RIP George Cantor

He was 69 and had been in ill health. He covered the 1968 Tigers for the Detroit Free Press as a beat writer and the 1984 Tigers for The Detroit News as a columnist. He also was a news-side reporter and columnist, and wrote several books. I have one on the '68 Tigers and another on University of Michigan football.

He was a heck of a writer. What was sad was his bitterness after his daughter died after falling from a sixth-floor dorm window at U-M. He let it affect his editorial page columns.

Still, another piece of Detroit history gone.

RIP, George.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100813/OBITUARIES/8130414/1409/News-columnist--Tigers-lover-George-Cantor-dies-at-69

http://www.freep.com/article/20100813/NEWS08/100813065/1320/Journalist-author-George-Cantor-dies-at-69

 

I thought I'd share what I wrote IJAG last night when she told me about George:

I have George's book on the '68 Tigers and always thought perhaps I'd
run into him somewhere and have a chance to talk about covering the
team during that tumultuous time in Detroit, a year after the riots
and how the entire city was on edge and yet, people braved the ride to
Tiger Stadium that summer to see the Tigers.

When you're 9, the world is still a wondrous place, even if the
reality doesn't quite match up.

I know we came back to Detroit on vacation that year and went to one
game -- one of Denny McLain's six losses that season -- a few hours
after driving down Grand River Ave. and seeing all the burnt-out
businesses and houses, just two blocks from where my mother grew up.
And I think it struck home to my parents that Detroit wasn't a safe
place to live any more, because my mother rarely cries and she cried a
lot that day.

My grandparents had already moved out to Schoolcraft by then, in a
neighborhood that seemed pretty safe at the time. But the white flight
that started well before the '67 riots only accelerated from that
point on, and the elderly residents on Glastonbury were some of the
last to leave. I know Grandpa Cook had a series of wooden dowels that
had to be placed in the windows at night and a wooden brace for the
front and side doors, because there had been a rash of break-ins along
their street. By then, he was in his 80s and had cataract surgery, was
frail and drove poorly. And she had crippling arthritis and was
completely dependent on him to get to the hospital.

After Grandpa died in the spring of 1976, about a month after your
birth, Mom and I went back that summer to pack up the house. I wanted
to go to a game, but Grandma was very nervous about a 17-year-old
alone, especially after Al Kaline's son, Mark, had been robbed at
gunpoint outside the stadium. They finally relented, and I saw the
Tigers sweep the Indians in a doubleheader, but it was odd being in
the ballpark by myself -- not because I was in danger but because I
had always shared the experience.

It's very hard to go past the Glastonbury house now, not because I
don't have wonderful memories. But because even though the house --
and the neighborhood -- is kept up nicely, there's still a feeling of
change that will never be undone. The butcher shop across the street,
where I could walk to pick the Free Press and the News every day, is
boarded up. The drug store that sold an eighth of a pound of hot
roasted cashews for 50 cents is boarded up. The supermarket,
closed. The bakery, closed. The A&W that we could walk to on a warm
summer's night, gone.

Still, I can close my eyes and locate a moment frozen in time, the
summer of 1968, listening to Ernie Harwell and Ray Lane on WJR --
Grandma serving up pie from the kitchen, filling out the scorecard
next to Grandpa -- Dick McAuliffe 2B, Mickey Stanley CF, Al Kaline RF,
Norm Cash 1B, Willie Horton LF, Bill Freehan C, Don Wert 3B, Ray Olyer
SS ...

And reading George's book always brings that memory back for me.

 

Wolv, if your daughter died that way, I suspect you'd have a chip on your shoulder, too. And as I recall, U-M didn't cover itself in glory through its actions. It mostly was trying to cover its own ass.

 

Crusoes - I think you're right. Plus, I think he probably struggled with the fact that his daughter was drunk when it happened, and she wasn't 21 yet. Still, that's got to be so, so hard. I felt for him.

 

Forgot to add: The cause of death was prostate cancer. That sucks that the big C struck again.