Ron Green Sr. would make you put the newspaper down, shake your head and smile

The game ended, fans left, lights were turned off, doors closed. But to thousands of readers of the Charlotte News and later the Charlotte Observer, the result wasn’t official until they read what Ron Green wrote.

Ron, whom everybody I know called Senior, died Wednesday. He began to write sports for the Charlotte News in 1948, wrote his sports column for the Observer from 1984 until 1999 and continued to write periodically after he kind of retired. I thought he’d go on forever, and he tried. He was 95.

To understand Ron’s impact, understand that he came from a different time. Newspapers were a big deal, but he never thought he was. An absolutely elegant writer, he worried about the quality of his work the same way we mortals did. He didn’t have to talk about his concerns; you could see them in his face. Then you’d read him and think: What were you worried about? That’s one of the qualities that made him good.

Ron moved from the News to the Observer after Bob Quincy, the Observer’s excellent sports columnist, passed. I was a sportswriter at the Observer and moved to the News to become a sports columnist. I wrote my first on May 15, 1984, and Ron walked up, in the newsroom, and told me he liked it. It was my Welcome to the News moment, and if I make 95, I’ll still remember it.

Although the stories we tell about Ron will differ, there will be a sameness to what people write and say: He was a nice guy. We often say that about somebody who passes, but this time it’s true. Try to find somebody who didn’t like Ron. All the petty office politics and jealousies never applied to him. When your most talented writer also is your most humble, maybe step aside and watch and learn. I never heard him brag. Maybe he did over a beer or glass of wine or when he hung out with his golf buddies at Cedarwood Country Club. But I doubt it.

He once mixed up the names of two well-known basketball players in a big game, one of those mistakes that makes a writer wince. Readers take the newspaper personally, and they jumped him. Rather than invent an excuse, Ron wrote that he made a mistake and added that he probably would again.

We all have sports we favor, and Ron’s was golf. He was one of the best golf writers anywhere, and has the awards to prove it. He also was known for his annual Thanksgiving column. It could have been corny; maybe it was. But readers loved it, talked about it to me, savored it, saved it. In the column, he wrote passionately about his family and sports and the places and people he loved. And every Thanksgiving, there was a line or an image, or several, that made you set the newspaper down and shake your head and smile. He was that good.

Ron never viewed writing a sports column as a job. He thought of it as a pleasure, a gift, an opportunity.

Getting to know him, and read him, was, too.