‘Don’t look old and don’t act old!’: Spokane’s Jim Price and Chuck Stewart tally over 110 years of sports writing

For sure, in this era of fast-changing social media trends, there’s little market for old news. Nonetheless, can you spare a few moments for old news writers? Some of you have read their work for decades. A few of us are not done yet.

Chuck Stewart started with the Spokane Daily Chronicle in 1961. Since then, barely cramped by retirement, he’s been at it, composing sports-page copy, almost without interruption. That’s 62 consecutive years! He has written for the conjoined Spokane publications longer than anyone. Ever.

Sidelined by a medication reaction over the winter, he hopes to make it 63 very soon.

I’ve chalked up 51 years, often writing about baseball and horse racing. My first Spokesman-Review byline appeared in 1964. My continuity, however, hangs by a thread. Some people can’t hold a job. I couldn’t hold a career, veering from daily newspapers to racetracks to the Spokane Indians baseball team, Eastern Washington University and back to this newsroom.

Writing for these pages is not all we have in common.

Both recently passed our 85th birthdays. Neither is a Washington native. Each, nearly 1,200 miles apart, launched his journalism career astride a bicycle, delivering news door-to-door. We married late. Each wife died of cancer. Our lone siblings live out of state. Both actively attend Presbyterian churches. Each adopted a sideline that, despite passing years, doesn’t let us go.

Both love baseball and, as student managers for high-school sports teams, wound up at the school paper, Chuck at North Central and, for me, at a newly minted school on the San Francisco Peninsula. Chuck, desperate for credits that would allow him to graduate, quit a Latin class – “It was all Greek to me!” – switched to journalism and became the assistant sports editor. When my school’s baseball coach told me to volunteer, I went.

Neither of us has chewed tobacco or kept a flask in our desk. And we’re aware that being paid to attend sporting events sounds frivolous. Working nights and weekends, missing dinner at home, doesn’t come to mind.

A few of our predecessors also appropriated a lot of Cowles family ink.

Margaret Bean, sophisticated daughter of a pioneer grocer, joined the S-R staff in 1919, when female reporters were a curiosity. She wrote feature stories, reviews and a column called “From the Treetops.” Dorothy Powers, an exuberant University of Montana import, overlapped Bean’s tenure, evolving from reporter to well-read columnist.

Bean worked full time for 34 years. Then, for years in retirement, she wrote about her travels. Powers signed on in 1943 and stayed 45 years, mostly writing about local activities and personalities. Bean died days before her 99th birthday. Powers made it to 93.

Though journalism doesn’t guarantee long life, Merle Derrick, who preceded Stewart by a generation at the Chronicle, caught on as an NC student in 1944. With time out for military service, he became a statistics-loving high-school reporter who wrote for 48 years. Then, after the newspapers merged, he toiled another five years as a part-time nonwriting copy editor.

The list includes two others of recent vintage. Readers saw the bylines of investigative reporters Karen Dorn Steele and Bill Morlin for 48 and 45 years respectively. There are two active members as well. Political reporter Jim Camden, known for Public Periscope and Spin Control, and sports columnist John Blanchette started at The Spokesman-Review in 1981. They’re in their 43rd year.

Stewart, a stable force in the office, couldn’t stick to a college, studying twice each at Whitworth and Eastern Washington and once at Washington State. I attended only one but needed a freshman geography class to graduate from Stanford and barely made it with a D.

After Chuck enrolled at Whitworth, the school’s sports editor, Joe Cross, who later worked here, introduced him to Chronicle sports writer Jim Spoerhase. Following a stint with United Press – he covered the notorious Candy Rogers case – Chuck landed a summer-vacation spot at the Chronicle in 1961. He returned the next year and, when Spoerhase switched to the police beat, Stewart took his place.

Sports editor Bob Johnson covered Washington State football and basketball. Derrick had the high schools. Stewart handled almost everything else: pro baseball and hockey and all the local colleges, as well as auto racing and softball.

He covered the 1970 Spokane Indians, who propelled many players and Hall of Fame manager Tom Lasorda toward the major leagues. He wrote about hockey teams that won four Allan Cups. He followed future hall of fame driver Tom Sneva to the Indianapolis 500.

Nonetheless, his legacy certainly must be LOCALLY, the exhaustive account of this area’s individual athletic feats and honors. Chuck took an irregular feature, expanded it, and turned it into a widely read weekly column. Pawing through news releases, web sites and social media platforms may sound like a drag. But Chuck has loved it.

“There’s nothing I like more than doing that,” he said. “I love putting the names in the paper. I love getting notes from parents and grandparents about things I’ve written.”

The father of five, Chuck’s retirement also has been devoted, in turn, to daily care of his seven grandchildren. And he’s become a legendary softball official.

He has umpired at three national tournaments. He spent 17 years as Spokane Amateur Softball Association’s umpire in chief, often filling that role at important tournaments. He’s received the Amateur Softball Association’s Region 15 Award of Excellence. He’s in the USA Softball Northwest/Mountain Region, Inland Empire and USA Softball of Idaho halls of fame.

In 2009, the Spokane Softball Umpires Association renamed its major service award in his honor. Inaugurated in 1975 to celebrate Bruce Campbell, another longtime umpire-in- chief, this became the Campbell-Stewart Award and was handed to Chuck, a past Campbell winner who already had lots of other association honors.

Comparatively, I’ve been a sloth.

For 30 years, while Chuck was reporting for work at 6 a.m., I slept through almost 10,000 sunrises. In retirement, he has burned through three more decades, spending two nights a week at the newspaper. After being paid to attend baseball games for a few years, I spent twice as many publicizing and announcing horse races. I dabbled at casino gambling, quit that to bet on horses and dumped the ponies for the stock market. I tout zinfandel as the best red wine.

In the early 1990s, three decades after my debut, I returned to the newspaper as a part-time copy editor and writer. Then, the day after my 60th birthday, I made the regular payroll, perhaps the oldest full-time hire in the paper’s history.

In my own two decades as a retiree, snug in a fine old bungalow, I’ve consumed gallons of coffee, contributed feature stories and obits, and served a couple terms on the City/County Historic Landmarks Commission. I’m a baseball-reference.com addict. I’ve written most of one book, researched another and looked after a 105-year-old garden. Don’t be misled. My wife was a gardener. I’m a vegetation administrator.

Chuck shares my perspective on writing our way through old age.

“Always have a reason to get out of bed. Have something to do. Don’t look old and don’t act old!”

A few words about Chuck Stewart the man.

In 1962, while he covered spring training for the parent Los Angeles Dodgers, pitcher Billy Harris asked Chuck if he would drive the family’s brand-new Buick station wagon, his wife and infant son to Spokane.

“I had just been on my first airplane ride,” Stewart recalled. “It wasn’t something I cared to repeat. So, I drove from Vero Beach, Florida, to here (2,892 miles) so I wouldn’t have to fly.”

Two years later, new at the paper, I headed to the ballpark for a Shadle Park-Central Valley football game. Foolishly, I drove there on Trent, found a train blocking Havana and arrived with the game in the second quarter. I introduced myself to Chuck. Though the newspaper staffs were very competitive, he said, “Let me catch you up.” As a result, I wrote as if I had seen it all.

To paraphrase the late broadcaster Bob Robertson, “Always be a good sports writer. Be a good sports writer always.”