By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
Rarely do I get personal in my writing. It’s never been about me, nor should it be. It’s about these high school kids I cover and trying to bring some positivity into their lives through what I do on a daily basis.
But this one is personal.
I didn’t know what I would say when I sat down at the keyboard to write about Dan Russoman, and, to be honest, I don’t really have a plan as I write this. I’m kind of just letting the emotions come out and see what my fingers come up with on the keyboard, and hopefully it will be enough of a tribute to Dan that his family knows how much he mattered.
Dan was the Sports Editor and News Director for the Hammonton Gazette and had been for more than 25 years. He lost his second battle with cancer in July, dying much too young, at the age of 56, and leaving behind a wife and three daughters.
It’s sad on so many levels, and I’m sure — like a lot of people who knew him — there’s a range of emotions going on these days. There’s sadness, there is anger that cancer seems to keep taking the good ones away from us. There’s the hopelessness that there wasn’t anything we could do to help Dan at the end.
I didn’t know Dan well — but, in a sense, I guess I did. I have known him for several years now, and by that I mean I would see him around at Hammonton or St. Joseph Academy games and we’d talk, about players, coaches, games, rankings, all the sports related stuff. It became something you looked forward to when covering a Hammonton or St. Joe game, something reassuring. Dan will probably be there, it will be fun to catch up with him.
You see, there’s kind of a brotherhood (and sisterhood) among high school sports reporters, photographers and videographers. There’s a mutual respect, because we know what it’s like to be in the other person’s shoes. And in Dan’s case, most of us could really relate because we cut our teeth at small weekly newspapers before moving on to other things.
When you’re in this kind of business, you typically don’t have a big friend group. The job demands a lot of nights and weekends, odd hours, all kinds of travel all over South Jersey, and sometimes the entire state. The people you see at games — the writers, the photographers, the videographers — they kind of become your de-facto friends. You might shoot one of them a text looking for a coach’s phone number because you want to talk about a senior who’s been having a good season. You ask about their families sometimes when you see them, get updates on kids and spouses. You like and repost their social media content to try to boost interest in what they are doing. Some may think we are all in competition, but it’s not really like that. This is a great group of people who will do whatever they can to help you out.
Guys like Mike McGarry, Patrick Mulranen and Guy Gargan of the Press of Atlantic City, Roderick Boyd, Chris Baker and Kevin Emmons of D2 Athletics, Kevin Minnick and Bill Evans of nj.com, Tom McGurk of The Courier-Post and Josh Friedman, who I worked with at The Daily Journal in Vineland before he had a great career with The Courier-Post and now has moved on to a different industry. Photographers like Scott Faytok and Dave Hernandez of nj.com, Matt Strabuk of the Press of A.C., stringers like Joe Warner, Kristian Gonyea and even some younger talent like Lucas Gurrier and Collin Conway. And Dan Russoman was right there with all those guys as somebody you could always rely on to help you out.
I know exactly what Dan’s wife and daughters are going through right now. I watched the same thing unfold two years ago with one of my older sisters, Eileen Watson, who was just 58 years old when she died after a year-long battle with cancer. When I heard that Dan was back in intensive care in early July after a really tough battle throughout April, May and June, I knew the time was coming. I reached out to him, said what I could, but what is there to say, really? Everyone has to deal with their own mortality on their own terms, and all we can do as people they care about is just try to simply be there for them.
I remember the last time I saw my sister alive, a few days before she passed. I stayed behind in the hospital room for a few minutes by myself, just holding her hand. I knew before I left that room that I would never see her again. It’s a weird feeling, with time simultaneously standing still and racing forward. You can’t do anything to stop it, all you can do is just be there.
One of the last things she said to me was, “life goes on, I guess.” There was a resignation in that statement. She was leaving behind her three boys and husband, and just had to hope that they would find a way to get by without her. There was nothing left she could do to stop the inevitable. The cancer ate away at her, and at that point it was a matter of days, not weeks, until she passed.
It’s incredibly sad that people like my sister and Dan Russoman are no longer here to enjoy the little things in life; the summer BBQs, a crisp morning in the fall, the smell of fresh-cut grass, the birds chirping in the morning, the silence after the first snowfall of the season, a hug from someone you care about on a tough day.
But, in time, the sadness will turn to remembrance, and we’ll be thankful that people like Dan Russoman crossed our path on our own life’s journey.
So many of these high school athletes don’t even know how good they have it these days, with as many people who are making a living now in the high school sports media business. When I was in high school, back in the 1980s in Ocean County, the best you could hope for in terms of coverage was maybe Kevin Williams of WOBM would mention your team in the morning highlights on the radio before you left for school. Forget getting in the Asbury Park Press, that was reserved for star players on great teams. I spent two-years-plus on the varsity baseball team at Lacey Township High, was a team captain my senior year, and got my picture on the Ocean County Observer one time — and they didn’t even get my name right! I guess whoever took the picture didn’t have a roster with first names, so the paper just made one up, calling me “Chuck” O’Sullivan.
My family got a giggle out of that, but really, that was it in terms of notoriety I got as a high school athlete. It’s so different today with all these people writing stories, taking photos and doing video highlights. It’s a great time to be a high school athlete, and I hope they appreciate people like Dan Russoman and all the hours he spent crafting stories that would allow the public a glimpse into the lives of the Hammonton and St. Joe players and coaches; and become a keepsake for the athlete and their family. Like all of us in this business, Dan’s was a labor of love. He loved covering these athletes, getting to know them, celebrating their achievements.
There’s talk of a potential scholarship in Dan’s name, and even if they named a street in Hammonton after him it probably wouldn’t be enough for all that he did for that town through a quarter century of grinding, staying up late, getting papers out to press every week for years and years. He’s impacted so many lives. He’d surely be embarrassed with this essay and say something like, “geez, Sully, you’re really laying it on pretty thick there.” I can almost hear him saying that right now. But he deserves the accolades. Like I said, I didn’t know him well. But then again, I did.
As Dan was going through his battle this spring he talked extensively on social media of the pain he was in and all the challenges he had to go through on a daily basis. But he said what made it all worth it was that light coming through the hospital window in the morning. That little reminder that he still had some time left. He still had some fight in him.
And maybe in the end that will be Dan Russoman’s legacy — don’t ever stop fighting to live, and live well, because each day is a gift. Dan’s days have come to an end, far too soon for anybody who knew him. But our days going forward will be better for having known him.