The Loss of a Local Sports Luminary

Sunday, July 28th, Wyoming resident, Pat Harmon died at the age of 97.  He had been the sports editor at The Cincinnati Post, the historian for the National Football Foundation, and, from what I've read, so much more. 

Below is part of an article by Kimball Perry from July 29th, found at Cincinnati.com

After his mother died and he was abandoned by his stepfather, Pat Harmon became an orphan who rummaged through garbage to survive.

The kindness of an adoptive family and his love for for the written word helped land Harmon a wife, a college scholarship, a journalism career and iconic status as a well-known, well-respected sports editor and columnist for The Cincinnati Post.

“My mother used to get wonderful love letters from him,” son Mike Harmon said. His father and mother, Anna Worland Harmon, were married 73 years. Pat Harmon, 97, died Sunday at a Springdale nursing home.

While Harmon likely was best known as sports editor and columnist for the Cincinnati Post from 1951-1985, his family knew him as a kind man who taught them skin color doesn’t define people.

“The words that define him are justice and compassion,” Mike Harmon said.

Much of that attitude, his son believes, stems from Pat Harmon’s rough childhood. After he was left homeless, he was adopted by a family after he was found eating out of garbage cans. He developed a love for words and worked while in high school for the school newspaper and the local weekly newspaper writing sports stories.

That helped him earn a scholarship to the University of Illinois and, ultimately, jobs as sports editor of newspapers in Champaign, Ill., and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, before coming to Cincinnati in 1951. In Iowa, he created a controversy by selecting state high school all-star teams. “He picked two blacks,” his son said.

That attitude continued when Harmon moved his family home to the Cincinnati suburb of Wyoming where they welcomed African-Americans, Jews and others not normally seen in white homes in the 1950s.

“When we were growing up, everybody came to our house,” Mike Harmon said of the home that held his 10 siblings. “Our house was a hotbed of civil rights before the civil rights movement.”

At work, Harmon was known for his easy way and fanatical devotion.

On Dec. 31, 1972, when Pirates star outfielder Roberto Clemente died in a plane crash, Harmon was desperate to get to work, but a daughter had the family’s only car and was late. A fuming Harmon called a cab but as he waited, his daughter drove home in the family car. Harmon jumped in the back seat, slammed the car door and ordered to be driven to the newspaper as he furiously scribbled notes for a column he planned.

“It wasn’t until they got Downtown that he realized he was in his own car with his daughter driving,” his son said with a laugh.

In his later years, Harmon’s eyes failed him and, lately, his hearing was almost gone, his son said.

“He seemed to be less interested in sports but every now and then he’d ask how the Reds were doing,” his son said.

 

HERE is a link to the Kimball Perry article, and 

HERE is a link to a Bill Koch article