Dater: Role Models - Gone But Not Forgotten

Norm Clarke Was One

It’s so easy to just hear something like “So and so passed away today” and go “Oh, wow, too bad” and instantly go back to your phone for the latest tweet in its endless stream. And that’s just life. Breaking news: we’re all gonna die.

When you get older, as I am, more and people you knew die.

I know this is a fun site about the Avalanche, but I want to take a few moments to remember someone who passed away the other day, someone who I only interacted with a few times, but one of those interactions really made a positive difference in my life.

His name was Norm Clarke, 82, a former columnist with the Rocky Mountain News, who later found greater fame as a society columnist in Las Vegas. He worked pretty much his entire adult life in media, starting out as a reporter for the Helena Record in 1973 and moving up to the Associated Press in Cincinnati after that.

Cut to 1991: I’m a newcomer to Denver, having moved from Concord, N.H., on May 15 of that year. I’m looking to start over, in just about every way imaginable, in my life. I’ve recently been let go from the local paper there, the Monitor, in budget cuts and decide to move to Denver because 1. I’d visited Colorado in 1990, to hang out with a friend I first met in Cape Cod, and loved everything about it. 2. Because my high-school best friend also had moved to Denver a few months before, with his girlfriend, who went to CU. I moved in with those two - along with the sister of the girlfriend - to a two-bedroom apartment (Tamarac Apartments, $480 a month, split three ways).

I felt reborn in some ways, being in a new place, but also very lonely and lost at times. I had no idea what I’d do next professionally. I worked for a while as a bill collector, calling people to tell them their trash bills were overdue.

But, I did have a journalism degree and a couple years of experience at a good local paper, with about a dozen writing “clips.” There were two newspapers in Denver, pretty good-sized ones, so I looked up every reporter and editor at both the News and Denver Post, and sent a form letter, with a resume, to every single one of them at the papers’ addresses. The letters basically said, “Hey, I want a job in this business again, and if you can help me in any way, I’d sure be grateful. Here’s my number.”

I would estimate I sent between 75 and 100 of those stamped envelopes out there. I got exactly two responses. One was a phone call from former Post college sports writer Natalie Meisler. The other was a call from Norm Clarke.

For both of them to just call a stranger, some kid, says a lot about them. Natalie, who I later worked with for years, was a great woman, a real character. She was both sweet and hard-boiled, who spoke the language of newspapering that only those of us who really lived in those days when newspapers were king understand.

Here’s what is amazing about Norm Clarke’s decision to call me: just a few days after that, he broke one of the biggest sports stories in Denver newspaper history. He broke the story that Denver would get an expansion baseball team, later known as the Rockies. He took time out to call a nobody kid, probably right in the middle of trying to uncover a huge story.

I remember that Norm just asked me some questions about my interest in sports writing, and just giving me some good, practical advice about things and wishing me good luck and to keep in touch.

I was pretty discouraged about getting anywhere in media at that point, but Norm’s call really picked me up and helped me keep going. A couple months later, I was inside the Post sports department, taking high school scores over the phone.

The weird thing is, Norm became a competitor of mine after that. I was at the Post and he was at the News, and believe me, it was a grudge match. It was one of the last great newspaper wars in this country. Somebody should write a book about how competitive it was in the later years. Maybe that someone should be me.

Norm and I became head-to-head competitors on a story in 1993 - about who would become the next head coach of DU hockey. He was a general sports columnist then, but he did his column in a kind of dot.dot.dot. style, with a lot of info packed into the column. I was at that time the only guy at the Post who covered any hockey, with DU as a primary beat.

To my great irritation, Norm seemed to have a great interest in getting the DU coaching story, and he had plenty of reported speculation on who it would be. I was after the same story. He had a lot of sports to write about, and I was only focused on that one story, so maybe because of that, I got the scoop first of George Gwozdecky getting the job.

Norm probably wasn’t happy about that, but a few years later, I talked with him somehow and he complimented me on the scoop. It meant a lot to me, coming from a guy like him. He even said something about how I should think about coming to the News, but it never happened.

When Vegas got a hockey team a few years ago, Norm actually reached out to me to talk hockey, and asked for some phone numbers of people in the league. I was only too happy to give it all to him, and always told him to call if he needed anything else. He did call a time or two again, and I was always honored to help him with whatever he needed. It was the least I could do, to repay a man who took the time to encourage a nobody kid in 1991.

I’ve always tried to return calls or messages of young people who have reached out to me for the same advice. People like Norm set that kind of example for me.

Thank you, Norm. See you on the other side.