When your former player dies...

I vividly recollect the night that Oklahoma State head women's basketball coach Kurt Budke and one of his assistants, along with a prominent elderly couple, perished in a plane crash. I met Budke a couple years before he died — what a neat guy — and I wrote a story about the tragedy. Painful, but part of the job.

 

It's happened (sadly) on a handful of occasions for me ... more often that not, it wasn't a natural death (i.e. disease like cancer). One senior football player, who had signed with Vandy, was killed in a murder-suicide by his mother's estranged boyfriend. Another football player from our area, who went on to be a college star, was the passenger in a fatal car wreck where he and the driver were blitzed off their gourd. I wrote the local obit for the latter, and it turned into a story twice as long as anything I've ever written. my main role is editing/design, but I was pushed into writing the obit because the death happened on a Sunday when we run with a skeleton staff.

Among the athletes who were in high school when I started here 10 years ago, we've had one drown and another committed suicide.

 

It really is an honor to write obits/tribute pieces on people who die who you knew and respected. It's a chance to do a great job for them. I've had my obit/tribute stories quoted at funerals and that is a true honor. As far as having it affect you, I'd go to HR if you need support/time off because your ME and other higher ups likely will not be sympathetic at all unless it's a direct family member.