Bud Kenyon found football as a 17-year-old Marine stationed in China — and he never let go.

Born Harold Clayton Kenyon Jr. in Bristol, Vermont, his father was a farmer and his mother ran a boarding house.

At 17, he joined the Marines and was sent to China during the 1948 occupation after World War II.

“My high school didn’t play football,” Kenyon said. “When I went into the Marine Corps, and ended up in North China, they had six teams...I wanted to try out. They made an end of me because I could catch. That got me started.”

When he came home, Kenyon finished his fourth year of high school and went on to Springfield College, where he was captain of the football team. “The rest is history,” said Kenyon.

He started his coaching career in Oriskany where, in addition to football, he also coached basketball and baseball. In 1959, he moved to Hoosick Falls, where he introduced 11-man football. In less than two years, he turned a team on probation for misconduct into the runner-up for the leagues’ sportsmanship award.

Kenyon came to Guilderland in 1965 as a physical education teacher and head football coach.

All of the Kenyon boys — Kevin, Mike, Keith, and Chris — played Guilderland football and Debbie was a cheerleader. Her father points out cheerleading was the only sport for girls in that era. He credited his wife of 63 years, Betty, for taking care of home life so he could concentrate on coaching.

Kevin Kenyon said of his father’s coaching style, “He’d call you out immediately on character issues. It was always about responsibility and accountability.”

He also noted that his father founded and ran a clinic for Section II coaches. “He was way ahead of his time,” Kevin Kenyon said, getting competing coaches to learn from each other to better the game.

There were no cuts on Kenyon’s team, his son said; anyone willing to do the work could join. “Some of the players we had were not athletes; they just wanted to be part of the team. They grew physically, mentally, and spiritually,” he said.

He went on, “The game is self-limiting. Everybody had a role. You couldn’t take a play off. If it was a failure, they would critique you.”

After retiring from Guilderland in 1980, Kenyon went on to coach in Washington County.

“It is the most emotional sport known to man,” Coach Kenyon said of football. “You find out if you control your emotions or your emotions control you.”

His favorite part?

“I like Monday through Friday the best — the preparation. The games, I enjoyed; it was hanging out your laundry on what you did during the week.”

Kenyon, 87, itemized the three things his misses the most about coaching, in this order: “One, Monday through Friday; two, the people I coached with and against that I respected; and, three, the players.”

“I’m still excited,” he said about football. Two weeks ago, he stood out in the pouring rain, to watch a Pop Warner team coached by one of his former layers.

“I love those little kids,” he said.

Kenyon — who has 23 years straight with a winning record, at Hoosick Falls, Guilderland, and Greenwich — noted that he had been inducted into the Capital Region Football Hall of Fame in 2010 and in 1990 received the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame Award for dedication to amateur football, the first Section II high school coach recognized for the honor.

“Naming the field was the icing on the cake,” he said of the honor from Guilderland that was nearly in his grasp. “I was so proud. I was proud for those kids and their families. We did things together.”