Hackensack street to be renamed for late Coach 'Scooter' Whiting
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HACKENSACK — A street near Hackensack High School will be renamed in honor of Gordon “Scooter” Whiting, the beloved former Hackensack coach and athletic director who died in May.
The City Council voted Tuesday, June 16, to rename the intersection of Beech and Second streets as Gordon “Scooter” Whiting Way. The decision was met with applause from a packed council chambers filled with family, friends and former students.
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“This is a well-deserved honor for the Whiting family. Scooter was a thoughtful, caring man who deeply loved Hackensack,” Mayor Caseen Gaines said. “He believed in this city, he believed in its people, and he always believed our shared future could be better if we worked together toward it, as a community.”
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Whiting died at age 58 on May 15, just two days after the city Board of Education had accepted his retirement.
He was a lifelong Hackensack resident and a legendary figure in the city's athletics community going back decades. In the 1980s, he was a star football player for the Comets, earning All-State and All-League honors as a linebacker and defensive lineman before graduating from Hackensack High School in 1986.
Whiting attended North Carolina State on a football scholarship, and then transferred to Wagner, where he was part of the school's 1987 Division III national championship team.
After college, Whiting became the head coach at Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood in 1994 and worked there for three years before returning to his hometown as an assistant football coach in 1997. He was the head basketball coach when he took over as head football coach in 2006.
After two seasons as the Comets' head football coach, Whiting served as an assistant to Benjie Wimberly from 2012 to 2020. He became athletic director in 2021. Beyond his work in athletics, Whiting was also a teacher and an assistant principal in the Hackensack School District.
Dr. Joy Dorsey-Whiting, Whiting’s wife and principal of Hackensack Middle School, said she was overcome with emotion when Gaines announced plans for the street renaming at the funeral services. Whiting was a “proud Comet” and loved the Hackensack community he grew up in and spent decades serving, she said.
“My husband was a humble man. He was a man of few words, but he lived loudly,” she said. “He lived for us as a family. He lived loudly for the children of Hackensack. He loved this city.”
On June 17, scholarships were given to two Hackensack athletes from the Gordon “Scooter” Whiting “Once a Comet, Always a Comet” Memorial Fund, a scholarship fund his family had set up shortly after his death.
“We know so many people who want to do something. Flowers die, but money can have a lasting impact and he was such a staunch believer in paying it forward,” Joy Dorsey-Whiting told The Record and NorthJersey.com in May. “We just feel like this is a way that will enable my husband’s light to shine.”
The couple would have celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on June 30. They have two children: Curtis, who recently graduated from Sacred Heart, where he played football, and Camille, a sophomore at Hampton.
While he was the district’s athletic director, Whiting volunteered to coach the flag football team, forgoing extra pay so he could coach Camille.
An official dedication ceremony of the street will be held in the fall, planned to coincide with the start of the football season. The location was chosen because it overlooks Hackensack High School's gymnasium and athletic fields, where Whiting coached countless students over his decades-long career, officials said.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Hackensack street to be renamed for late Coach 'Scooter' Whiting