Louis E. DeVicaris, coach at Gratz, principal at King

On the third play of Temple University's 1952 football season opener against Penn State, junior defensive lineman Louis E. DeVicaris tore a right-knee ligament.

He would never play again.

Nevertheless, Mr. DeVicaris would go on to become head football coach at Simon Gratz High School, then principal of Martin Luther King High School.

In 1989, the Philadelphia Coaches Association gave him its Annual Administrator Award. In 1990, the Philadelphia School District named him its principal of the year.

So much for a bum knee.

Mr. DeVicaris, 79, of Levittown, died Feb. 23 of complications from congestive heart failure at St. Mary Medical Center.

As a coach and as a principal, he spoke out for change.

In February 1968, what he called "abominable" conditions led him to quit as Gratz's head football coach, a job he had held since 1956.

"Things are so bad on the field they give us for practice," he told an Inquirer reporter, "that we have to spend the first half hour every day cleaning up broken glass and pet manure."

He told a Philadelphia Daily News reporter that the reason for the poor conditions - from locker room to equipment - was that Gratz was the "stepchild" of the school system because it was "the largest coeducational, de facto-segregated, all-black high school in Philadelphia."

In February 1970, after leaving his teaching job at Gratz, Mr. DeVicaris was named vice principal at Germantown High and immediately reshaped the curriculum, giving students more flexibility to choose courses.

In February 1972, he marked the opening of Martin Luther King High School in East Germantown - his first day as a principal - by noting that King would be a test of how any Philadelphia school could provide a good education while escaping student disruptions.

He didn't count on teacher disruptions.

Mr. DeVicaris had helped design the school around several collegelike "houses" so that small groups of students and teachers could better work together.

But a 1981 Inquirer series on problems in the city's schools reported that the teachers' union had opposed the "houses" plan because it eliminated three department heads at King. The plan was abandoned in 1974.

Mr. DeVicaris retired in 1993.

Born in Philadelphia, Mr. DeVicaris graduated in January 1948 from Frankford High School, where he was named to the all-Public League and all-scholastic football teams.

He attended Pennsylvania State University for a semester on a football scholarship, attended the University of Alabama, entered Temple in 1950, earned his bachelor's degree in 1954, and returned for a master's in 1955, both in physical education.

As a Temple senior, after his injury, he was an assistant football coach for the 1953 season and held the same job at Gratz in the 1954 and 1955 seasons before beginning to head the Gratz football program.

The glory of that program shone on him in 1994.

On a July day in Canton, Ohio, Leroy Kelly, the storied Cleveland Browns running back from 1964 to 1973, was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Kelly singled out Mr. DeVicaris, his high school football coach, whose recommendations earned him a scholarship to what is now Morgan State University.

"If it wasn't for Mr. D," Kelly told the audience and his coach, who was sitting among them, "I don't think I would have gone to college."

Or been in Canton that day.

Time didn't shake Mr. DeVicaris' allegiance to King High.

In 2004, he was among those at a School Reform Commission meeting who opposed the conversion of King into an independent charter school. Today, it remains a public high school run by Foundations Inc., an educational management firm.

Mr. DeVicaris had a second, simultaneous career.

In 1960, while at Gratz High, he founded Adventureland Day Camp in Bensalem, Pa., as a summer operation.

It became a year-round operation in 1991, and a few years later he added a nursery school, kindergarten, and day-care center.

These days, his daughter Suzanne said, Adventureland is a summer camp that runs events such as picnics from April through October.

Besides his daughter Suzanne, Mr. DeVicaris is survived by his wife of 53 years, Judith; sons Alexander and Christopher; daughters Lisa DeVicaris and Jacqueline Sinkler; a sister; and two grandchildren.

A Memorial Mass was set for 10 a.m. Saturday at Queen of the Universe Roman Catholic Church, 2443 Trenton Rd., Levittown, with a noon life celebration at Adventureland, 6401 Hulmeville Rd., Bensalem.