Sports Writer Steve Dukes Dies Suddenly
June 17th, 2008Editor’s Note: As many of you already know, I got my start as a newspaper reporter in Bay Minette, Alabama, where I covered the courthouse, politics and other things for The Baldwin Times. It was 1984 and Ronald Reagan was running for a second term as president. One of the most interesting characters I met that year was a scraggly-looking country boy from Baldwin County named Steve Dukes.
They say you can’t judge a book by it’s cover. Although in these professionalized times we live in, the corporate greed-heads tend to discriminate against anyone who looks or talks a little funny, even if they may be the most creative and competent person for the job. And that would certainly describe Dukes.
Every time that little chain of twice-weekly newspapers in the southwest corner of the state got a new owner and publisher over the years, the first thing they would do is fire Dukes. But after a few weeks or months when it became apparent that they needed somebody who knew what they were doing to cover local sports, they would call Dukes back and rehire him. This was certainly true of former publisher Terry Everett, now a Congressman.
I got to know Dukes better in my second stint working in Baldwin County from 1989-1992, when he had been relegated to a free-lance position covering sports and being paid by the game instead of a real salary with benefits. To make ends meet, he worked for Mikee’s Restaurant in Gulf Shores on the weekends, and I would sometimes run into him there and take the time to catch up on sports news and news from the northern part of Alabama’s biggest county.
Dukes was one of the last great characters from the last days of newspapering in America before the craft lost its soul to the money-men. Newspaper publishers don’t hire creative characters anymore. They hire PR men and women who dress right and show up on time and know how to spell - and not rock the boat.
Dan Rutledge is another one of those characters, although I call him “the Zen man,” for surviving as long as he did in the newspaper “business.” He just retired last year, and will once again be writing a sports column for us every Friday during football season starting in August, dog willing…
God Needed A Statistician
by Dan Rutledge
God must have needed a statistician in heaven.
That’s the only explanation that makes any sense of the sudden death of Steve Dukes last Thursday at his home in Pine Grove. He was 58.
Who was Steve Dukes? There are many answers to that question.
He was the first person I met when I arrived in Baldwin County in 1982 to be the countywide sports editor for a fledgling group of weekly newspapers. I’d been told that one of the sports guys working for me would be a big, unusual-looking guy with thick glasses who always wore flip flops but who was a good sportswriter and a great guy.
The scouting report proved to be right on. Steve was all that and more and wound up being one of if not my best friend.
Steve was a newspaper man, a reporter whose beat was sports but who could write about anything. He was one of the best writers this former editor has ever had the privilege of working with. He knew the rules of grammar and the AP (Associated Press) Style Book by heart. He was painstaking in his writing – it had to be correct, grammar-wise and spelling, too – and he never liked to let a story go until he had proofread it at least once.
When the word came that NBC’s Tim Russert had died suddenly on Friday, I thought, “We’ve lost two good journalists in two days – one known by everyone, one known in just Baldwin County.” Like Russert, Steve was a good, no great, reporter. If you gave Steve an assignment, you knew he would get the facts, get to the heart of the story and that he would tell it like it was. And when it came time to write the story, he was always fair and tried to tell all sides. (And when you gave Steve an assignment, you never had to worry about what you would get or if you would get a story at all … you always got it and got it on time. He always came through.)
Steve loved sports. He began writing sports stories for the Baldwin Times while still in high school and kept statistics – from whence came his nickname “Stats” — for the Baldwin County High School teams and the newspaper … and just kept on writing after high school. For some 35 years, if you went to sporting events anywhere in Baldwin County, it was more than likely you’d see Steve – and he was not hard to spot with his unruly grey beard. And although he reported on sporting events all over the county, Baldwin County High School, his alma mater, and Faulkner State Community College were his favorites to cover.
Steve loved his alma mater and FSCC and was proud whenever they, or anyone representing them, accomplished something athletically.
Both BCHS and FSCC lost a great friend when Steve passed away. Oh, someone will (seemingly) take his place and cover the game(s) and write it up for one paper or another … but whoever it is will not write it with the love for BCHS or FSCC (or the Alabama Crimson Tide or the Los Angeles Dodgers or the LA Lakers) that Steve would have put into it.
Steve was also a kind and gentle soul who did his best to like everyone and not sit in judgment of anyone. Steve gave of himself without thinking about it and helped whenever and wherever he saw the need. If you were his friend, you could count yourself as one of the fortunate ones.
His gentle nature and good heartedness, as well as his willingness to help others, is a credit to his mother and dad. (Yes, Mrs. Dukes, the right upbringing does tell.)
And perhaps the ones who will be the big losers because of Steve’s no longer being on the Baldwin sports scene are the kids, the high school and junior college athletes, whose names won’t make it into the newspaper.
Steve was known for writing stories that were plenty long, sometimes too long … but that was because he liked to name every player who scored or gained a yard or caught a pass or in some other way did something to help their team win. While not earth-shattering news, that yard or reception is big news, a reason of self-esteem, for the player or his/her parents.
So long, for now, Steve Dukes. We’ll miss you. Baldwin County sports will miss you.
As for Steve himself, I’ll bet he’s happy right now! If I know Steve, his first question on arrival in heaven was, “Where’s the hospitality room?” And I’ll wager that by now he has probably already met and interviewed – with his tape recorder in hand – Bama’s Bear Bryant, the Green Bay Packers’ Vince Lombardi and the Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax.
I only wish he could send us the stories he would write from those interviews. Guess I’ll have to wait until I get on the other side, too, to read them.
Dan Rutledge is the former long-time sports editor for Gulf Coast Newspapers and former editor of the Baldwin Times in Bay Minette, Alabama.
Tags: Obituaries
