April 20, 2012 – The indelible picture I have of Randy Starkman is one of him walking on Bloor St. west of Spadina with a bouquet of flowers. They could only be for his everlasting sweetheart Mary Hynes. It is with overwhelming sadness that I write about his death at only fifty-one from pneumonia. What a loss, not only to Mary and their daughter Ella-I cannot imagine their grief, but to everyone who cares about the real athletes of Canada and truly excellent writing.
Randy started covering Canadian athletes in Europe with his then-girlfriend Mary in the early 1980’s. They eventually came back to Canada where he started full-time with The Toronto Star in 1988. Since Sarajevo in 1984 he has covered twelve Olympic Games. In Seoul he gave a comprehensive report on Ben Johnson’s positive dope test and broke the story about Johnson’s second positive in 1993. This won him one of the two National Newspaper Awards delivered his way.
Watching Randy at the Olympics was a lesson in how to file quickly and accurately. He asked real questions of athletes because he knew so much about them. Then you’d see him on the media bus as he got shipped off to another sport, earphones on, laptop up as he wrote the story. He crammed more sport reporting into one day than any other journalist I knew. But still if he bumped into me at the press centre, he’d take the time to say, “Let me buy you lunch. I remember what it’s like to be a free-lancer.”
Randy was also friends with my brother Jonathon-a Toronto fire-fighter who organized a huge media trivia night as a fund-raiser for the Daily Bread Foodbank. Randy rallied the troops-I don’t know how many tables of journalists he managed to produce, but my everlasting memory of the last one will be of Mary’s TVO table arguing with my brother over a fine point on Canadian geography.
Randy and I talked for a few minutes that evening on Bloor St-he had recently filed a story on Mary Spencer-world boxing champion in the 75 kg category and while Spencer was getting more and more ink as women’s boxing makes its debut at the London Olympics, only Randy took the time to follow her to family’s home.
He situated the story at Chippewa of Nawash First Nation where Spencer’s roots are and where all kids love her. He went to their annual pow-wow. How many sports writers would ever take the time to travel 250 km north of Toronto to talk to ten-year-olds in a First Nation community? Only Randy. I coach those kids in cross-country skiing and Spencer is everything to them. His story captured who Spencer is and why it is so important for those children that she fights on all of their behalf. They were thrilled to see themselves in The Toronto Star.
As always Randy was gracious about receiving accolades about his work but I could see he wanted to move on. “Those flowers are for Mary aren’t they?” I said. He nodded like a school boy-still so in love.
