Dan Coughlin's Farewell to Dick Zunt

Goodbye, Zip

As you know by now, former Plain Dealer sportswriter Dick Zunt died of cancer Saturday morning. The final week was not easy, so it was a blessing when he took his final breath. The visitation will be Tuesday, Jan. 5, from 2-4 and 6-9 at Chambers Funeral Home, Rocky River Drive and Puritas Rd., Cleveland. Funeral Mass is Wednesday, 10 a.m., St. Patrick's Church across, the street from the funeral home, the church where Dick ushered for over 40 years.

For my out of town readers, both of you, you probably didn't see the terrific sendoff Dick got in The Plain Dealer. Terry Pluto did a terrific column on him and Mike Peticca wrote a wonderful obit. Their themes reinforced Dick's personna -- the nicest guy in the world. There were two words he could never utter. He could not say "no" and he could not say "goodbye."

I've been asked to deliver the eulogy, which is a great honor, but Pluto and Peticca already used the good stuff.

Oldest of five children, Dick was born in 1931 on Cleveland's near West Side. The Depression was bad enough, but then his father came down with tuberculosis and spent several years in a TB hospital. Dick's mother packed up the five kids and moved in with grandparents in order to save their house. She wisely rented the house in order to pay the monthly mortgage. Many years later Dick's mom and the younger kids were able to move back into their house. She was pretty sharp. That's how it was when times were tough and your only luck was bad.

They scraped up the money to send the kids to private high schools. Dick went to St. Ignatius when the tuition was about 75 bucks a year. He ran track, leading to his life-long love affair with the sport. After graduatiing from St. Ignatius in 1950 with classmates which included Bishop A. J. Quinn and Indians owner Larry Dolan, Dick worked for a year to save money for college at John Carroll. It was there that he whetted his appetitie for a newspaper career by working on the Carroll News, the college paper.
After graduating in 1955, he joined the Navy for four years. It was peacetime, but there was still a draft. In that era it was almost impossible to begin your life's work until you fulfilled your military obligation. One of the first questions an employer asked was, "What's your draft status?" If you said, "1-A," you were usually told, "Come back in two years when you get out of the army."

Dick was 27 when he got out of the Navy in 1959. Imagine, 27 years old and he was just beginning his life's work. That's fine if you're a doctor, but he wanted to become a sportswriter. He came back home and landed a job as an insurance adjuster and also started working part-time at The Plain Dealer sports department helping Ed Chay take high school games over the phone.

He worked both jobs until December, 1964, when Hal Lebovitz hired him full time to work with me on the high school beat. I was fresh out of the army and had just been put on the high school beat, which was an important responsibility. Hal made a smart decision by bringing Dick aboard and making it a two-man job. I was a rookie. I didn't even know how to get to John Adams Field. Dick showed me. He was well-experienced but he was tolerant of me.

Dick stayed on the high school beat for another 37 years, finally retiring in 2001 at the age of 69.

One lady in the city room said Dick was the most polite person she ever met.

Chuck Murr, a former PD copy editor, pointed out that Dick shook more hands and made more friends for The Plain Dealer than anybody in history. All of that is true.

A couple final thoughts now. On New Year's Eve Russ Schneider and his family and Maddy and I were with Dick, sitting around his bed at the hospice. The symmetry didn't occur to me until the next day. We all joined the PD in 1964 -- Dick, Russ and me. Here we were together for the last time. The Class of 1964 also included Dennis Lustig, the world's shortest sportswriter. Dennis died in the early 1980's. Now Dick is gone. Russ and I remain. I noticed that Russ is now using a cane.