Ralph Collette: an impact beyond the schoolhouse

It’s not often that a hard-nosed educator earns the love and respect of students that are “a little rough around the edges.” Ralph Collette took on that challenge and spent decades rising to the occasion.

Collette, a longtime educator and later assistant principal at Freedom High School, passed away on March 31. He spent the last three years of his life paralyzed from the neck down after a fall at home in February 2023, but he never let it deter him.

“How he kept his spirit for three years. He never was ‘woe is me,’” Collette’s lifelong friend, Jim Warlick, said. “He always was upbeat, always was asking about you. … He just was selfless.”

Warlick met Collette when he was 14 and 4-foot-11, after Oak Hill High School integrated in 1965, and decided they’d be friends based on prison-yard rhetoric — find the biggest guy that you can and make him an ally.

“He said I used curse words he’d never even heard before,” Warlick laughed.

From then until Collette’s passing, Warlick and Collette kept a tight bond, with Collette acting as a friend and protector to the tiny White kid who often got picked on.

Warlick explained, “Ralph said, ‘Jimmy, if you wouldn’t run your mouth so much, maybe you wouldn’t get into that, but Jimmy, I’ve got you covered.’ Thank God the bullies didn’t pick on me, or they’d have had to deal with Ralph. That’s the kind of friend he was.”

According to Terry Rogers, Collette’s high school coach and, later, coworker, the young man embodied athleticism in high school.

Collette, who played football and managed the basketball team, wanted to play basketball the following year.

“I sort of picked at him,” Rogers reminisced. “I said, ‘You ain’t gonna get to play with me. You don’t work hard enough at it.’ He said, ‘I’ll show you. I’ll be ready.’”

“Well, the next year, he comes out for the basketball team,” Rogers continued. “He makes the team. We’re 21 and 4. Win the conference. Win the tournament. He’s MVP in the conference tournament. I think that shows the excellence that Ralph had in himself and how he handled himself and his work ethic.”

Once Collette made it out of high school, he briefly played on the semi-professional football team Carolina Storm before blowing out his knee trying out for the New York Jets, effectively ending his professional football aspirations, according to his nephew, Kelly Mathes.

Collette instead turned his focus to education, first teaching physical education at McDowell High before working at an alternative school in Charlotte.

There, he adhered to a tough love methodology, one that he carried over to Freedom High School when he returned to Burke County.

While plenty of students expressed their gratitude to Collette following his injury, his nephew, Mathes, remembered that the “tough love” didn’t stop at the school doors.

“Tough love (is) that kind of love that you don’t realize until a little bit after the fact,” Mathes said. Collette took in Mathes and his siblings, Rodney and Leslie, when their mother was murdered.

Although Ralph already lived with the small family at the time, he went from having zero kids to being fully responsible for three in a matter of days.

“He made sure we had everything we needed and then some,” Mathes continued. “He was always teaching, there was always a lesson to be learned. You don’t know you’re getting them lessons until after the fact when you look back and you’re like, ‘Oh, OK. I see now.’”

Even Mathes focused on his uncle’s strength, recalling that he had seen his uncle lift weights so heavy that the bar started bending, but he didn’t even want to get into the details because no one would believe him.

“As big and tough as he was, he was really soft and gentle at the end of the day. He was really kind-hearted,” Mathes explained.

Former Freedom teacher Elizabeth Cobb reiterated Collette’s kindness, explaining that he was the type of person who lifted people up, even at his lowest points.

Cobb had known Collette and Warlick in high school, although she was a grade below them. She worked with Collette for about 12 years before she retired.

Once he had his accident, Warlick convinced her to visit her old colleague, where the friendship rekindled and she began stopping by weekly, bringing homemade meals and spending time just talking.

“I wish everybody could know him the way I did,” Cobb said. “I’ve never been to a funeral that was more joyful and loving. … If you didn’t know him, it’d be hard to know just how extra special he was.”

For those that didn’t know him, Coach Rogers probably said it best: “Life is measured by the people that you impact, and Ralph Collette impacted thousands — not hundreds, thousands. … Ralph knew where he was. He knew where he was going. He knew where he had gotten to. But he never forgot where he came from.”