My journalism journey part 30

As I ventured into the world of college sports, I was introduced to two of the more interesting characters in Aberdeen sports. Clark Swisher and Bob Wachs were legends at Northern State University. I had known them before I moved onto the college sports beat, but now I got to know them even better.

Swisher coached everything at NSU when he first came to Aberdeen but eventually headed just the football program and then was the school's athletic director. The school's track and football stadium was named for him.

When I met him, he was retired from the college but still active in a lot of things. That included the high school all-star games and most of the college activities. The Gypsy Days' homecoming activities were also in his honor.

As a football coach, he amassed a record of 146-42-4 and three perfect seasons and was elected to the South Dakota Hall of Fame. However, it was something he did off the field that stuck out for me.

I was doing a story on him sometime in 1995, I believe, and I can't remember the occasion, but I learned so much about him at the time. I learned he was in the Army in World War II and was in Poland when the war ended. He and his Army troops helped liberate Auschwitz. He said it was the most moving experience in his life.

Later, he took a team back to Auschwitz to share that experience of the horror of the Holocaust. He told me anytime someone would come around and try to dispute the Holocaust; it would make him angry, because he had seen it: the stick-thin people standing there, waiting to be free again, hoping those who were coming would not be there to kill them but to set them free. He saw the realities of the death camps. He knew it was real.

Swisher died in 2005, having built a legacy with a strong NSU athletic program. It was passed down to Wachs and Jim Kretchman and Bob Olson.

Wachs was the winningest coach in NSU men's basketball with a 532-286 record in 30 years at Northern State (1955-85). The arena at Barnett Center was named in his honor, too.

When I met him early in my days in Aberdeen, it was because of the Bob Wachs Open, a golf tournament named in his honor. He also had been a golf coach and loved to golf in his retirement.

But he was all about basketball most of the time, I was told. He was a tall man with a white shock of hair and craggy face, an interesting face that always seemed to have a scowl. Not that he was unhappy or unfriendly. It was just the way the face was.

The weathered visage was due to years in the sun, and it took its toll over the years. When I talked to him finally in about 1995, he was in a fight for his life with melanoma.

I appreciated the chance to visit with Bob and his wife, Salona. Bob wasn't giving in to this cancer, no doubt, but you could tell it had beaten him down. He was thinner than in the past, and that's hard because he was thin to start. But his spirits were high, as were Salona's.

I came back from that interview with a knot in my stomach. I had seen cancer far too often, stared down that monster a lot and knew where there was a chance of striking a blow and where the monster was going to win.

In this case, I knew the monster was going to win.

Wachs died later that year. It was no big surprise.

There was a young track star, Allison Peters, a very fair, blond, freckled young woman from a town north of Aberdeen called Britton, S.D. She was a talented sprinter and jumper, and I would see her at track meets, working on her tan, and get on her about using sunscreen.

"But I want to get a tan," she'd say.

"You need to worry about skin cancer," I'd warn her. "You're like me. You're too fair."

After Wachs' death from skin cancer, I kept after Allison. I made sure she got sunscreen. I got that message to her that skin cancer was a real thing about which she needed to be concerned.

I hope the message went through.