Toughest story assignment -- it was Love (and death)

     The most difficult, most challenging, assignment of a 45-year sportswriting career? Some stories/columns to choose from, but one stands out.
      It dates 30 years this November, and relates to Jacksonville, Florida, and the Florida Times-Union. And it was about golf, but not specifically.
      It was more about the aftermath of the deaths of four men in a small-plane crash. And the assignment was totally unexpected.
      Reading a book on golf recently brought a reminder. The main character of the latest of John Feinstein's long string of sports-related books, The First Major, (subtitle) The Inside Story of the 2016 Ryder Cup, is Davis Love III.
      If you know golf, you know the name.
      He was captain of the winning U.S. Ryder Cup team in 2016, having been chosen for the captain's position for a second time (because his work as captain in 2012, even in a U.S. loss to Europe, had impressed the U.S. Ryder Cup people).
      These days people might not remember Davis Love Jr., father of the son. When I see Davis III, I always think of his Dad. 
      It was his death and three others that made Nov. 14, 1988, a memorable day for me.
      On that Monday morning, I received a phone call from Mike Richey the then-Times-Union sports editor and my longtime friend from our Louisiana days.
      He wanted me to drive to St. Simons Island -- off the coast off southeast Georgia, some 75 miles from Jacksonville -- to do a story on the scene at Sea Island Golf Club.
      That was home base for Davis Love Jr., 53, the nationally known Golf Digest teaching pro/instructor, and two others who went down in the plane -- head golf pro John Popa, 37, and teaching pro Jimmy Hodges, 35, Mr. Love's protégé.
      Also killed: nearby resident Frank "Chip" Worthington, 39, the pilot.
      Obviously, this was a tragedy, a shock to the golf world and to that community on the most prominent, most affluent of the "barrier" islands just east of Brunswick, Ga.
      I was new to the Florida Times-Union, maybe three weeks into the job -- a job I needed after my departure from Shreveport. With the family, we had settled in Orange Park, a suburb just south of Jacksonville.
      Here, other than what was going to be a trip into a sad, stunned scene, was what made it difficult. I knew little about the golf world, I had never been anywhere close to Brunswick, had never heard of Sea Island Golf Club or St. Simons Island.
      I was a stranger in strange territory, about to meet and interview people who were complete strangers to me.
      And I was only vaguely familiar with Davis Love III, then an extremely promising, long-hitting, 24-year-old, fourth-year PGA Tour player with one tour victory, his father's prize pupil and -- with younger brother Mark -- his greatest achievement.   
      Now, expecting a routine work day (my main task was to guide the high school/community athletics coverage), here I was faced with uncertainty.
      Why me?
      We are not sure, can't recall. We think, though, that Mike Richey that morning could not reach our talented main Times-Union golf writer, Chris Smith, who had a good relationship with the Love family. (It was before cellphones, folks.)
      Maybe because -- laugh here -- I was a savvy sports writing veteran (it was my 19th fulltime year, but at 41, I was still kind of young, OK) and had experience, Mike called on me. We had plenty of other really good writers on that staff.
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      This was at least 10 a.m., so I rushed to get ready to go. Mike gave me some travel directions and the first place to find -- the Times-Union bureau in Brunswick and the name of that bureau person -- Beth Reese.
      Thank goodness for Beth, who soon added Cravey to her name and moved to Jacksonville, where she remains on the newspaper's news staff. She made my work that day a bit smoother.
      As I recall, when I found the bureau, she showed me how to use the machine to get my story back to the office a few hours later, and because she had to attend a meeting, left me the key to the office. And gave me directions to St. Simons Island.
      It was a 7-mile drive east on a causeway -- marshland all around -- with the Atlantic Ocean close by the resort and residential community.
      It was with plenty of trepidation that I drove to that golf club. Actually, I was not sure of all the details of the plane crash. 
      A link to the full details is below (from a Golf Digest story 20 years later).
      What happened: Davis Love Jr. and his two companions were going to attend the annual meeting of Golf Digest teaching pros at Innisbrook, a golf resort near Tampa. Because they wanted to spend most of that Sunday with their families, instead of driving to Jacksonville to catch a flight south, they chose to have Worthington fly them there -- in early evening -- from the air strip next to the golf course and connect on a Piedmont Airlines flight at 9:30 p.m.
      But the short hop met disaster -- a dense fog and, as it turned out, mixed-up signals from air controllers. Worthington's sight lines were impossible; the plane, a quarter-mile left and 500 feet past the runway's starting point, hit trees 40 feet above the ground. The estimated time: 8:53.27 p.m.
      The plane went "off the radar," but the fog was so bad, the wreckage was not found until daylight the next morning.
      Damn.
      What a loss. What a sad story to write.
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      Unfortunately, we -- any of us who write and get paid for it -- do some of our best work when it involves deaths, or tragedy. Many of the strongest reactions to pieces I've written fit this category.
      And it can be a tough task. Thinking about writing this blog, I remembered that one of the toughest assignments I made -- with the suggestion from editor Stan Tiner at the Shreveport Journal in summer 1983 -- was sending young sportswriter John James Marshall to visit/interview Joe Delaney's family after the sensational running back's drowning as he tried to save some drowning young people in Monroe, La.
      John James said it was his toughest assignment, and credited then-Haughton head coach Bobby Ray McHalffey for accompanying him and sitting through the interview. That made it easier, but "easy" is not the right word in these situations.
      For me, the people at Sea Island that awful November day in 1988 could not have been more cooperative and available. 
      Davis Love III and wife Robin were not there; they were on the way back home from Hawaii (and then San Francisco) where he was to play in the Kapalua Open and also make a vacation of it. They had just arrived in Hawaii when they got word the plane was missing.
      Three weeks later Chris Smith went to Sea Island to interview Davis III, and Chris' in-depth story was one of his best.   
      Davis III, who will be 54 next month, continues as one of the PGA Tour's biggest names, a 21-time winner on Tour, one major (1997 PGA Championship), a World Golf Hall of Fame inductee last year.
      Two of his victories came near Jacksonville in The Players Championship (1992 and 2003). We were there in '92 when, three shots out of first going into the final round, he shot a 67 on Sunday and won by four shots.
      Because of what had happened -- with its Jacksonville ties -- four years earlier, I thought that was an especially poignant victory.
      Chris Smith, who now works for the PGA Tour (senior director, business public relations), made Davis Love III and his "team" the focus of the cover story for the Times-Union's Players Championship preview the next year. Another nice story.
       It wasn't that my story for the Times-Union -- published Nov. 15, 1988 -- was that difficult to write. It was mixing the quotes from the interviews and the facts into a readable piece (our sports desk in Jacksonville helped with that).
       It was not an award-winning effort, but it was rewarding just to meet the challenge and get it done, and in plenty of time before deadline. 
       It was one to remember, for sure.
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https://www.golfdigest.com/story/gw20081107fields
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aGl2Xctj1o