Wilk goes out with stories of a lifetime

Published online on Tuesday, Jul. 07, 2009

Woody Wilk's stories build slowly.

Dramatic pauses connect his words, as if something truly noteworthy is coming, and a lot of the time it is.

His stories are filled with great details, which remind him of other details and then other stories with great details. Woody and I once had a phone conversation where 11 minutes passed without me uttering a sound, a fact I pass along not as any sort of mockery, but simple admiration.

When one person has the great knowledge, you let him deliver it any way he sees fit.

Wilk's life is a bit like that, too, consistent, purposeful. He has been married to his wife, Debbie, for nearly 36 years. Not only does he have a model train his dad gave him when he was 3 years old, but it's still in the same packaging.

And for the last 25 years, Wilk has been doing the same work, sports information director at Fresno City College.

It's not a glamorous job, promoting junior college sports, and especially not in a Division I town. You pitch story ideas that don't get printed, type box scores that often go unused, give public address announcements to a few dozen at a baseball game.

"It's never been about me," he says.

This Friday it will be about him, his last day at work before he burns a month of vacation time and then retires. Those 44 rows at Ratcliffe Stadium get a little tougher to climb each season, he says.

"At the age of 66," he says, "I'm primed and ready."

There are a couple of rooms his wife would like him to paint. And even though it wasn't the intention, in this economy, he thinks maybe his retirement could save a younger person's job.

He has been sports information director for eight different men's basketball coaches; John Toomasian, who also was a politician, and Emory Luck, who also was a doctor, and Mark Mendez, who also was a noted résumé exaggerator. Wilk worked with Steve Cleveland and Denny Aye and Vance Walberg and now Ed Madec, who talks so furiously that he and Wilk even holding a conversation shatters laws of physics.

Wilk has worked through six different school presidents, not including the interims, men who mostly left to be chancellors and superintendents. At a stepping-stone school, Wilk built a career.

In the beginning, Wilk was born the "mid-life surprise" of a middle-class couple in Culver City. His mother, Martha, gave birth to him at age 43. His dad, Julius, once got a $10 tip from Jack Dempsey while working at a Firestone tire store in Beverly Hills.

"That tells me what a classy person Jack Dempsey was," Wilk says.

Wilk played sports at a small Christian college and eventually went into the Air Force as an intelligence specialist, and during the Vietnam War he was stationed in Greenland doing radio and television for the Armed Forces Network.

When the Dodgers were playing, Wilk would go to the station late at night and patch into the broadcast happening five time zones away. Not many things on this planet are as soothing as Vin Scully's voice at 2 a.m. when you're in Greenland.

Says Wilk: "I thought, 'Hey, I feel like I'm home.' "

That's how he envisioned his career when he was a kid, calling games like the young Vin Scully. Little did he know, 50 years later, kids would still be dreaming the same thing. Not everyone can be Vin Scully.

So his career did not go in that direction -- a lack of talent is all that held him back, he says -- even though he did some radio and television after he came to Fresno State to get a master's degree.

He had a different talent, though, the patience to care about young people and their crazy sports dreams. He watched a decent pitcher named Ted Lilly and an undersized kid named Matt Giordano play football.

He always put the kids ahead of the wins and losses, cared about the people more than the scores. His slow stories will be missed.

"I've tried to make it as positive a thing as possible," Wilk says of his days at Fresno City. "I think I'm a positive person. There's people in this world who have health issues. This game is not going to make my day a bad one."

This game is not going to make my day a bad one.

Scully couldn't have said it any better.