Fisher DeBerry, with his 87th birthday lurking in about a month, will return to Colorado on Friday evening to once again headline his annual charity event.

“As long as there’s kids who need help, we’re going to try to help,” the longtime Air Force football coach said.

The 18th annual Colorado Coaches for Charity will be held Friday at the East Club Lounge at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver. Air Force coach Troy Calhoun, Colorado State coach Jay Norvell, David Kelly — the general manager for Colorado football under coach Deion Sanders — and coaches from Northern Colorado and CSU-Pueblo will be in attendance.

The event will include a featured entertainer and the coaches will take the stage to talk football and highlight their respective charities.

The Colorado Springs-based Hillside Connection will be recognized for its work in the community, as it has worked toward its goal of “leveraging the game of basketball to create pathways to opportunity for kids in Southern Colorado Springs.”

“It is a great program and I think making a heck of a difference in the community there,” DeBerry said of Hillside Connection, which was founded by Palmer graduate Terrell Brown. “It really helps a lot of kids who probably otherwise would have some time. And a lot of times free time is not the best thing in the world for a kid to have.”

DeBerry, whose foundation provides support for parenting development, mentoring programs, after-school activities and funding for academic scholarships has been driven to help children’s programs since his upbringing that saw his grandparents take him in, along with his mother, to provide support.

The coach, who retired in 2006 and was inducted into the college football Hall of Fame in 2011, has long seen sports — and football in particular — as an avenue to teach life lessons and build character. That’s why he’s grateful he coached during the era he did and didn’t face the complications brought about by Name, Image, Likeness and the transfer portal that those with whom he’ll share the stage on Friday regularly combat.

“Don’t let your brother down,” DeBerry said he would tell his teams before they’d depart the locker room before games. Now, he feels that concept has been diminished.

“I just think we’re sending the wrong message, and some of the basic foundations that we believed in and tried to orchestrate from, you know, it’s just non-existent today,” DeBerry said by phone from his Tulsa, Okla., home, where he and wife, Lu Ann, spend much of their retirement watching their grandchildren compete in athletics. “It’s all about one thing, and that’s money.

“Sometimes, then you lose the respect for each other and the companionship and the team concept. … When guys are chasing the dollars, they don’t really care what their brothers are doing. They care about how much I can get and how much playing time I’m getting and it’s all about me. Some of the values that you believe in and football can teach you better than anything in the world — the truth about life — is non-existent.”

But DeBerry still sees plenty of good in the college game, particularly when he looks at the program Calhoun, whom he had as a player and an assistant coach, runs at Air Force.

“He’s done a wonderful job and he’s done a wonderful job of surrounding himself with a lot of great people who are great coaches,” DeBerry said of Calhoun, whose staff continuity is a rarity. “There is a difference. You can be a great coach and not a good person, or a good person but not a great coach. But he’s surrounded himself with people who know the game and are great coaches and who are wonderful people with sound life philosophies and set a great example for the players. That’s your responsibility as a coach. They don’t remember how you ran a sweep too much, but they remember what you said and how you reacted and what you all did. Those are the things that, when you get my age, they pick up the phone and say, ‘Coach, how you doing? Remember when we did this…?”

DeBerry also praised Calhoun’s work with the charity, The Home Front Military Network, which provides resources and emergency financial assistance to military families.

For DeBerry, a life in football helped set up a life in retirement directed toward giving back as a way of paying forward the generosity shown by many toward him. And if it means getting together with coaches and talking about the game that he still loves and follows closely, flaws and all, that’s an added bonus.

And even in his late 80s, he intends to keep this going.

“We’ll keep on keeping on as long as the Lord will give us the strength,” he said.

For more information on Colorado Coaches for Charities, visit: www.coloradocoachesforcharity.com/