Sometimes greatness mandates that a man’s last wish be ignored
Newspaper columns average about 20 inches in length, 20 inches of type, so longer ones might approach 30, but only the really self-indulgent columnists, slinging obscure words for no earthly reason (I don’t know any personally), habitually present columns masquerading as 40- or 50-inch essays.
Late one night I was walking through the sports department of the
No one can write perfectly, but [Roy] sure tried to come as close as possible.” — Ira Miller
not-dead-yet Pittsburgh Press when a loud, rhetorical kerfuffle erupted on the desk. One veteran copy editor had been asked to handle a story that was longer than normal, what we used to call an enterprise piece. “How long is it?” he grumbled. “Fifty inches,” came the reply. “Oh cripes,” he yipped. “You know — 50 inches? — 50 inches, let me tell you something. The best writer who ever walked into this building never wrote 50 inches. He didn’t need to. Fifty inches?!”
I didn’t even break stride wondering how that would turn out; I only knew he was talking about Roy McHugh.
Roy died this week at 103, and it was only recently that the days began to blend into each other for him. Still it startled me a bit when he asked,
Roy wrote for people who had time to read and who loved the language.
apropos of nothing: “What day is it?” “Tuesday,” I said.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “I knew it was a Tuesday or a Saturday because I didn’t get a Post-Gazette.”
As surviving Readers of Roy have no doubt come to lament, there is no delivered print edition of the PG on Tuesday or Saturday. So when the great 20th century columnist picked a winter Monday to take his last breath, more than one of his contemporaries put two and two together.
“Too bad his obit appeared in the electronic edition,” said former Pittsburgh Press editor Ed Wintermantel, “but Roy probably would’ve preferred it that way — the fewer readers the better. In fact, he may have planned it.”
Roy left with explicit instructions to take no notice of his sudden absence. No wake. No funeral. No services, formal or otherwise. No covert gatherings, either for remembrances or, worse, for mere protocol.
On Wednesday, the PG produced a worthy editorial, but since online comments were disabled for the obit, and since there were no services, many of our determined print-only customers who would recall and revere the longtime sports (and later general) columnist could have missed what McHugh called his next and last milestone.
So that’s the reason for this column. That and the fact that plenty of his admirers have come forward with something eloquent to say, never mind that he’d kill us all if he knew we ran three pieces on him in one week.
“You know very well he didn’t want any kind of memorial,” Georgia Quailey half-scolded into the phone from Florida. “To look down and listen to people say these things about him, he’d still be turning red.”
Quailey met Roy through her husband, Stu, all the way back in 1953. Stu is gone, but Georgia’s friendship with, travels with, conversations and laughs with Roy McHugh endured to the end. His great longtime friends famously included Kennywood manager Carl Hughes and his wife, Ann, who lived near him on Mount Washington, for a long period of time in the same high-rise condo.
“I’d reached the point finally where I wanted to see him pass on, he was just so ill,” Georgia said. “But even then he could remember such stories, and tell them again, about how he was so non-mechanically inclined, and in the service they made him a machine-gun instructor, and he was so small but they made him an MP – he’d get in fights! My daughter and I would travel with him to New York. He loved to travel and he traveled all over. Sometimes by himself, like to Ireland.
“The one thing I never understood about him was for thinking himself inadequate in some way when it came to his writing. Because he knew there were so many people who complimented his writing ability. It didn’t make sense.”
It sure as hell didn’t. Saturday night at the Priory Grand Hall on the North Side, the big fight card didn’t start until a 10-bell salute chimed from ringside for Roy McHugh, one of the best boxing writers ever and anywhere.
His own salute to the then freshly deceased Jackie Conn, brother of former lightweight champion and original Pittsburgh Kid Billy Conn, opened thusly.
In whatever newspaper limbo the files of the old Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph may exist, there’s a photograph that would tell you a lot more than I can about Jackie Conn.
The view is from over the shoulder of a magistrate. Four young faces are gazing up at the bench, one
— Conn’s — innocent and unblemished, the other three in need of repairs.
They are in need of repairs because of some off-color language heard the night before by Jackie Conn as he escorted his sister past a group of street-corner loafers around Market and Fourth. When ladies were present, Conn was not one to tolerate that sort of thing.
In any place, at any time, he acted upon his principles. The magistrate dismissed the charges.
“Roy was admired by his sports staff, which was unusual for any editor,” said Dan Donovan, who worked for him at the Press. “The saying was Roy not only wrote the best columns, the best articles, he also wrote the best headlines and the best [captions]. What I liked about him is that he valued writing the most. He had put together a great staff when I interviewed for the internship. He hired Bill Christine, Phil Musick and Bob Smizik. I remember he asked me only one question when he interviewed me: Was I interested in writing, or in sports? Since I was interviewing with the sports editor, I thought I gave the wrong answer when I said writing. With Roy, it was the right answer.”
Another of Roy’s intern candidates popped up on Twitter this week, the ultratalented hockey writer and columnist Jay Greenberg.
“Applying for internships the summer before my senior year at Mizzou, the most uplifting words of my life came to this WPA kid in note from idol Roy McHugh. ‘Obviously I think you’re a prospect.’ Got the job; wiped out by a strike. Not a waste. Roy McHugh said I had promise.”
It was McHugh’s pursuit of flawlessness that is perhaps best remembered among his peers.
“No one can write perfectly, but he sure tried to come as close as possible,” said decorated sportswriter Ira Miller, another McHugh hire. “No wasted words, everything for a purpose. Plus, he was a true gentleman with a wry sense of humor. I still remember him zinging me once at a Steelers draft day. I used to eat a lot more than I can now, and they had just picked Jack Ham, so I piped up, ‘I like Ham,’ and, without missing a beat, Roy chimed in, ‘And beef and fish and ice cream and ...’”
Roy wrote for people who had time to read and who loved the language. Pete Peterson, the native Pittsburgh author who taught James Joyce among other things at Southern Illinois University, remembers to this day Roy’s line about the 1971 World Series.
“Although Clemente will get the sports car awarded to the most valuable player in the Series, there are those who believe Blass, at the very least, rates a motorbike.”
Late into his remarkable life, McHugh remained a fountain of sports knowledge dozens of writers and authors would use for an array of projects. He assisted Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David Maraniss (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Vince Lombardi) for his 2006 masterwork “Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero.”
“Roy knew how to listen, and I believe it was this ability which helped him keep his mental faculties sharp and intact as he aged,” said Doug Cavanaugh, a California boxing writer who was helped by McHugh. “He was never the elderly wallflower, always an active participant in conversation, his eyes bright and lucid as he enjoyed the give and take. He was a curious man, one who really took in what you said and didn’t just wait for you to finish so he could have his turn to speak.”
It was with such engaged curiosity he met every spring the winner of the Roy McHugh Prize, which is to be awarded for the seventh time later this month by Duquesne University. The $2,000 award, financed by a $20,000 check from Roy’s great friend and co-author Art Rooney Jr., honors a junior or senior Duquesne journalism student who demonstrates “exceptional written expression.”
Prior to the Oct. 21 fall outside his condo that was the beginning of his end, Roy and I would often walk to RedBeards for lunch.
Even in his early 100s, he’d hold the door open for me, walk to the back, order a salad, and ask to have the dressing on the side.
“Roy,” I’d say. “Dump that dressing on the salad. You’re 100! You won.”
This week, we all lost.