by Fred Seely
Editorial Director
Remember Jack Hairston?
If you’re a Gator, you knew him here (Jacksonville Journal) and there (Gainesville Sun.) He’ll miss Saturday’s Georgia-Florida game, but he won’t mind — it’s on television, so he can stay home and rest his aching knees.
The veteran sports editor has seen every Georgia-Florida game since 1957 — most of them in person — and can tell you every score. In most cases, he can tell you details of the game.
“It’s gotten to the point that I don’t need to go to the game,” said Hairston, now 75 and publisher of a newsletter about Gator football. “I can get enough at practices and off TV.”
Hairston was the now-defunct Jacksonville Journal sports editor from 1957 until the spring of 1971. He was the city’s best-known sports figure, even though he worked at the poor-sister afternoon newspaper. If there was a sports event or occasion, Hairston was there. In those days, the Jacksonville Quarterback Club drew the city’s elite together each Monday evening, and Hairston was in the middle of the action, holding court in the “team” room, where officers and the speaker gathered before and after meetings to swap tales and lift glasses (Hairston’s choice: bourbon and water.).
He was in the Wolfson Park press box during baseball season, on the Jacksonville University sidelines when basketball came and, most important to Jacksonville sports fans, he was the most knowledgeable Gator writer.
He worked hard to beat the bigger Times-Union to stories, and he almost always did. When the T-U somehow got something first, Hairston wanted to know why. Once, a promoter admitted that he fed a story to the T-U to reach its bigger circulation. The vengeance came quickly: a bitter tongue-lashing and a “Don’t call me again.” It took months for the promoter to get his name back in the Journal’s sports section.
But, through all this, Hairston was a big fish, and Jacksonville was a small pond. In the spring of 1971, a big-league offer came, and he went to the Atlanta Constitution.
Bad fortune: the newspaper wanted him to work in the office; he wanted to write and report.
Good fortune: The Gainesville Sun sports editor job opened, and he was back in the Gator fold by football season.
He served as the Sun’s sports editor and columnist for 20 years, leaving in 1991 after a nasty battle with the newspaper’s publisher that ended in a lawsuit over age discrimination (Hairston won.)
“It’s been a rough few years,” he said during a visit in Gainesville. Indeed it has: he’s battled (and apparently beaten) lung and prostate cancer, a heart problem and a bowel blockage. He’s been widowed, remarried and now faces his wife’s uncertain future — she’s just had a mastectomy and is headed for chemotherapy and radiation.
But Hairston soldiers on. He’s at Gator practices and news conferences. He’s a source for reporters and coaches. He’s the oldest and perhaps slowest-walking of the mostly-young Gator press corps, but he’s still trying (and usually succeeding) to outwork the rest.
He’s an authority on the Georgia-Florida game and recalls the times that the city almost lost the game.
“The city, back then, wasn’t on top of it, and there would be problems,” said Hairston. “Security was always an issue. The city wouldn’t provide enough police. The stadium was a concern; the campus stadium was getting more seats.
“Seemed like the city would step up to save the game just in time.”
And he’s a Gator.
“The X-ray came back in December 1996, and there was a spot behind the rib cage,” he related. “The doctor wasn’t sure if it was a problem or not, so he said, ‘I need to open you up and take a look. If it’s cancer, we’ll get it out. If it isn’t, we’ll sew you up.’”
One problem for Hairston: Florida and Florida State were to play for the national football championship in New Orleans.
“I asked the doc if it could wait until January, and he agreed,” said Hairston. “I wanted to go to the game — I already had a plane ticket, a room and game credentials.”
In January, in he went, and out came a lobe of his lung.
“Whenever I went back for a checkup, the doctor always would call another doctor in the room and say, ‘This is the guy who put off lung cancer surgery so he could see Florida play for the national championship.’”
The Gators won and, seven years later, it’s obvious that Hairston
did, too.