A prayer for Van McKenzie

jamele:

treasure those feelings. you'll never have them again about anyplace you'll work in the biz.

van created a most special atmosphere, as only a one-of-a-kind figure can. he helped create it a bit in his brief stop at the n.y. daily news in the early '80s, and it lingered there for a while after.

or maybe it was just a part of being young and eager and on the way up.... but i don't really think so. it was the atmosphere created by van. and it was unique.

treasure it and please toast once for me!

 

I don't have the ingredients for a Bloody Brain, but knowing Van, he wouldn't care if it was a beer.

 

I'm heading to the liquor store this afternoon to purchase the necessary ingredients. I'm in on the group shot, whenever we do it.

 

I remember that spring day in 1999, when Van walked into the Sentinel newsroom and had a sports clerk running downstairs to fill his parking meter because he didn't yet have a parking pass. The guards even stopped him at the gate because he didn't have a Sentinel ID. That was the last day they stopped him. From there, no one could stop him.

After his hiatus from The National, he was back. In August he sent football sections around the country with a note inside that said just that. A Schwarzenegger-like warning to APSE wannabes. We went from thinking things impossible, to thinking nothing was unthinkable. Many people thought he was crazy. Eventually we all came to realize he WAS crazy! And he proved it time and again.

Our focus, our determination, our goals, the way we thought ... it all changed that day in 1999. And that didn't stop Friday.

There are many, many great stories to tell, and many have been retold here. I'll share one:

One spring, earlier this decade, there was a great buzz around Orlando about the Magic being in the playoff hunt and Van wanted to capture it in a banner headline. "Orlando abuzz about Magic ...." blah blah. This however, was the same day as the first day of the Masters, and he wasn't sure he wanted the Magic to be played that big over golf's biggest event.

Then, the light went on in his head and the wheels started spinning and he uttered those words that all designers that Van has ever worked with came to dread, "What if we were to ..."

He had a photo of a golfer walking in front of some azaleas at Augusta National and he said, "Let's put some bees on here and have them coming out of the azaleas and then flying into the Orlando abuzz about the Magic headline."

We all looked at each other like he had finally gone off the deep-end, but yet all of us had the same look in our eyes. We were thinking "He's actually gonna make us do this." But we didn't give in. Finally, after trying to sketch it out, as he always did, he wadded up his dummy sheets and threw them at us and said "Get out of here." I think it might have been the only time he actually caved.

Van was many things to many people. But most of all, he was a friend.

In 2005, I was literally dying of liver disease. (The process, no doubt, sped up by late nights drinking with Big Mac.) I had been hospitalized for nearly five months and the Tribune was about to pull the plug on my disability, among other things, and Van called me at the hospital to let me know that it wasn't being handled the way he would have liked and that it was "bullshit, but there will be letter sent out today, so I just wanted you to know from me first."

Not five minutes prior to his phone call, I had just been placed on the liver list at Shands in Gainesville, which I told Van after his news. He said, "Well, then you probably don't care to hear any of this shit from me then, do ya?"

I said, "Actually, Van, you are just the person I needed to hear from."

And I'll never forget it.

He cared about headlines, he cared about giant photos and he cared about beating everyone else. But most of all, he cared about people.

The tears may stop one day, but the memories never will. My heart goes out to you Sandy and Von and Van Jr. Your strength has been immeasurable.

 

What a great thread. One of the things I remember most about Van after starting in Orlando was how remarkably down-to-earth he was. After taking the job, literally every sports editor I had ever worked for said something along the lines of "you're going to work for one of the great ones." Because of that reputation - and my own complete ignorance - I expected Van to be an editor who puffed his chest out and lorded over the newsroom. But from the moment I met him, he was the total opposite.

Two great stories I will never forget:

The first time I saw Van after his initial battle with cancer was at a lunch with several of the Sentinel staffers. He had just gone through a round of chemo and was a bit thinner than before, but was in very good spirits. So we sit down at the table and Van is sitting across from me, and after a few minutes, he ends up flopping his menu down on the table.

"I don't think I can eat," he says, "but I know I can drink."

Several beers later, he sees me shaking my head and laughing.

"What?" he says. "You think I was kidding?"


And the other story....


One day we're sitting in the sports department and Van is in his office. It's a relatively light crew, so it must have been early in the day. Rick Maese is sitting in the back of the room, and I can hear some sounds coming from his computer from some online game he was playing. Pretty soon, I get an instant message from him with a link to the game, and I start playing. After about 20 minutes, pretty much every staffer in the sports department is playing the game at their computer, and you can hear the sounds from it all over the room.

Finally, Lynn Hoppes stands up (sorry Lynn, I had to do it), and he says "Do you think some of you could actually do some work today?"

Just as he says this - right on cue - the room goes silent....save for the sounds of the video game....coming from inside Van's office.

We all busted out laughing.

 

The desk also came up with a glossary, inspired by Van over his years in Orlando:

Van Glossary

* Vanifesto - The original edict that what used to be done at the Sentinel was no longer an acceptable excuse. (Sorry Von, I do not have a copy of this, but I'm sure someone does)

* Vanectomy - Ripping up the front page (or any other page, for that matter).

* Van Quentin - Sports Department.

* Vandemonium - Big Event chaos that usually involved ripping up a doubletruck at 10:30.

* Vandatory - General rules as set by Mr. McKenzie.

* Vandate - Daily proclamations.

* Vanitized - the general reworking of any Vandates.

* Vandalized - a real word, with a Van twist. This usually happened to graphic artist Lonnie Knabel.

* Vanadu - The world of the perfect Sports section. A world than only existed in Van McKenzie's head.

 

The last 2 posts made me laugh out loud.
Thanks guys.

 

This is from the Sentinel's web site, where you can post on Van's obit.

Van was an extraordinary leader. Whatever success we enjoyed at The National Sports Daily before business problems sank our ship was strictly thanks to Van and the magnificent crew he assembled, Even fighting the most ornery and bizarre logistical problems, he was always in command and exhibiting great spirit (even if he was furious and exasperated within). I don't know whether I ever felt so bound to a colleague as when the first copy of The National came off the presses, and Van and I embraced in as much relief as joy. I only worked with Van for two years, and under the most trying circumstances, but I knew all along that I was working with as fine a journalist as ever prowled a newsroom in America,
The profession has lost a joyful giant.
Frank Deford
Westport, Connecicut

Now if we could get Deford to post here...

 

I, too, am curious about Van alums who went on to be sports editors.

St. Louis reference is to Larry Starks.


Anyone want to build on this?

 

I met Van once during APSE judging. Truly larger than life. If sports journalism had a Mount Rushmore, he'd be George Washington and Teddy Roosevelt.

This is the one time you can truly read a message board and feel like you're in a hotel bar the night before a funeral and drinking with friends. I think this is the best tribute anyone can have.

 

Maybe more than any two guys I know, Buddy Martin and Van were soulmates, each trying to do the big story bigger....Buddy sent me his column on Van ....it's to run in his paper Sunday, the 28th...I asked if I could post it here....so here it is...Buddy's the editor of the Charlotte (Fla.) Sun. ... Buddy and Van worked together in sports departments at the Ocala Star-Banner, Florida Today, The St. Petersburg Times and the New York Daily News.....with both men always available for "consultation" late of an evening....

Buddy's e-mail is buddyshow@aol.com.

*******

A legend remembered: My friend Van

Today’s column is what we in the business call “Inside Baseball.” It’s really not about baseball at all, but rather about a person almost none of you have ever met and whose name will mean nothing to almost anybody – except to those of us in the trade.
To a good number of knowledgeable people in the sports journalism, Van McKenzie was a legend, as could be seen by the testimonies in newspapers and on the Internet since his death Friday. Many of you saw his work without realizing it, because his name never appeared anywhere on it. His influence on sports print journalism was gigantic, though, the way Andy Warhol’s was on pop art and Versace’s was on fashion – out of the box and brilliant.
Sports page design was Van’s specialty and almost every section in America today carries some component of his thinking. But to say McKenzie’s influence was only about the design of sports pages would be like remembering Laurence Olivier for his spiffy wardrobe. He loved design, but he loved stories and words – and most of all he loved sports writers. He loved it all.
In baseball lexicon, McKenzie was a five-tool journalist.
In my nearly four decades of newspapering, I would count Van among the top three sports journalists I’ve ever met or known – and one of my very best friends. He could smell a good story, knew how to motivate a writer to write it, how to edit it, how to headline it, how to play it and how to milk it to the end of its cycle. He had the head of quarterback and/or coach, but he could block and tackle like a guy in the trenches. But Van also knew how to tighten down all the nuts and bolts in the section.
Having seen him from almost every conceivable vantage point, from the time he broke in the business as a teen to his ascent as managing editor of The Dream Team at the National Sports Daily and eventually as associate managing editor/sports of the Orlando Sentinel, I can assure you that he was a self-taught editor with the courage of a bank robber and the kindness of a kindergarten teacher.
If McKenzie had been Picasso, every painting would have been like Guernica, the huge 26-foot piece of art, because he was totally a big-picture guy. He wanted every sports section to be bigger and better tomorrow than it was today.
If I were writing his epitaph, it would say: “Van McKenzie, 1945-2007. ‘I’m all in.’” Because he was all in, all the time, on everything he did.
Whether we were playing a friendly hand of low-stakes poker, or wagering a bob at the greyhound race track that we so often frequented back in The Day, Van was all in. He raised on almost every hand. And many was the night that we were tapped out going into the last dog race – in those days being “tapped out” usually meant a $50 loss – and wrote a check go play the final race and have enough to tip the parking lot attendant on the way out. Sometimes we were counting on fumes in the gas tank to get us home and fumes in our bank account to clear the check.
To think that it all started with a classified ad I placed in the Ocala Star-Banner in the late summer of 1963 upon my return from a brief stint at the Nashville Tennessean. We needed would-be sports writers to cover high school football games for $5 -- $7.50 if they had to drive out of town. Van, his brother Jay and their friend Jim Waldron showed up for the assignment. Van drew the game in Jasper, almost 100 miles away. We always laughed about the fact that his gas guzzler car took all of that just to get there and back. (Jay later became managing editor of the Ocala Star-Banner; Jim worked with us at Florida Today and later owned a weekly paper before his death.)
One day in Ocala I was laying out the next day’s sports section as Van, looking on as an unpaid observer, suddenly commented: “I can do that!” Several weeks later I hired him part-time and he was laying out the Sunday paper. From the very start he had that remarkable eye, plus a great passion for the business.
Sometimes on a Saturday night, after walking out of the Ocala newspaper office on the heels of a 14-hour day and 80-hour week (no overtime), we would boast, “tomorrow morning, nobody in America will be better than us!”

(oops, gotta jump)...

 

(the jump)


That was often our mantra at the beginning of a long-term friendship and partnership that would take us over four newspapers in the next two decades. Like others, I have enjoyed reminiscing about our ride together. You can see accounts of Van's friends all over the Internet. I am especially fond of the tributes made by many those former workers who may have only been on the periphery of Van McKenzie’s world.
One blog in particular I enjoyed talked about the night that the now-defunct National Sports Daily published its first edition and the Manhattan office was teeming with big shots. After deadline, McKenzie snuck off to the executive dining room and brought back several bottles of Dom Perignon to be enjoyed by the workers.
Aside from all the spectacular achievements and hundreds of national awards that he won, his greatest accomplishments were that he gave lots of people a chance in the business and made everybody on his staff feel valued.
Today it is our turn to say how much we valued him.
The last timeI saw Van was August, 2006 when about a hundred of us traveled to John Cherwa's home in Orlando to say goodbye, as Van wasn't expected to live but another two months. In a private moment we reminisced about our times together and laughed as we said, "we didn't do too badly for a couple of small town boys." He lived several months past that deadline, past the Christmas holidays, often playing poker with a few friends over a cold beer and on occasion making it out to the dog track.
"He got it all in," said Cherwa, his Sentinel colleague. Just like he always did.