Payne family mourns loss of patriarch
By Marty Maciaszek
mmaciaszek@dailyherald.com
Posted Tuesday, June 12, 2007


Jim Payne exhibited his toughness and fighting spirit during the toughest fight of his life.

Payne, a teacher and coach at East Leyden High School and patriarch of one of the area’s best-known high school sports families, battled amyotrophic lateral sclerosis for 17¨ years.

And Payne easily bucked the odds of what is better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease and is supposed to result in death after a few years. Payne finally succumbed to it at 10:10 a.m. Monday in his Schaumburg home at 66.

“It’s tough but my father’s in a better place,” said Kent Payne, who was a basketball star at Schaumburg High and has coached at St. Edward and Addison Trail high schools and at Elgin and Harper community colleges.

“I’ve known him all my life and I’ve never heard one person say anything in a negative connotation about him,” said Ray Pettenuzzo, who played for Payne when East Leyden won the Class 5A state football title in 1977. “He’s how an educator should be portrayed and how a coach should be portrayed.

“Whether you were the fifth-string running back or first-string, he treated you the same every day. You were like, ‘Wow, this guy really does care.’æ”

Pettenuzzo credited Jim Payne for pointing him in the direction of teaching and coaching. Pettenuzzo played at Carthage College, where Payne was a star running back in the early 1960s, and just resigned in May after 16 years as head football coach at Maine West.

“His advice to me set the ball rolling,” Pettenuzzo said.

Jim Payne, who is survived by his wife Ruth Ann, graduated from downstate Amboy High School before going to Carthage. He is a member of the Illinois High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame and also coached track and field at East Leyden.

Payne’s grandchildren include Cully, who will be a junior at Burlington Central and has committed to DePaul to play basketball, Katlyn, who helped St. Edward reach the Class A Elite Eight as a freshman, and Quentin, who will be a seventh grader.

“Driving home (Sunday night), I told all three of them if you get anything out of ‘papa,’æ” Kent Payne said, “it’s he didn’t know when to quit and didn’t know how to quit.”

Visitation for Jim Payne will be from 5 p.m.-7 p.m. Thursday at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Schaumburg. A service will follow for Payne, who will be cremated and has donated his spine and brain to the Les Turner ALS Foundation for research.