MILFORD – If you played for or coached with Bill Brown, you had someone who would definitely influence your life.

“He was probably the second biggest influence in my life next to my mother,” former Milford High School junior varsity boys basketball coach Steve Erdody said.

The Spartans basketball community lost an old friend earlier this week when Brown, 63, passed away following a lengthy illness.

Erdody was a student in Brown’s accounting class at MHS and later coached under Brown for a few years and remained a lifelong friend.

Brown worked with longtime Milford legendary boys basketball coach Mo Facques, who passed away in the summer of 2019, and Ken Garnham. But he was the Spartans head man through the 1990s, and also coached Milford with Facques again, this time as co-coaches, in the early 2000s when the Spartans needed someone to take over the Milford boys hoop reins once again.

He stepped away from coaching in 2006, ending a 27-year coaching career.

Brown will be most remembered for keeping the Spartans tough and competitive after Amherst and Mont Vernon broke away from Milford to form Souhegan High School.

“The Milford varsty boys basketball teams coached by Bill Brown were successful both on and off the floor,” longtime Milford athletic director Marc Maurais said. “Sportsmanship and academics were always a top priority.

“His teams were disciplined and he served as a great role model for many young men who played for him.”

Erdody said Brown urged him to get his degree at Keene State College.

“If it wasn’t for him I’d have been the guy standing at the Milford Oval being shuffled off every night,” Erdody said.

Brown coached freshmen ball at Milford for a year, then junior varsity, and then the varisty team.

“He got it right at The Split,” Erodody said. “When that happened we had one kid coming back, everyone else was over at Souhegan. All the All-Area players.

“But he kept plugging away and found ways to make his teams win. He was awfully competitive. I remember at a Pinkerton game, I had never seen anybody get kicked out of a game at halftime but Bill got himself kicked out of a game. He threw his keys against the referees door and Wes Cook was the official and said, ‘By the way, you’re all done, go sit up in the stands.'”

But if Brown told you something, it was the truth, Erdody said.

“He was an honest person,” he said. “He taught me about work. Even now I’m thinking about retirement and I would (normally) say ‘Bill, what do you think?’ But in the last year you were happy just to make him smile.”

Memories of Brown’s coaching days will make a lot of people in Milford smile.

“It’s two losses to the Milford basketball community,” Maurais said, “with the passing of Mo Facques and now Bill Brown.”