Owen Canfield dies
Owen Canfield, a longtime Hartford Courant sports columnist and former sports editor who worked in the newspaper business for 59 years, dies of colon cancer at age 85. He retired from The Courant in 1995, but continued to contribute occasional columns through 2008.
Owen Canfield, a longtime Hartford Courant sports columnist and former sports editor who worked in the newspaper business for 59 years, died Saturday morning in Torrington of colon cancer.
Canfield, 85, who covered a multitude of sports over the years for The Courant, was known for his humor and writing about his life with his 10 children and his wife Ethel, who died in 1988. In his final column for The Register Citizen on March 30, Canfield wrote about covering Jack Nicklaus’ Masters victory in 1986, Reggie Jackson’s three home run game in the 1978 World Series at Yankee Stadium, Hank Aaron’s 715th home run in Atlanta, Pete Rose, Tate George’s shot in 1990 that beat Clemson, “and a million lesser things, all of which were important to someone,” as he put it.
“Owen’s arena was sports, but his gift was understanding people – what made them laugh, cry and play to win. He brought humor, warmth and generosity of spirit to his work and his writing enriched the pages of the Courant and lives of his many devoted readers,” said Andrew Julien, the Courant’s
Publisher & Editor-inChief.
Canfield retired in 1995 from the Courant after working there for 30 years but continued to write weekly then monthly columns through 2008 and also wrote columns for the Register Citizen. He started in the newspaper business in 1960 at what was then called the Torrington Register.
“That first column was called ‘The Day After Christmas’ and wasn’t I a proud young scribe, having been appointed sports editor by editor-publisher Walter Gisselbrecht a few month earlier,” Canfield wrote in March. “A great guy, still a friend, named Howard Holcomb, broke me in. I called the column Sports Stops, and the heading was accompanied by my mug shot. Ha. Big stuff, I’ll tell you.”
Canfield was born on Feb. 1, 1934. He graduated from Torrington High in 1952 and spent four years in the Air Force, including some time in Korea during the Korean War. He met his wife Ethel Riley, a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, when he was stationed in St. Albans, Vt. They were married May 7, 1955 and had 10 children, six daughters (Linda, Sheila, Kathleen, Sharon, Patricia and Maureen) and four sons (Owen, Kevin, Steven and Daniel). He is survived by his children, 17 grandchildren and five greatgrand-children.
Two of his children went into newspapers: his son Owen is an editorial writer at the Oklahoman and Kevin covers city hall and government for the Tulsa World.
“I know he was always proud of that,” his son Owen said. “He was proud of all of his kids. I don’t know if I’ve got his reputation. I don’t know if you could find anybody to say anything bad about my dad.
“There have been a lot of sports columnists in Connecticut; I think most people would agree my dad was certainly one of the more memorable ones. My dad wasn’t Red Smith but he always said he wrote for the readers and that came through in what he wrote, whether it was a column about the GHO or one of his Christmas columns.”
Canfield was a seventime Connecticut Sportswriter of the Year and is in the Torrington High School Hall of Fame and the Connecticut High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame. He was also named the honorary mayor of Torrington on St. Patrick’s Day in 2017.
Upon his discharge from the Air Force, Canfield worked at various jobs, including delivering milk and stocking shelves at the local supermarket until he used his GI Bill to take a correspondence course in creative writing and then landed the job at the Register, where he worked until 1965.
Funeral arrangements are pending.