Steve Ellis Will Be Missed
There may be sportswriters around who worked harder than Steve Ellis of the Tallahassee Democrat, but in my 35 years in the business I never met one. Ellis, who covered FSU for the past three decades, was the beat guys’ beat guy. His drive and ability to get to the right people for the right answers were legendary. Even those coaches aghast to see their failures and fallibility splashed across the local paper under Ellis’ byline respected Steve and knew him for what he was.
And they mourned when Ellis died yesterday of a heart attack. So do I.
Steve was 54.
“He was a good writer and very accurate,” Coach Bobby Bowden told the Democrat. “And how in the world he found out everything he found out, I’ll never know. He could find out anything, boy. He had a great knack for that.
“He didn’t play favorites. He told it like he thought it was,” Bowden added. “Of course, I got a lot of grief out of it but still, I knew he was doing a job.”
The only two requisites for being a good sportswriter are to care and to have a clue. Nobody cared about doing his job the right way more than Steve Ellis and nobody had more of a clue about his beat. Beyond that, he was a joy to be around, always sunny, generous and decent.
Every time I saw Steve, which wasn’t often enough, he would say he was bound and determined to slow down and not let his job dictate his life. I knew better and I imagine so did he.
When he had his massive heart attack on Nov. 10, from which he never recovered, he was working from home. He insisted that his wife email his story to the newspaper before she called 911.
Some might see that as sad. I see that as Steve being Steve.