Sportswriter McDermott dies

From the PD


Jack McDermott covered sports for The Plain Dealer and other papers


Published: Thursday, January 05, 2012, 3:01 PM Updated: Thursday, January 05, 2012, 3:18 PM
By Grant Segall
View full sizeLarry Hamel-Lambert, The Plain Dealer
Lorain -- Jack McDermott hung out with world champions but liked interviewing teenage hopefuls, too.

McDermott, a long-time sportswriter for The Plain Dealer and other area newspapers, died Monday, Jan. 2, at home in Lorain from an apparent heart attack. The 68-year-old had suffered heart problems for years.

"Jack loved Lorain, knew it like the back of his hand and loved those kids out there," said Bob Fortuna, Plain Dealer sportswriter. "And the people in Lorain County loved Jack."

Those people included Joe Gentile, a boxer turned promoter. "Jack was a real, real nice guy," said Gentile. "He was fair with people. He was very supportive."

Gentile said he and McDermott had dinner with Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner in 1975, before the boxers' championship clash at the new Richfield Coliseum. And McDermott posed for a photo while taking a mock punch from champion Larry Holmes.

McDermott also covered countless young unknowns, including future stars like football's Matt Wilhelm, who won championships with Ohio State and Green Bay.

McDermott was born in Amherst and lived in Lorain County the rest of his life. He graduated from St. Mary Catholic School and Ohio State University.

In the mid-1960s, he began to cover high school teams for the Elyria Chronicle. He joined the Lorain Journal in 1969 and covered the Cavaliers's first years, including the Miracle of Richfield.

On the side, he was sports information director at Baldwin-Wallace College under football patriarch Lee Tressel and later at Oberlin College.

In 1978, he was sports editor of the short-lived Ohio Observer in Mansfield. He joined The Plain Dealer a year later and transferred to the paper's new Lorain County bureau in 1992. He retired in 2006.

McDermott coached his children in recreational baseball and softball. He was a passionate Democrat and Irish-American. He especially liked the Irish Tenor who shared his name.

His son, John M., coaches boys' basketball and girls' softball at Brookside High School in Sheffield and freelances sports stories for the Elyria Chronicle.
John Edmund McDermott

1943-2011

Survivors: Wife, the former Mary Kay Walker; mother, the former Margaret Mackin of North Ridge ville; children, John M. of Lorain, Kris Higgins of Hilliard, O., Molly McDermott of Amherst and Katy Smith of Clyde, O.; and 10 grand children.

Funeral: Private.

Contributions: St. Jude Chil dren's Research Hospital, 262 Danny Thomas Place, Memphis, TN 38105, stjude.org, or Autism Speaks, 5455 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 2250, Los Angeles, CA 90036, autismspeaks.org.

Arrangements: Dovin and Reber Jones of Amherst.