The bad news first reached me three or four weeks ago. David Climer, one of the best sports writers the South has seen during his 38 years at The (Nashville) Tennessean, was struggling with stage 4 cancer. I made a note to call but didn’t. Then last Thursday, while covering a Tennessee Titans practice, I was told he had taken a turn for the worse.
Early Monday morning, I found his phone number. I planned to check on him once the clock struck 9 a.m. in Nashville. Then I saw an email from a friend. Climer had died on Sunday. He was 66. I’ll regret not making that phone call a couple of weeks ago for a long, long time.
We all have folks in our chosen professions whom we like. We also have folks we admire, maybe to the point even of envying their talent or success. Those folks don’t always come in the same package. Climer checked all the boxes, however.
He was genuinely nice. He was also ethical. And immensely talented without feeling the need to let you know he was talented.
For instance, Larry Woody – another Tennessean journalistic giant – shared this memory of Climer on the newspaper’s website: “I’ve known David since he was a standout athlete at Lebanon High and I was covering preps for The Tennessean. A few years ago he told me he discovered a scrapbook his mom had kept that contained a story I wrote about him and the baseball team.”