At first I thought it was a scam that’s become all too common on the internet these days. Call me about a tragedy that happened to someone we both know. I hesitated to call. I finally got the nerve up to dial the 505 number.
Not the news anyone ever wants to hear.
I first met Scott Ford in the fall of 2003.
I was lucky after submitting a sample of my writing that the then editor Joan Behar took a chance on me and let me intern. I was given the courts beat for a few weeks then I was told to go talk to Scott.
“I need some help covering Laguna-Acoma sports, are you interested?”, he asked me probably trying not to laugh at the look of surprise on my face.
He reached under his desk and pulled out a camera bag.
“Here, use this,” he told me as I tried to hide the little Kodak easyshare camera I purchased with borrowed money.
He gave me a ten-second tour of the camera and told me to go figure it out, he had stories to write. Scott also reached into the top of his desk and handed me an athletics press pass.
“You’ll need this to get into games,” he said as he directed me out his door after handing me a golden ticket.
My first sports story was covering a L-A Hawks football game against Zuni. I took meticulous notes. Every down, every penalty and every time out.
I wrote it all, more than 2,500 words worth of first-game grid iron action. I turned in my jump drive with my first sports article along with a few pictures.
He opened up the story and he said that it looked good and he was sending it to Joan to edit. Not five minutes later I’m called into Joan’s office.
“Wow Kie, that sure is a lot of detail. Cut it down to no more than 500 words,” Joan told me as she took a red pen to my epic telling of Hawks very first game of the season.
I took the hard copy of my now riddled with red ink story and sat down at my laptop and started chopping paragraph after paragraph to get it at or under 500 words.
Scott knew what Joan was going to do to my story and I like to think he had a good laugh at my naivete.
After my first sports submission was published, he gave me a copy of the paper to look at. There it was in black and white. I could call myself a sportswriter thanks to Scott. Thanks to Scott.
From that point on, we would sit in his office with a couple cups of coffee and talk local sports.
Scott told me it was okay to be a “homer” when we cover our local schools.
Write for the kid you are covering and write for the parents, the grandparents. Know your audience as they say.
He never said anything about my pictures so I just kept doing what I was doing and finally figured out how to work the manual settings of a camera and stop using “auto”.
The chats began to go from “try this next time” talks to “I like the way you described this here as a transition to your next paragraph.” It took a few months, maybe even a year, but he went from being a mentor/teacher to being my friend and peer.
I am going to miss you Scott, my mentor and my friend and I am sorry that we will never have those talks again. I won’t have the chance to ask you how the Chargers are doing in the AFC or who are the Pirates counting on this week in district against Pius.
I will be forever grateful that you took a chance on me and pushed me to step outside my comfort zone, to develop my own voice in my writing and in the photos I shoot.
Scott also told me to go out and have fun and we did. We had fun.
Scott Ford, my mentor and my friend, thank you for documenting the athletic achievements of so many Cibola County sports stars. When they get older and pull out those old newspapers, they will see it first.
By Scott Ford.
Bye Scott Ford. You will be missed by many.
If you or anyone is having a tough time dealing with everything life throws at us and is looking for a permanent solution to a temporary problem, call or text the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, 988.