Marvin Rosengarten was strolling down a hallway at the Gatesworth recently as Carrie Montrey, the facility’s executive director, was making her rounds.

“Good afternoon, coach!” she said.

Rosengarten, 92, has been retired from the athletic field for a couple of decades. But he’s still known as “Coach” after a long and storied career in college athletics. He regularly watches track and field events on TV, and he’ll offer up his opinion and critique of sports teams from the high school ranks to the pros.

There’s another reminder of Coach Rosengarten’s tenure at the campus of Southeast Missouri State University: the Marvin Rosengarten Athletic Complex. The building houses football the football team’s locker room, an athletic training facility, equipment room and offices. When the SEMO Redhawks football team gathers to study game films, it’s in a theater with high-tech video equipment in the Rosengarten complex. The Rosengarten Center also has two outdoor natural grass practice fields.

Before the building’s January 1994 dedication, Rosengarten learned he would be honored when he received a phone call from Kala Stroup, the university president.

“She said ‘We’re going to name the building after you,’” Rosengarten recalled. “I was really surprised and it didn’t really sink in at first. Someone told me I was the first Jewish guy to have a building named for him who didn’t pay for it!”

While not a wealthy donor, Rosengarten developed a gift for fundraising from supporters of the university, and he was a very successful coach. Eventually, his role expanded to become athletic director of SEMO, a post he held from 1979 to 1989.

Who Is Marvin Rosengarten?

It was 1929 and the outset of the Great Depression when Rosengarten was born in St. Louis. His mother Ruth came from Ukraine and his father Leon was originally from Poland. Marvin attended Hebrew school as a young man and worked in his father’s store on Belt Avenue.

“I didn’t know anything about athletics and I didn’t have time to play sports,” he said. “I was working because it was during the war and there were no men around. My brother talked me into going out for track and football at Soldan High School, and I ended up being pretty good. I didn’t even know I had that ability.

“I played four years of football in the backfield and I was always good at track from day one. All my friends were going to college and I figured I’d go work at Leon’s Market. Then my coach in high school hooked me up with a scholarship at Southeast Missouri State.”

Rosengarten excelled at football in college, and he enjoyed studying history. After his freshman year, he came home for the summer and was greeted by a letter with enlistment orders. He became a newly minted Marine and served three years in the Korean War. Following military service, he was back working in his father’s store. In his leisure time, he went to the Jewish Community Center on Union Avenue.

“I saw guys from high school working out with weights and I said to myself ‘I know I’m stronger than them,’ and before you know it, I bench-pressed 300 pounds,” he said. “I wound up down at the Boys Club and got a trophy for all-around lifting. I lifted in a national meet, and I was in pretty good shape. I decided to go back to school and bought a car with my mustering-out money.”

One of the reasons Rosengarten returned to Cape Girardeau was a plea by the football coach for him to spearhead the defense.

“By my junior year, a few guys start filtering out from the service and by 1954, we had a pretty good team,” he said. “I was all-conference my junior and senior year.”

After graduating from college, Rosengarten accepted a job as a high school assistant line coach and track coach in Sikeston. He was good at those jobs and enjoyed his time in the Missouri bootheel, often dining on $1 T-bone steak at Lambert’s Cafe (which years later became the home of the “throwed rolls”).

In 1959, Rosengarten headed west to Arizona and Yuma High School, where he became the first coach to win state track and football championships. In 1964, he returned to Cape Girardeau, first as assistant football coach and head track coach. During that period, he recruited Walter Smallwood, the university’s first Black player, who went on to become the team’s all-time single-game, single-season and career touchdown leader.

In 1968, Rosengarten concentrated on track and led the SEMO team to 15 titles. In 1974, he married his wife Marlene, who came from St. Louis, and called Cape Girardeau “A whole new life for me.” She became one of the top salespeople at Hecht’s Department Store, a retail magnet in town owned by Marty and Tootie Hecht (who were Jewish).

After retiring as athletic director, Rosengarten worked for the university for another two and a half years, when he oversaw booster activities and developed his gift for fundraising. That’s when he received word that a key sports facility on campus would bear his name.

The Rosengarten home today is filled with sports memorabilia, including one of Marvin’s first weight-lifting trophies. There are also many reminders of his tenure at SEMO, and the Marvin Rosengarten Athletic Complex.

“He had such respect on campus, and it was an incredible honor,” said Marlene Rosengarten.