Melissa Bailey File Photo
Ben Hunter.
Firefighters found the body of a beloved Dixwell basketball coach and youth worker in a second-floor bedroom. He’d apparently been dead for some time.
The coach, Ben Hunter, a former assistant principal at Hillhouse High School, died of natural causes related to heart disease, according to the state medical examiner’s office.
Firefighters discovered his partially decomposed body in his bedroom when they responded to a water emergency at his Crescent Street home 5:44 p.m. on Wednesday.
Hunter spent decades coaching basketball and otherwise organizing stuff for kids to do in the Dixwell neighborhood, including nighttime summer leagues at Goffe Street Park. He worked in the public school system for 32 years. And he mentored hundreds of kids.
“He was the man of the community. Every kid our age knew him,” said Wanda Faison, a 47-year-old school security guard. She got her first summer job in high school helping Hunter out with summer programs. She said he continued to call on him for years after that to volunteer working with kids.
Jeffie Frazier, longtime principal of Dixwell’s Helene Grant elementary school, also worked closely with Hunter.
“Ben was a pillar. He was a true New Haven person,” Frazier said Thursday. “I think he should be remembered in that sense — be remembered for all the positive things he did for young people. He was always looking out for young people.”
A former 1980s Hillhouse girls basketball player remembered Hunter on Thursday as a “kind and giving individual” and a coach who was “firm but fair.”
“He was a good-hearted man,” said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous. “If he had it, he gave it to you.”
In his later years Hunter’s life took a bad turn, when he was caught stealing $34,000 in federal funds meant for a youth basketball program. He avoided jail time for that crime in 2007 after an outpouring of public support. “At his best, when he was on his game, no one was more full of joy or care for New Haven kids than Ben Hunter,” said Mayor John DeStefano. “But Ben late in life also made some bad decisions. He knew it, he regretted it and he paid for it. I wish him peace and some measure of resolution in death.”