office as a dispatcher for a time, before eventually returning to post-secondary education at Edgewood College in Madison.

It was during that time that he started coaching and realized it would become a passion. His career as an educator started shortly after graduating in 1980 in Alma, taking over for a teacher that had died in a car crash. That teacher’s son was one of his students.

“It was the toughest thing. I will never forget it,” he said. He worked at basketball camps at UW-Madison, and later took a job in Waupun before finally settling in at Black Hawk in the 1980s, teaching language arts and becoming the boys’basketball coach. He began at the middle school before moving to bigger responsibilities at the high school in the 1990s.

“Black Hawk was my family,” Mortimer said. “It was the center of my life for 30-some years. I have no regrets.”

Coaching was a blessing, too, he said.

“When I coached, I had so many wonderful athletes. Black Hawk has been blessed with terrific athletes. I wasn’t easy to play for – I see that now – I was a taskmaster, I expected perfection. I always asked for 100%,” Mortimer said.

Eventually, he felt there was too much stress on himself. He spent a lot of long nights watching film in order to prepare his players to better themselves as players and as people. The district won multiple sportsmanship awards during his tenure, and in the years since he’s had many of his former students and come to him, shake his hand, and share their gratitude.

“You see these men now that you coached and they come up and shake your hand. I had a wonderful time. I wouldn’t change it for the world. The only thing I’d change is going to state – I would have liked to experience that,” he said.

He is trying to trim his time with the EMS, but they are short staffed “like pretty much everyone else.” He said as his age rises, he is more prone to slips, trips and falls. Three times now he has fallen while on EMS calls. “The older you get, the easier it becomes and the longer it hurts.”

If and when he retires from the EMS for good, he said he would like to return as a substitute teacher, working 5-6 days a month. He still fills in from time to time for Black Hawk principal Cory Milz when Milz and District Administrator Willy Chambers have to be away from the district for a function.