Steve Brandon is gone: A small man in stature, but a giant in many ways

Steve Brandon

Go through life and, if you’re lucky, you make a lot of friends. If you’re really fortunate, you have at least a few of them that you can truly trust.

Steve Brandon was on the short list for me.

And now he is gone. The long-time newspaper sports journalist died Friday at age 68, a heart attack taking the life of a person who quietly, surreptitiously made a positive impact on too many people to count.

For proof, check my Twitter feed (@kerryeggers) in the hours after notice of Steve’s passing Saturday morning. Since then, there have been hundreds of notifications and mentions, many of them expressing deep regret at his death but great admiration for the kind of person he was.

I knew Steve as well as most. We worked together for 44 years in Portland newspaper sports departments. I began as a full-time sportswriter at The Oregon Journal in 1975. Steve came onto the staff a year later, first as a part-timer, but soon with full-time status. We were together until the merger with The Oregonian in 1982, then for another 18 years before we both departed for the Portland Tribune. We were together there for 19 years — Steve as sports editor, me as sportswriter and columnist.

Steve Brandon as a very young reporter (courtesy Carol Brandon)

For the first half of his career, Steve had been one of the best sportswriters in Portland, covering the Trail Blazers for his final nine years at The Oregonian. He had a completely different role at the Tribune. His job included assigning beats and stories, determining story placement, writing headlines and cutlines, attending staff meetings, dealing with editors and copy editors, answering queries from readers and managing egos. No wonder he had such little free time.

On Facebook after Steve’s death, former Trib staffer Joel Fowlks wrote that he “was born for” his role at the paper.

“He had the best grasp of the local sports scene of anyone I knew,” wrote Fowlks, now an attorney. “He had the widest frame of reference — a local expert not only on the Big Three sports but on anything sports-related in the area…. I truly believe he could have written or edited any section of the newspaper. He was one of the most respected people at the Tribune because of his solid journeyman journalism skills and his blue-collar work ethic. He worked every day, and damn near all day, making sure each sports section met his standards. It was the work of two or three people, and that’s not an exaggeration.”

Indeed, Steve embodied the philosophy of our mentor, former Journal sports editor George Pasero, who always preached, “A sportswriter knows no hours.” At the Trib, Steve and I worked closely, talking virtually every day, exchanging ideas, doing what we could to make the sports section “sing.” There were occasional disagreements, but we saw things the same way the vast majority of the time. Sometimes, he would offer story ideas. I nearly always took him up on them.

Steve didn’t write a lot for the Trib. Part of it was he was busy with everything else. Much of what he wrote came out in a column called “Scoresheet,” filling in the cracks of what hadn’t already been covered. Steve spent hours upon end writing briefs, often information about local sports that never get covered — small college, community college, high school, especially the PIL. A Cleveland High grad, Steve made sure his old school and league were taken care of. There’s little doubt Steve Brandon should be a member of the PIL Sports Hall of Fame.

I once counted the number of people with at least one byline in the sports section during the first 19 years of the Tribune. The list was more than 60. Many of them were interns, thrust upon Steve, mostly during the summers, for guidance and leadership. His patience was perfect for that role. One of the interns, Jesse Severson, wrote about him following his death.

“There are two reasons why Steve helped me: because he was a great person, and because I asked,” wrote Severson, now working as a digital content writer in Chicago. “My experiences with the Portland Tribune — and my time with Steve — taught me more than journalism skills. It also taught me how simply taking a moment out of your day to help somebody can forever change their life. … It’s not hyperbole to say I have the life I do now because I had a Steve Brandon.”

Fowlks called Steve a “consummate newspaperman.” Perhaps that is why, a year ago, he took a job covering sports for the Polk County Itemizer-Advertiser weekly at age 67. The money came in handy, but mostly, he was bored. If working for a 3,500-circulation weekly were beneath a journalist of his credentials — Walter Cronkite taking a job doing evening news for WOI in Des Moines — Steve didn’t take it that way. He tackled the job in earnest, doing what he could to make the sports section look as professional as possible.

If you have a vision of Steve as a big, boisterous sports guy, you’re mistaken. He was 5-foot-6 on a good day, soft-spoken, with a ready smile and a quick wit. The man was kind, warm, gentle, humble. His temper was even as a basketball baseline, and it served him well, in business and in life. More than anything, he had a great way about him. If you couldn’t get along with Steve Brandon, that’s on you, not on him.

Steve and wife Carol during a visit to Cannon Beach on August 31 (courtesy Carol Brandon)

Steve served as copy editor for my recent Jerome Kersey biography, and he filled the role again in my upcoming Bill Schonely update book (“Wherever You May Be …. Now — the Bill Schonely Story”), to be published this fall. The latter was only three chapters, so I told him I’d pay him in part with a round of golf and lunch. Now I won’t get the chance.

I’m hoping we can put together a scholarship fund for a young journalist in Steve’s honor. It would be a tribute that would make him proud, and it would be fitting given his terrific work with budding writers.

I feel bad for Steve’s family, wife Carol and children Jake, Shasta and Jared. It’s a personal loss, too.

Master of ceremonies Charles Barkley tells Shasta Williams she is too pretty to be related to her father, Steve Brandon, during the 2002 Oregon Sports Awards. Nobody got a bigger kick out of it than her dad. (courtesy Shasta Williams)

A good friend is gone. And it’s a jolt to all of those who were touched by Steve through the years.

I only wish he could hear all the wonderful things people are writing and saying about him. It’s an irony of life, isn’t it?

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