By Craig Basse, Times Staff Writer
Sunday, June 5, 2011
TAMPA — Tom McEwen, the Tampa Tribune's longtime sports columnist, often credited with helping to make Tampa a major sports city, has died at age 88, according to Linda McEwen, his wife of 41 years.
She said he had become weak after battling skin cancer. Still, she thought he would pull through.
"I'm as surprised as anybody," his wife said. "I thought we had him strong."
Mr. McEwen, who had a hand in many of the area's major sports events in recent decades, died at 3 this morning at his home.
Widely renowned for the power he wielded in Tampa, he was once listed among the 25 most influential people in the area by Tampa Bay Life magazine.
He was credited with helping to get Tampa Stadium built and with bringing a National Football League franchise and two Super Bowls to the facility. The stadium press box was named for him.
He was a 19-time Florida Sportswriter of the Year and a member of the Florida Sports Hall of Fame.
In 1991, he was inducted into the Tampa Sports Hall of Fame.
"My axiom has always been to work hard and be fair," he said shortly before his induction. "I've tried not to stray from that. And I've tried to teach the same principles to the people who have worked with me. Write for the people, not to the people."
The Tribune's sports editor since 1962, when he took over a department with a staff of seven, he stepped down in 1992 as overseer of 57 staffers. He continued to write a column for the newspaper and to respond to letters in his Sunday Hey, Tom! feature.
His final column appeared Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 4, 2001.
"This is my decision and I believe it is mutually beneficial to the Tribune, a near-lifetime romance of mine, and to me and my family," Mr. McEwen said at the time.
Before becoming sports editor of the now-defunct Tampa Times in 1958, Mr. McEwen was a sportswriter at the St. Petersburg Times for four years. He was a former sports editor of the Fort Myers News-Press.
He came to the Times in 1954 from the Philippine Islands where he worked for the U.S. government.
Born in Tampa and reared in Wauchula, Thomas Masey McEwen graduated from the University of Florida school of journalism.
In January 2001, as he was wrapping up his long career, he took a visitor to his Davis Islands home on a tour, pointing to wall after wall of a career's proximity to greatness: Framed photos of himself with Johnny Unitas, Bear Bryant, Jesse Owens and other sports superstars.
Evoking other memories was a black-and-white photo of himself with the tiny Tampa Tribune sports staff in the early 1960s, at the start of his 30-year reign as sports editor, before he became a force in helping build Tampa's sports temples like the Ice Palace, Legends Field, Raymond James Stadium.
His credits, which led the city to name a street after him, included the Super Bowl, once ridiculed as an absurd dream. As he was leaving the scene, the Super Bowl was arriving for a third time.
It was on his porch, two years earlier, that Tribune sports editor Paul C. Smith broached a painful topic: Mr. McEwen's exit from the newspaper he had dominated as editor and columnist.
Smith knew the stakes for Mr. McEwen. He had heard Mr. McEwen joke that he planned to quit writing when he dropped dead on his keyboard at a Bucs game.
"It's a dope. It's an addiction," Mr. McEwen said of his work. And more: Representing the Tribune had been his undisputed role for so long, he was the paper for thousands of readers.
In that job, McEwen did far more than cover local institutions; he helped build them. And in the process, he became an institution himself.
Mr. McEwen threw his weight behind a host of highly publicized causes, from landing an NFL franchise to moving the Yankees' spring training facility to Tampa. Many credited him with bringing the Buccaneers, the National Hockey League and pro soccer.
Yet, in the final years of his long career, Mr. McEwen's reputation was causing the Tribune embarrassment with the boosterism and insider maneuvering drawing sneers in the newspaper industry.
In the Tribune's commemorative section dedicated to Mr. McEwen, the veteran sports writer declared:
"I've had critics of my style and I do understand their criticism. At the same time, I'm me, not them. I have done it my way. Through most of that time, it was with the full backing of my publisher and newspaper. And if my influence helped to make this sports community a little better, I don't see anything wrong with that."
Information from Times files was used in this obituary.