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Former AHSAA Executive Director Steve Savarese met Joey Wolfe when he was the head football coach at Daphne High School.

“I love JoJo,” Savarese said this week. “My wife and I lived a few houses down from his family when we first moved to Spanish Fort. Joey would come over and say hello occasionally and, one day, he was just in our house. I said, ‘We have to get something for Joey to do.’ He would just walk in and say, ‘I love you, coach.’ He still does today.”

Savarese invited Wolfe to help with the Daphne football team in the 1990s.

“Mr. Trojan” as he is affectionately known now – not just around the Baldwin County High School but around the city in general — hasn’t stopped helping since.

“Obviously, he has some handicaps,” Perry Wolfe said of his 50-year-old son. “Joey can’t read or write or tell time, but he talks to everyone. He knows all the kids’ numbers. Everyone is his friend, and he is everyone’s friend.”

Wolfe went to school at Daphne and earned a certificate of graduation in 1996. One of his fellow students at the time? Current Daphne head coach Kenny King.

“Joey has been around the program a long time,” King said. “He always shows up. He is there every day from beginning to end. I’m talking every day. I tell the boys all the time that if JoJo, in his 50s, can show up everyday and show what it means to have school pride, then certainly you can do it as well.”

Wolfe is known as the head football and baseball manager at Daphne. He is easy to spot if attending a Daphne sporting event.

“Every where he goes, he wears purple and gold,” Perry Wolfe said. “When we go to church, he is wearing those Daphne colors.”

Wolfe has been a fixture on the Daphne sidelines for three decades with the only exception being when his family moved to Louisiana for two years. He already has been inducted into the Daphne High Hall of Fame and the Baldwin County Coaches Hall of Fame.

“When I first met Joey, he was a student in the early days when I was coaching basketball and teaching,” said Glenn Vickery, who followed Savarese as Daphne’s head coach in 2004. “Later on, when I became head football coach, Joey was in our lives every day. He would be at the fieldhouse at 7:30. He would leave for lunch and help in the cafeteria and then come back and go home at 6:30 like the rest of us. He has a sweet heart, a sweet attitude and a sweet personality and a great love for Daphne High School. He’s just a blessing to be with.”

Perry Wolfe said on the rare occasion some younger players just entering the Daphne program would pick on JoJo, the team’s upperclassmen would put a quick stop to that.

“From a parents’ standpoint, I never had to worry about him going up there,” he said. “Those coaches and players go out of their way to keep him safe. JoJo never has a bad day. He said his only bad days are if Daphne loses. He eats, drinks and sleeps Daphne High School.”

Savarese said Wolfe isn’t the only one who has learned something during the last 30 years.

“Everyone thinks we did something for Joey,” he said. “What we all have learned is that Joey has taught us a lot more than we ever taught him with his love, his caring, his humility and, most of all, his passion for being a Daphne Trojan.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story initially ran in the AL.com Thursday high school newsletters. To subscribe, please visit al.com/newsletters. Each week, the newsletters include trivia, polls and much more.