Dick Plummer died last week, and owners of Political Correctness Meters in our world of leafy suburbs breathed a sigh of relief.

Plummer worked the PC meters overtime in his 50 years of active service to the town of Scarborough, Scarborough schools, and the Scarborough sports world.

Where shall I begin? Here goes.

Ever go to a kindergarten soccer game in our Modern World of Chloe and Biff? What phrase do you hear over and over and over again? (A prize for the first one with the right answer).

“Good job!” is the phrase yelled delightedly, repeatedly, ad nauseum. Good job, Johnny! Good job, Susie! Doesn’t really matter what Johnny or Susie do, and that’s fine; we want to encourage them, build their self-esteem and, most importantly (believe me, most importantly) stress to them that even though we, their parents, work 80 hours a week, we are “there” for them.

Problem is, the practice doesn’t stop. You hear it shouted to kids in rote fashion in K-5, in middle school and even in high school.

Dick Plummer?

You got “good job” if you did a good job.

If you didn’t, or worse – and this was the capital offense in his book – if you didn’t fulfill what he viewed as your potential, you got stony silence.

You ran l0 laps after soccer practice and were timed in 19:32? Is that it? Oh, OK … See you tomorrow.

You made seven out of 10 free throws at the end of basketball practice, and he thought you should be making eight or nine? Never mind that the gangly kid ahead of you only made five of l0 and got hearty praise from Coach Plummer; he did as good as he could do. You? Stony silence. Nod of the head. Gaze at some distant, unknown sight. See you tomorrow.

If you didn’t meet Plummer’s standards, it was because you didn’t meet the standards you should have for yourself.

Dick Plummer had more self-respect than anyone I ever met.

Fool around in class, let down your friends, show up late for your job? Come on, get it in gear.

But do something that showed you felt he could be belittled, played with, or not shown proper respect? Grab your gun!

Dick arrived at Scarborough High about 1957, and ended up coaching basketball in different positions at the high school for about 20 years. He coached – and was a pioneer in southern Maine – in soccer for about 25 years. He also coached baseball for about half that time, though that fact is little known in town nowadays.

In the late l980s, his soccer coaching career came to a kind of unhappy ending. He banged heads with somebody in a position of authority in town government, and he was “invited” to retire, we were told.

Many of us thought this unfortunate. A guy who won five state championships in SHS soccer in Class A deserved a better ending than that.

In part to honor him (and OK, perhaps to show the people who forced him out that they were way outnumbered in town by Plummer fans), a few of us organized a testimonial dinner for him. We planned it for a banquet room at Scarborough Downs.

Quickly, however, it became clear that this location would not be large enough. We ended up renting the Cascades Restaurant in Saco, which could hold close to 400.

A very odd thing happened in the course of making about 30 phone calls the first night of our banquet “ticket sales” effort.

The dialogue I had with the second person I called was to repeat itself in a number of calls that night.

Me: “Hi, Joe, Dan Warren here, how you doin’? Dick Plummer has just retired … or got retired … and a bunch of us are putting together a testimonial dinner for him. We were wondering if you would like …”

Alumnus soccer player: “Plummer?!! That SOB!! You know what he did to me once?! It was during practice, junior year, and all I did was laugh at somebody’s joke, and he hauled me out of practice and chewed me out in front of everybody and …”

Me:” OK. Hey, I know, Dick could be tough … but, say, I’ve got to make a bunch more calls tonight. Do you want to buy some tickets to the banquet or not?”

ASP: “Well, OK, I guess so. Yeah, give me four, I guess.”

I hung up, called the next person, got the same response. It was uncanny. Almost scripted.

Roughly half the players I called that first night had a similar reaction when they heard Plummer’s name. It was like something out the Pavlov’s salivating-dogs science experiments we had to read about in Psych 101 in college.

Why did this happen?

It happened because Dick Plummer made us better athletes, and perhaps better people. He had one job, he believed – make all kids reach their potential, and if they didn’t, make us realize we had committed what amounted to a Crime Against Humanity.

Dick never would have made it today in the leafy-suburb world of “Good job, Johnny!” He would not have agreed to the modern-day coach credo of passing out praise uselessly, like so many Italian lira.

You got praise if you deserved it. Period.

Dick wasn’t warm and fuzzy – just respected, admired (from afar) and appreciated by those who have actually thought about who they are today, why they do what they do, and how they got the good traits they now have.

One player said he bangs on his kids, while they are doing their homework: “If you’re going to do it, do it well, huh? Don’t sit there and do it half (baked). Do your best. Come on.”

Another player, upon hearing of Plummer’s death on Nov. 18, said: “In my job, honest to God, I look at sales figures at the end of the month, and I hear his voice: ‘is this the best you can do? Really?”

To this day, 30 years later, the lessons I learned from him help drive me. Don’t get me wrong; I hated him. Thought he was a jerk. But now I realize he was apparently put there for a reason. Some coaches were really friendly and likeable. Others were funny, and encouraged us that way. Dick? He was the taskmaster. Thank God.

Want a modern-day example of what Plummer did for Scarborough kids in the l960s and l970s (and beyond presumably)? He was the personal trainer, the person who follows you to the gym, stands over you while you do sit-ups and says, “Come on, do more!” He’s the health consultant who goes to your house, searches through cabinets and refrigerators for junk food, and, holding up a package of cupcakes, says gently but forcefully: “What’s this? Huh?”

Many kids don’t like to run. This goes for athletes, strangely enough. It’s especially true of high school boys in many towns, in certain sports. They’d better not play for Dick.

Steve Diplama once complained that Plummer, standing in for Coach Packy McFarland at a varsity baseball practice, made players run wind sprints up a steep hill nearby. “I didn’t know I went out for the track team!” Diplama yelled aloud to no one in particular.

“When you get done here, Diplama, you’ll WISH you were on the track team!” Plummer retorted.

Somebody added that day in l972: “Dick could teach shop class and make kids run.”

True.

To this day, I drag myself out of bed before daylight and try to knock off several miles.

Dick Plummer is to blame.

I know, I know. The time could be much better.

See you tomorrow, Coach.

Each day, I want to tell him, and his memory, to go pick on someone else.

Somehow, I never do.

Many of us are thankful he keeps us striving for that day we will finally hear from him, “Good job.”

Dan Warren is a lawyer who lives in Scarborough.