Doyel: Jeff Washburn told stories and made deadline to the end

WEST LAFAYETTE – Jeff Washburn wrote to the end. On Saturday he was at Purdue’s football game against Indiana in West Lafayette. Sunday he was at the Indianapolis Colts home game with Tennessee. Tuesday he was at Louisville-Purdue at Mackey Arena.

Wednesday, he died.

A pro’s pro, he made deadline Tuesday night writing for The Sports Xchange. He was dying of esophageal cancer, and he would be dead in less than 19 hours, but he made deadline. He was relegated to a wheelchair, but he made deadline. He had lost 75 pounds in a matter of months, but good ol’ Wash – he made deadline, hammering away on that iPad.

Jeff Washburn died before I could write the story I wanted to write. This one will have to do, and let me tell you something: It won’t be good enough. It won’t be as good a story as he could have written about himself, or about me, or about anyone. A storyteller, I tell you. That’s Wash.

Wash didn’t want attention, so he didn’t know I was going to write his story. The idea came to me Sunday in the Lucas Oil Stadium press box, when the national anthem was playing before the game and everybody was standing, everybody but Wash. Confused by that, I sought him out and saw why he hadn’t stood: He couldn’t. About one month after I’d seen him last, at an earlier Colts game when he’d told me that an MRI had come back with great results, he had aged 10 years, faded like a rose petal plucked from its stem.

He was 63 and looked 80. He looked small and tired and vulnerable. He looked beautiful, a man living his life to the end, feeling no self-pity, wanting not to talk about his condition – but about his craft. And mine.

“I have a story for you,” he said, and I’m thinking: So do I.

We talked about his story idea, about Purdue freshman receiver Jackson Anthrop and Anthrop’s father and his mother, his father a former Purdue basketball player, his mother the best athlete in the family and a spitfire to boot. That was Wash’s word for Jackson Anthrop’s mom – “spitfire” – and he told me so much about the story, he knew so much, he loved it so much, I blurted: You write it, Wash!

“No, you’d do it better,” he said.

That was Wash, a longtime former Purdue beat writer at the Journal & Courier: Humble to the point of telling a fib, just to make someone feel good. Oh, he deserved this story. No, he deserved better than this story, but he died too soon. I’d been interviewing him, but not telling him, starting at the Colts game on Sunday. Just getting some biographical info at first, that he went to Lafayette Jeff, part of a line of Washburns who went there. Jeff was named for the high school, matter of fact. He told me he went to Purdue, that his dad Paul was an engineer who died decades ago and his mom Maxine a homemaker who had died in last year at age 99.

He was telling me about his wife Cheryl, a retired special education teacher, and what a beautiful support she was. They had one son, Jade, who went into the same line of work as his idol: Jade Washburn is a freelance AP sports writer outside Chicago.

Jeff told me about his friend Mike Pinto, who’d driven him to the Colts game on Sunday and the Purdue basketball game on Tuesday. Mike and his wife, Kimberley, would drop off Wash, then be there after Wash was finished writing and take him home.

Wash didn’t tell me that he’s been inducted into the Pony League Baseball Hall of Fame in Washington, Pa., honoring his decades covering that sport.

Brendan Tebben, a 1995 Lafayette Jeff grad (and later Purdue) now living in Fishers, remembers Wash this way: "As someone who grew up playing baseball in Lafayette, the games were always bigger when Wash was there. I remember waking up early the day after to see what he had said about the game."

Tuesday night, Wash wrote about Purdue’s 66-57 win against Louisville from his seat by the court. The media at Mackey Arena sit two-thirds of the way up the bleachers, but Purdue put Wash at one of the tables courtside. Wash rolled his chair up to the table and took out his iPad. From way up high, where the media was sitting, Wash looked so small, so fragile, so professional and so content.

After the game he wrote from that spot, writing as fans mingled and workers cleaned around him. A pro’s pro, Wash never looked up. I know because I was writing down the row from him, the only two media writing from the court. Wash was a machine, pounding away on that iPad. And when he was finished – before me, because he was just so damn good – he felt badly about interrupting me, but …

“Gregg?”

Yessir.

“Can you roll me to the back?”

He wanted to go up the tunnel, up the small incline, to meet Mike Pinto. I operated his wheelchair like an oaf, banging his extended feet into a railing.

“I’m so sorry Wash,” I tried to say, but he waved me off. Didn’t hurt, he said, and I’ll choose to believe him because the alternative isn’t acceptable.

Last I saw of Wash, he was being rolled out of Mackey Arena for the final time by Pinto. On the way home, Wash and Pinto made plans for Sunday. Northwestern’s basketball team is coming to Mackey Arena to play Purdue. Wash was going to cover the game for The Sports Xchange. Pinto was going to pick him up at 2. Tipoff was at 4, and Wash wanted to get there early to read pregame notes supplied by each school’s media relations department, game notes he could have written off the top of his head.

“Going and covering events energized him,” Pinto was telling me Wednesday night, shortly after Wash died. “He likes the sport and all the people around him. I saw such kindness to him – kindness of the Colts, and coach (Matt) Painter was amazingly kind to him in terms of access. Their people (at Purdue) were so great to him. As they wheeled him out last night, the local TV guys were all: ‘Hey Wash.’ Everyone’s stopping and talking to him and shaking his hand. He was looking forward to his next game.”

Oh, he’s at a game. They’re playing somewhere in the great beyond, and Wash is sitting courtside with that iPad. Heaven just got a sports writer, one who hits deadline. One who tells the story just right.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar or at facebook.com/gregg.doyel.

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