Murray DeCourcy just happened not to be that type of dad. It’s hard to imagine that now. The archetypal fathers presented to us, both in fiction and modern media, either are detached and absent or intimately involved in every last activity. My dad was present and interested but left the kid stuff for the kids. I “played catch” plenty – with my younger brother, with the dozen or so boys near my age who grew up in the Old Hills neighborhood.
It never felt there was anything missing from the relationship with my father, though. Except, ultimately, for years. We’ve missed way too many of those.
Sunday would have been his 90th birthday. He got to see 65 of them before a stroke felled him while he was mowing the lawn, not quite two months after the last.
As superintendent of transportation at the Edgar Thompson Works for U.S. Steel — where the photo in this story, featuring LaMarr Woodley, was taken — my father kept the trains rolling and the trucks running in and out of the plant for much of his 35-year career in industry. He arrived at the plant most mornings at 7 and could leave by 5:30 p.m. on a good day. He saved his parenting energy for the things only he could do.
One of them was taking me to games. The memories I have of my father that involve sports are exclusively of observing others playing: my first big-league game at Forbes Field, when Mets third baseman Ed Charles autographed my popcorn container; a Pittsburgh Steelers game against San Diego in 1973 that marked the end of Johnny Unitas’ career and the beginning of Dan Fouts’; a Pirates game when we were disappointed Roberto Clemente did not play because he was given the night off to celebrate his 38th birthday. He’d never see another.
More than anything, there were the basketball games my brother played in junior high, high school and at LaRoche College. We drove all over Western Pennsylvania to sit on wooden bleachers and watch him play. It was there I fell deeply in love with the game that has consumed my life. I was aware even then my brother, as the varsity athlete, was getting the lesser deal because I got all that time with Dad.
I knew I wanted to be a sportswriter from the time I read Maury Allen’s “Greatest Pro Quarterbacks” in fourth grade. I was a below-average athlete and thought, while everyone else was dreaming of playing in the majors, maybe I could coach. My dad said most coaches were ex-players. But sportswriters, announcers? I could do that.
But maybe subconsciously that connection with my father from sitting beside him in the stands was something I’ve continued to chase?
It might kill him again to hear that. My father was not enamored of my choice of professions. One of the last real fights we had, other than a couple that involved me being too apathetic about mowing the lawn, involved my decision not to take physics as a senior in high school. I’d had it with science and math and knew I’d get by fine in college and journalism. He insisted I might change my mind and then I’d be behind.
After I earned a journalism scholarship that covered my tuition to Point Park College – now Point Park University – he never said another word.
He almost invariably was right, though. When I was disenchanted enough with Point Park’s smallish downtown campus after a single month to consider transferring, and after I’d visited Ohio University for a weekend and become enthralled with its journalism school, we had a conversation about it as he drove me back to Point Park following a weekend home.
He heard my side and then said simply, “How are you going to pay for it?” He didn’t mean he wouldn’t help, and he knew I could get loans and all that. He meant this: What kind of fool walks away from free college?
I knew instantly the point he was making. I never considered it again.
Had I left, it’s doubtful Debra Konieczka and I ever would have started dating; she was a Point Park classmate, so leaving school would have meant leaving behind that possibility. We’ll reach our 32nd wedding anniversary in October. And one month earlier I’ll celebrate my 15th anniversary in my dream job, covering college basketball for Sporting News. I couldn’t have drawn the whole thing up any better, and he got all that done with eight words and no anger.
It was my brother who wound up following the professional course my father would have chosen for me. I always tell this joke about my family, which includes three older sisters and a brother two years younger. I say that after my father had three girls, he kept trying until he had a son. And then he kept trying until he had an athlete.
Pat went even one step beyond that: He went into “the family business.” He left college as a CPA and worked a while for one of the big accounting firms, but eventually he joined the company that now is Allegheny Technologies, a force in specialty metals. Two years ago, he was named chief financial officer.
I’d like to think my dad would be somewhat as proud of a son who wound up in the media business, writing and talking about basketball. He died knowing I’d made it to a major metropolitan paper at 23, won journalism awards and covered big bowl games, world championship fights and my first couple Final Fours. I’ve been working a quarter-century in his absence, though, still wishing he could join me to watch another game.
