If you’ve followed Gator football for a while---you should remember Jack

Hairston… longtime sports editor of the Gainesville Sun… a journalist who knew--and

reported on—“10 Florida head football coaches” from Bob Woodruff in the ‘50s to

Urban Meyer in this new century… Jack Hairston died yesterday… he wrote

about Steve Spurrier as a Heisman quarterback, and as a “national championship

coach”... Most who enjoyed Jack Hairston’s work had “big respect” for his

“accuracy” and “news sense”… Jack worked at having “great sources”---contacts

that led to “scoops and insights”… Hairston was a chap from Mississippi who earned

cheers for Florida newspaper work in Jacksonville and Gainesville… next month, Jack

will be inducted into the Florida Sports Hall of Fame… Hairston was as “indefatigable”

as he was “accurate”---he survived three kinds of cancer…underwent heart surgery…

many other maladies… as a youngster, Jack walked away from two high-speed auto

crashes… a few months ago, he said, “it is remarkable that I’ve lived to be 81”…

Remarkable, indeed… I knew Jack Hairston more than 50 years---since I was a “dollar-

an-hour teenage sports-writing trainee” at Jacksonville’s morning newspaper, the

Times-Union… I spent summers “ushering” and “working the scoreboard” at a minor-

league baseball park---for me, it became “a journalism laboratory” ---listening night

after night to “seasoned” reporters like Hairston---talking about their professions---the art

of developing “good sources”---and “superb stories”… he loved being a

newspaper writer…to me, Jack was a mentor---a great friend… I owe him

so much---a lot of people do.