Jim Cressman's tribute to former London Free Press sports writer Ernie Miller should be required reading for Sun Media obit writers.
Miller died Wednesday following a brief battle with cancer and Cressman touches all of the bases in replaying his 70 years as a baseball hopeful, award-winning sports writer and family man.
His tribute includes quotes from Hall of Famer Fergie Jenkins.
Cressman says Miller was the first to write about Jenkins, "a young Chatham ball player who would go on to a Hall of Fame pitching career."
Stories about the Miller they knew during his 22 years at the London Free Press will be told by friends and former colleagues at the London City Press Club on Saturday from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Miller died Wednesday following a brief battle with cancer and Cressman touches all of the bases in replaying his 70 years as a baseball hopeful, award-winning sports writer and family man.
His tribute includes quotes from Hall of Famer Fergie Jenkins.
Cressman says Miller was the first to write about Jenkins, "a young Chatham ball player who would go on to a Hall of Fame pitching career."
Stories about the Miller they knew during his 22 years at the London Free Press will be told by friends and former colleagues at the London City Press Club on Saturday from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.
"Miller didn't want a funeral service," writes Cressman. "He was never much for doom and gloom. But he always did enjoy a good party . . . "
An obit written from the heart.
An obit written from the heart.
Sad, sad, sad. But the memories make up for it.
ReplyDeleteErnie was a pal of mine in 1958 on The Chatham Daily News, where he was sports editor under Ray Munro, Peter Gzowski, Joe Emmott and Dave Shepherd (anyone know what happened to Dave?) Ernie and I, an 18-year-old cub reporter,sharing a flat at the time with Air Farce's John Morgan, were virtually forced by Ray Munro into some ridiculous journalistic ideas.
One of them, in which Ernie was cajoled by Munro into promoting and structuring the story of a flying saucer landing in a Chatham field, prompted Morgan to quit after refusing to "cover" such a story, complete with matchsticks around a burned grass circle that had been engineered, allegedly. Another time
Munro had Ernie and I stretch a 50-foot long rope pulling a kid's waggon, to have the picture run over the top of two pages. Why? But we were young and naive and those were the days my friend. God bless Ernie. And me? I went on to The Brantford Expositor, then Fleet Street where I travelled with the Beatles for a while, and eventally published an English newspaper in Haiti of all places, where few spoke English, and 95% of the population couldn't read anyway. I must have been infected with the Munro bug, because it all turned out well in the end, despite Papa Doc's henchmen, 14 invasions, getting thrown out of the communist PM, getting invited back by Baby Doc, and being rescued from house arrest by the Canadian Charge d'Affair . . . and so on. There is a book there somewhere. Ernie would have loved those stories.
peter hall, England
This has to be the same Ernie Miller I met in New Orleans in the mid 70's. I was on one assignment and he was on another, There was one transport from the airport and we shared it. Ernie was a "one of a kind" guy that I never forgot. I met him a couple times after that in San Francisco. May he rest in peace.
ReplyDeleteAdele