"Writing about Seattle Sports"
Larry Stone
Sports Columnist Seattle Times
Introduced by: John Martinka
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Jenny Andrews was acting as President (she does have experience) for this meeting due to Chris Boland’s travels. First Steve Goldfarb and Andrew Face with guitars in hand played “This Land is your Land” while they and the members and guests present sang the lyrics. Then Kaj Pedersen introduced visiting Rotarians and guests.
Next was the introduction by Jenny of Eli Enger and his fiancé as Eli was inducted into membership. Congratulations Eli!
Other announcements were made by: Chris Ballard, Director of Vocational Service; Dennis Newell on our 2019 BBRC retreat in late March 2019, location to be determined; and Tim Leahy noted our membership goals and to continually consider others who would be good Rotarians. Mitch Freedman is in charge of Membership Cares this year. Kaj and Stephanie Rogers will meet with new members to explain BBRC expectations, replacing Rourke O’Brien who has moved to Boise. I know we will all miss Rourke and look forward to his visits!
Happy Birthday Kaj Pedersen (on August 22)!
Our speaker Larry Stone, sports columnist for the Seattle Times is a Cal graduate with almost 40 years as a sports writer. That all started on the Cal-Berkeley campus when he went to the campus newspaper to answer an ad they had to cover Cal baseball. Turns out he started the next day. After graduation Larry covered high-school sports and Central Washington University for the Yakima Herald-Republic, the Mariners at The Journal-American in Bellevue, and all Bay Area pro and college sports at the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat before moving to full-time baseball beat writer for San Francisco Examiner in 1990.Examiner.
Someone once told me he thought Northwesterners were like salmon. They always come back to their birthplace and Larry’s wife did that when he joined the Seattle Times in 1996. Larry covered the Seahawks for one year. In 1997, he started covering the Mariners who were on the rise, and in 2013 he moved to sports columnist covering a variety of sports stories!
A recent story he got a lot of comments from (he said the most ever) was a column he did title “What I learned from 27 Years of Being a Parent in Youth Sports. Another story coming out on September 6 includes an interview with Jim Whitaker, first American to reach the top of Mt. Everest in 1963 as well as hired by the founder of REI to manage REI’s first store in 1955. Jim is a young 89 years old.
Along the way, Larry has found access to players today more formal and restricted unlike the fun days in his early years. He covered Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr., had some funny comments about Don James and his great sense of humor and covered the “earthquake World Series” in 1989 – San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics! Larry has had a wonderful time doing a job that for he feels is a great fit!