Remembered for his infinite capacity for friendship and his bear-hug embrace of family — as well as being the guy who put the pun in sports punditry — longtime Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer Jack Wilkinson, 74, died June 1 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
His was a four-decade-long journalism career, spanning newspapers in his native New York, Miami, Chicago and for 24 years (1983-2007) Atlanta.
While his resume included all the big events — the World Series, the Super Bowl, the Masters, the Olympic Games, both summer and winter — he saved his best for college basketball. One day he might bring readers along for a conversation with UCLA icon John Wooden in the sunset of his life. And on another, take them on a vivid tour of the Parthenon of basketball gyms, Philadelphia’s Palestra. It didn’t go unnoticed. In 2020, Wilkinson was inducted into the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame.
His lighthearted touch and storytelling gift earned him two Georgia Sportswriter of the Year awards. But as recalled by his wife, Janet Ward, one of his most cherished accolades was an Associated Press first place for deadline writing — having tormented so many of his editors by clinging to his stories and slaving over each phrase well past any reasonable deadline.
Also the author of numerous sport-themed books centering on Georgia Tech and the Atlanta Braves, Jack counted it as a great personal victory when, after wrapping up the memoir of Pete Van Wieren, he was able to talk the straight-laced former Braves broadcaster into a title awash with whimsy. “Of Mikes and Men,” it was called.
Born in Queens, N.Y., and growing up in nearby Lynbrook, Wilkinson’s life was framed by sports from the beginning. As he recalled in one column about his relationship with basketball, he somehow managed to go off for 23 points in a ninth-grade game against a soon-to-be renowned opponent. That would be Julius Erving, in his pre-doctorate days.
He went to Hofstra on a football scholarship, as a quarterback. “Wilkinson?” mused one of his professors upon taking the roll. “We had a Wilkinson on the football team. Weak arm. Very weak arm.” Jack dropped that class and had already dropped football for another game. He was into lacrosse before lacrosse was cool.
His 15 seconds of television fame came when he took his yellow lab Milton onto “Late Night With David Letterman” for a regular segment called “stupid pet tricks.” Only Milton went off script, nervously relieving himself on stage before millions of viewers. The host and the owners were both highly amused.
Understandably, given his eagerness to tell such self-effacing stories and the warmth he naturally gave off, Wilkinson emphasized the blitheness of sports in his work. And had little patience for those who took themselves or their games too seriously.
“Awwww, that guy,” he’d say, with the expression of someone sucking a lemon, when someone brought up the name of a pompous athlete or self-important coach. Then, sometimes over a Pabst at his Poncey-Highland hangout, Manuel’s Tavern, he’d get back to laughing louder than anyone at the table.
Importantly, he earned the respect of those who mattered to him. “Jack loved college basketball, and he did a great job with it,” said former Georgia Tech coach Bobby Cremins. “He was always fair.”
Typical of Wilkinson’s style was this passage about the passing of old Fulton County Stadium: “Long before it became the ChopShop, Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was baseball’s little shop of horrors. The infield yielded more bad hops than Blatz Brewery . . . For most of the 1970s and the last half of the ‘80s, the ballclubs were as rank as the ballpark bathrooms.”
His quippish take on life wasn’t limited to sports. Back in 1993 during a spate of mysterious cow killings in Sand Mountain, Ala., Wilkinson came back describing the scene as, “udder chaos here.”
Some suspected alien influences. “Close encounters of the herd kind,” Jack wrote.
His final story for the AJC concerned a local late-stage synchronized swimming club. With the same loving hand he’d apply to any championship game, Jack wrote: “It was conceived, of course, in a bar . . . in a tiny booth bursting with middle-age mermaids guzzling beer and gazing longingly at a photograph of ballet legend Mikhail Baryshnikov. Thus was born Atlanta’s next cultural treasure. Coming this summer to a city pool near you: The Candler Park Water Ballet Company.”
Even after retirement from the AJC, Wilkinson couldn’t stay out of the press box. As an official scorer for the Braves in the late 2000s, “Wilky” earned himself another nickname — E6 — that being the scoring shorthand for an error by the shortstop.
Jack Wilkinson and Janet Ward were married in 1993. He had two daughters, Katharine and Alison, by a previous marriage to Lucy Keeble. He is also survived by nephews Ian and Kyle Stanton; great-niece Summer Stanton; and great-nephew Conor Stanton.
“Beyond his lifetime of words,” said daughter Katharine, “our dad’s real legacy is his huge heart — the care and camaraderie so many felt.”
In lieu of flowers, the family requests contributions to the Alzheimer’s Association.
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