Don’t tell anyone, but of the hundreds of cookies I received this spring from CHS moms, a few were shared with my Whidbey News-Times “rival.” (Shelli Trumbull photo)
It’s true — I like to poke the Evil Empire up in Canada that owns the three Whidbey newspapers.
And yes, I once cashed checks from them back in my misbegotten youth. We all have our youthful indiscretions.
But never think that I am poking the guy who is doing the same job for those papers that I am, covering sports.
Jim Waller, the Sports Editor of the Whidbey News-Times (whose articles also run in the shadow paper that calls itself the Whidbey Examiner) was my high school journalism teacher during the extra semester I spent at Oak Harbor High School after my dad moved us out of Tumwater mid-way through my senior year (long story).
He is the person most directly responsible for my journalism career — and a lot of my editors since that point would like to have a long discussion with him about that, outside, behind the building, about now — getting me in the door of the News-Times at 18.
I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Waller, as a teacher, as a Hall of Fame high school baseball coach and as a journalist.
The man is a consummate pro, the quiet, elegant flip side of the coin to my frequently hyperventilating, gossipy Dennis the Menace approach to sports coverage.
With that being said, I just wanted to direct you to something he wrote recently. It was timed to Father’s Day, but it slipped past me somehow and I just noticed it the other day.
It’s a reflection piece on the life and times of his dad, Mert Waller, maybe the single most influential coach to ever work on Whidbey Island.
My path crossed with the senior Waller during his later days, when he had moved to being an assistant baseball coach for his son on Wildcat teams that I covered for the News-Times.
He was a class act through and through, a great guy, and that comes through vividly in the article Mr. Waller wrote.
Go take a look at it. It’s well worth your time.
