Usually, stories of having to walk miles to school are regarded as exaggerated, dusty tales from grandparents.

But the memory of NIU football’s equipment manager, Dick Townsend, still serves him just fine as he remembers his daily journey to Rockford East High School.

“I hear these stories about how parents used to have to walk five miles to school, but literally, I had to,” said the 16-year football staffer, who will call it quits after this football season.

Since 1989, Townsend has driven to Huskie Stadium and fit Huskie players with specialized shoes, pads and other equipment. But his trip was much more difficult in the 1950s, when he attended Rockford East.

Townsend would walk to school from his home in central Rockford each day. On days where he was late, he’d run. Townsend’s daily trek turned out to be daily training when he landed on the school’s cross country team.

Townsend was recovering from a broken leg injury in fall 1954. The junior thought he was ready, but the coach thought playing football could reinjure his leg, putting him out of competition for the track season.

“I got mad at him when he said he wanted me to sit out all year,” Townsend remembered. “They happened to have a cross country time trial that day, so I jumped in.”

Townsend took third place and was immediately persuaded to join the team. He went on to place seventh in the 1955 state meet. His team placed seventh in the state the following year.

Townsend remembered being recruited by several schools, such as Drake and Duke, but was most impressed with NIU cross country coach Carl Appell.

“He was really a great coach,” Townsend said. “He took a bunch of nobody’s and made us really good runners. He dominated in track and cross country.”

In choosing NIU, Townsend guaranteed his spot in Huskie athletic history. NIU captured the first NCAA College Division Championship in 1958 after posting a perfect record and Interstate Intercollegiate Athletic Conference in 1957.

“Cross country was a minor sport and I don’t think a lot of people realized the significance of that at the time because it was a minor sport,” he said.

After Townsend graduated from NIU in 1962, he began a 26-year teaching career, coaching virtually every high school sport at some point during that span.

From 1970 to 1988, Townsend served as the athletic director for Waterman High School, stepping in to fill spots where there were no coaches available and pushing for a football program and boosting girls’ sports.

In 1988, Townsend decided to leave his teaching career, but said he hated to leave coaching.

“I knew Waterman had changed,” Townsend said. “The kids had changed and I was getting kind of old and impatient. I was really strict. I believe in kids respecting their teachers, but I had to battle that all the time.”

Townsend came out of retirement the next year to return to his alma mater to begin a 16-year run as equipment manager.

“Retirement is a bad word to use, because this isn’t a retirement job,” Townsend said. “I work just as hard here as I did in coaching and teaching.”

Football coach Joe Novak, who has worked with Townsend since becoming NIU’s head coach in 1996, respects Townsend’s loyalty.

“This is an important place to him,” Novak said. “He’s put a lot of his life into this university. I’m a traditionalist and I love people like him that come back to their alma mater and give so much back. To me, those people are special.”

At the end of this football season in December, Townsend will retire from his second career, passing off his job to his son, Paul.

“He’s one of the best equipment managers in the country,” Paul said. “So when you learn from him, you’re learning from the best.”

NIU has become an extension of the Townsend family, Paul said. Dick’s wife, Nancy, worked for the NIU postal office for 32 years, and Paul has worked various positions in security and facilities management.

Still, working with his dad isn’t always father-son bonding.

“We tend to bark at each other a little more,” Paul said, “but we talk family-wise too, so we’re up on helping each other out more than normal co-workers would.”

In 2001, Townsend was inducted into the NIU Athletics Hall of Fame, and last week against Toledo, the longtime equipment manager was honored at halftime in the end zone before 27,719 fans.

“It was a complete surprise, and I felt really gratified,” Townsend said. “All the hard work and laundry; it seemed to make it worth it.”

And even though he’s retiring from his job, he’s says he’s not retiring from being a Huskie.

“I’ll try to make it to every game for as long as I can,” he said.