Sadly, we share the bad news of the passing of one of our most memorable, and colorful readers. With our thanks and condolences, we promise…we won’t forget.
It is with sadness that we received the news this week of the passing of Joe Bookwalter, aka Joe ‘B’, a former resident of Dayton, who had been living in the Sarasota area for the past few years.
Joe was born in Dayton, went to school there, and worked for GM for forty years, retiring sometime around 1989. He was an inveterate sports fan, following area high schools, the UD Flyers, Ohio State football, and the Cincinnati Reds. And somehow, some way, he found the Press Pros site online shortly after our launch in August of 2010…and he’s been reading, and commenting back to us, ever since.
We never actually met, of course, just his regular emails in response to articles posted on Press Pros, along with questions to Hal McCoy. Few got to the point like Joe did, or with such liberty. Some would say his comments on the Reader Speaks page were as entertaining as the articles themselves.
To the question of “competitive balance” in high school sports and the OHSAA’s ten-year search to find parity for all who play, Joe once wrote, “Competitive balance is as simple as this. If you don’t like gettin’ your a– beat you can do two things. Get better, or join the band.”
And when the Urban Meyer controversy surfaced at Ohio State last fall, with the press conference and Meyer reading the statement regarding his knowledge of domestic abuse by then assistant coach Zach Smith, Joe wrote, “All I can say is that if I had read that statement like Urban Meyer did, without a bit of emotion or remorse, my dad would have come out of his grave and kicked my a–. Makes you wonder who coaches the coaches?”
We had gotten word some weeks ago that Joe had suffered a serious stroke, and was living in a care facility near his daughter in Tampa, Florida. He was 87 at the time of his passing.