As I'm finishing up some things late at work I'm so saddened to see Jim Huber has passed tonight at the age of 67.
Huber was a true gentleman and a credit to the sports journalism profession as a well-deserving award-winning essayist and commentator.
We exchanged pleasantries at many golf tournaments over the years, and he was always a pleasure to speak to.
Huber participated in the Know Your Score Links & Laughs celebrity golf tournament and gala/comedy show on the Grand Strand for the past four years, including this past August, and was the 2010 national spokesman for the Know Your Score: Fight Prostate Cancer campaign.
Though a cause of death was not immediately listed, I believe he was hospitalized for the past few days with acute leukemia.
The best tribute I can think of is to run a parts of an article I wrote about Huber in July 2010.
It follows:
The battle against prostate cancer led Emmy Award-winning Turner Sports essayist and commentator Jim Huber to develop a bond with Arnold Palmer, and it is leading him to the Grand Strand for a couple events in the next five weeks.
Huber is the 2010 national spokesman for the Know Your Score: Fight Prostate Cancer campaign, and he'll be appearing in that capacity at two events sponsored by marketing cooperative Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday.
Golf Holiday and ZERO - The Project to End Prostate Cancer - are teaming up to offer free screenings for men in the area in a Drive Against Prostate Cancer event from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday at the Martin's PGA Tour Superstore location at 2310 Highway 17 in North Myrtle Beach. Huber will be there.
The Drive Against Prostate Cancer features a mobile medical bus where local licensed physicians conduct a two-part early detection procedure consisting of a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test and a physical exam. Men are encouraged to receive a PSA number that can be regularly checked and compared to detect abnormalities. More than 100,000 men have been tested in the bus since the program started in 2002.
Huber will also participate on his birthday Aug. 28 in the Know Your Score Links & Laughs celebrity golf tournament and gala/comedy show. Golf will be held at Long Bay Club and the gala at Embassy Suites Kingston Plantation Resort.
"It's been an interesting year," Huber said. "I've done an awful lot of television, radio and newspaper interviews all over the country talking about [prostate cancer]. It's been really good for me."
Huber is the third Know Your Score spokesman in three years, having followed Ken Griffey Sr. and Jim Boeheim. He was asked to be Boeheim's successor by Conway resident, actor, sports announcer and prostate cancer survivor Mitch Laurance.
"I've known Mitch Laurance for years, and I think because of our friendship he asked me to follow in Jim Boeheim's footsteps, which is tough to do but I was honored," Huber said.
Huber has been a newspaper reporter in Miami and Atlanta, spent seven years at an Atlanta television station and 16 years as an anchor and feature sports reporter at CNN, and has spent the past decade at other Turner Broadcasting stations including TNT. He has won an Emmy and the Edward R. Murrow award for excellence in writing.
Huber has never been diagnosed with prostate cancer. But his father, Bob, a mailman in Florida, was in the 1990s about the same time Palmer was diagnosed.
"I was covering Palmer at the time and we kind of developed an inter-family relationship that was very strange, and my father thought of it as kind of an honor that Arnold would check on his numbers and see how he was doing," Huber said.
Palmer asked Huber what his PSA numbers were, as well. "I said, 'I have no idea,' " Huber recalled. "He said, 'You'd better find out; it can be life or death.' Through Palmer I got the urgency of knowing what your numbers are. When you get older it's so easy to do and so important because if you catch it early enough, it's pretty beatable."
Huber's father died in 1999, but was free of cancer at the time of his death.
According to ZERO, more than 217,000 men in 2010 will be diagnosed with prostate cancer and 32,050 will die from the disease. Studies have shown regular PSA blood testing reduces prostate cancer deaths by 44 percent.
-- We will miss you, Jim.
