A prayer for Van McKenzie

I remember thinking Van had made it after winning his first bout with cancer and was saddened to hear last year that it had returned. I know he remained a fighter until the end.

I will always be thankful that he took a chance on me and other young sports writers in the business and I am honored that I had the chance to work for him.

RIP. You will be missed.

 

Van was the sole reason my parents moved to Atlanta when I was 2. My dad wrote for the St. Pete Times at the time, and Van offered him a position here so he took it.

Unfortunately this is the first time I heard about his passing (I learned of his illness from a couple coworkers who have known him for years), so I have yet to talk to my dad about it.

 

Repeat this gawdam thread now.

 

I never met Mr. McKenzie and never really heard much about him until this thread, but for someone to draw this kind of response from SportsJournalists.com, he must have been every bit the great man as I've read in the past five pages.

RIP. My regards go out to his family and anyone who had the chance to meet and know him.

 

Ditto, Oz.

Never knew the man but he sounds like a guy with whom I definitely would have been good friends. In his honor, I re-wrote that previous sentence three times so as not to end it with a preposition. I'd raise a bloody brain to him (here in Wisconsin we call it an "Ed Gein) but antibiotics for the next eight days prevent me from drinking. I will, however, hoist one (or six) to him when I'm off the meds.

My best to the family and to his memory.

 

Never met him, but know his legend. Anyone who has half his career and half the impact he obviously had on so many quality people, would be more than ecstatic.

Godspeed, Van McKenzie. RIP.

 

Given the stories and the big names coming out to pay tribute, this is definitely the best thread we've ever had here...

 

Some years ago Van called to ask if I'd be interested in working with him. I told him I was flattered, but couldn't live in a city where the sun was ever present. (No, I'm not a vampire, just sick of dealing with skin cancer). He said he'd provide me with seven parasols -- different colors for each day -- and we laughed at the idea of me covering games while dressed like Mary Poppins.
He had to be kidding, but after reading this thread I'm not so sure. I think Van would have rather enjoyed the adventure of shopping for frilly parasols.
I'm sorry I never got to drink a Bloody Brain with him, or have him slap a credential on my parasol. (That might be the strangest sentence I've ever typed.)

 

I never met Van, but after reading this thread, I am sad at what I missed out on. RIP.

 

By some kind of dumb luck, Van hired me to be an agate clerk at the St. Pete Times in the mid 1970s while I was a student at the University of South Florida. Two years later, my luck got even better when he made me the main prep writer for Pinellas County. He was a larger-than-life figure at St. Pete, our unabashed leader in and out of the office. I remember playing on the Times softball team. Van was the first baseman, and he was different. On infield pop-ups, where the normal protocol is to yell, “I got it,” Van would shout, “EVERYBODY GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY.” Van also invented a game called “slot hockey.” It was played with two rim desks backed up to each other. The top drawers would be opened six inches, the players used pica poles for sticks and a roll of scotch tape for the puck. Van is the only person I ever worked with who could have convinced eight to 10 people to stay two hours after a desk shift for something called a slot hockey tournament. This usually was followed by the obligatory session at the dive bar around the corner and 6 a.m. breakfast at the The Clock. Once, on an NFL road trip, I visited Van in New York when he worked at the Daily News. He and Sandy and the boys were still staying at a hotel waiting for construction on their house to be completed. He told me it was an hour ride on the train. When we boarded, he bought a six-pack of Heineken and said, “I hope this is enough.” I just looked at him and thought about the hangover I knew I’d have when covering the game the next day. Van was a friend, beloved mentor and in many ways, a god to us young guys who worked for him in St. Pete. Rest well, Van. You’ve got an army out there who will carry your spirit forward.

 

Van was always big on football and making statements. In his first year at the Sentinel in '99, he wanted to make a huge statement with our football preview section. This would be the first big project of his new Sentinel sports section.

So, we're in a meeting to plan out the section. The theme was 100 years of football, as the 20th century was drawing to a close. We're kicking around cover ideas and Van decides we need to recreate the famous Notre Dame four horsemen photo. But, he decides the people in the photo on the mules need to be:
Steve Spurrier, Burt Reynolds, O.J. Simpson and Ronald Reagan. (Yeah, that's right -- read it again.)

We all were laughing ... then we realized Van wasn't kidding. He wanted those people on his cover!

Van wanted us to get those four to dress up as football players AND sit on mules so we can take their picture for an Orlando Sentinel football cover. (As was Van's style, he'd leave the minor details of getting this all done to us.)

Spurrier and Reynolds -- OK, we knew they were long shots, but maybe ... just maybe we could get them to agree to do it.

Simpson? Well, he was fresh off his trial and keeping a pretty low profile. But again, maybe ... (And if we had gotten him, imagine the uproar!)

But the kicker was Reagan. In addition to trying to get a former President to agree to such a thing, Reagan had recently announced that he had Alzheimer's and was no longer going to be in public.

We were offering our concerns and pleading that there was no way we could pull it off, but Van wouldn't hear of it. So, Alan Schmadtke tries to step in to help. He explains that it might be too difficult to get Reagan, but what if we got Gerald Ford -- who was a football star at Michigan and maybe, just maybe, might be willing to do it. We're all thinking this is a brilliant solution and maybe might even work. What they heck is Gerry Ford doing? Maybe he'd like to be on our cover.

"Oh, no!" Van says, shaking his head. "It has to be Reagan ... He's the Gipper!"

Even though we lined up the mules and may have had Spurrier and Reynolds agree to the shoot, Van's Four Horsemen didn't happen. Instead we found the first Heisman winner, Jay Berwanger, and had him wear his 1935 uniform for our cover. (For a Plan B, it was pretty spectacular.)

I worked on many special sections for Van while he was at the Sentinel (including a live Super Bowl game section, with Van faxing me layout sketches from the stadium in Tampa -- on deadline, of course), but that first section in 1999 is still my favorite. Van opened Pandora's box of possibilities to all of us that year. Think big, he would tell us.

I'll try to keep thinking big, but it's not going to be nearly as much fun without Van.

 

He's probably up in That Big Newsroom Now,
Or maybe his favorite beer joint,
Having a brew with the night crew,
His voice booming in 72 point!

Sportswriters all lay down your pens,
And recall a bolder day,
When editors dared and headlines blared,
Before Van McKenzie went away.