Loss of colleague with similar career hits hard

So, it was another birthday Monday.

I’m well into official senior citizenship, born on this month in 1957. During those years I was growing up in Fort Dodge, there was a kid named Steve Batterson born just four years behind me in Washington, Iowa, with the same interest in becoming a sports writer as I had in the town where Bob Brown was a legend at the Fort Dodge Messenger.

Maury White, Buck Turnbull and Ron Maly were giants in the sportswriting world at the Des Moines Register, but Brown and Dave Stockdale were “our guys” in Fort Dodge. They supervised me in my first sportswriting role as an 18-year-old freshman at Iowa Central Community College.

Batterson followed me at the University of Iowa and became sports editor of the Daily Iowan student newspaper in the same year that I graduated and found full-time work in Atlantic (1980), where I met my lifetime companion, Deb Imming.

I never became a close friend of Batterson, but because we had similar paths I stayed familiar with his work for decades at the Quad-City Times. In fact, the last time I saw him before his death on June 27 was while we were visiting our son Keith and his family in Davenport a few years ago and went to a Quad-Cities River Bandits game. Batterson was covering the game as he did for about 2,000 other Bandits games over the years, and we shared a few moments that day. He was polite, as usual, yet stayed on task.

The reason his recent death and funeral service today hit me so hard is that it almost seemed like we had parallel careers on opposite sides of the state. I never had a major college team like the Iowa Hawkeyes as a regular team for beat coverage, but I dabbled in the college stuff while concentrating on local high school sports. Batterson never thought he was above covering a small college volleyball match, or a high school softball game, just because he was the Hawkeyes writer. He just kept churning out content for readers.

In that respect we went about our jobs in a similar fashion through the 1980s and 1990s, when newspapers were still an essential part of the community’s awareness of local events and their high school sports teams. Everyone picked up that day’s paper to see what happened the night before, or what was said about the game they attended.

Don Doxie, longtime colleague of Batterson at the Quad-City Times, wrote a wonderful piece about his former co-worker.

It was noted that Batterson, 61, was originally hospitalized on June 5 because of problems with his kidneys, liver and blood sugar levels. He was in intensive care for an extended period and seemed to be improving before suffering a relapse on June 18. He had been in a coma for nine days at the time of his passing on June 27.

River Bandits owner Dave Heller referred to Batterson as “the consummate professional.”

“He was unfailingly polite and always respectful of people and their time but always determined to get the story and get it right,” Heller said.

Batterson was highly respected for his professionalism, accuracy and ability to meet deadlines. But, the thing mentioned by almost everyone in the story was his insatiable work ethic. He was supposed to work a standard 40-hour week, but supervisors struggled to keep him from doubling that number.

That takes me back to the 1980s and 1990s at the News Advertiser, when we just kept grinding because we were all so devoted to producing the most informative, comprehensive news source in southwest Iowa this side of the Council Bluffs Nonpareil.

The stuff I read about Batterson sounded so familiar. He often covered a high school game on Friday night, drove to a college game Saturday afternoon to either cover the Hawks or a local kid at a small college, and did all of the catchup work in the office on Sundays to contact coaches and complete all of the stories that would appear in Monday’s paper. Many other peers would have that day off, but not if you’re in daily journalism. Days off were scattered here and there.

“Just an absolute workhorse,” said Matt Coss, who was Batterson’s boss for most of the past five years at the Q-C Times. When Coss graduated from UNI his first job was next to me in the News Advertiser newsroom. I knew he was a star on the rise as we produced some incredible sports content in the early 2000s. So, there are multiple ties to this story that make it tough news.

“He just never stopped working,” said Jeff Batterson, Steve’s younger brother.

Heller added: “Talking to Steve Batterson was like talking to the house historian.”

That’s a role I’m trying to inherit from News Advertiser legend Max Sandeman, who preceded me for more than three decades. It’s an honor to walk in those shoes.

Batterson had that role for much of eastern Iowa and western Illinois for decades, and his passing is a reminder that our time is finite.

As I reached a new birthday Monday, I felt appreciative of the blessing to have another one and continue the relationships that mean so much. It certainly beats the alternative!

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Contact the writer:

Email: malachy.lp@gmail.com

Twitter: @larrypeterson