“Stormin’ Norman,” better known as Norm Clarke, died late last week. Cancer.
My friend for more than 50 years, he was—in not just my opinion—the best pure reporter ever.
That’s saying a lot, but consider how he got that moniker at the Rocky Mountain News in 1991:
Denver ended a decades-long pursuit of major league baseball when MLB announced that June that the Mile High City finally would be awarded an expansion franchise. Norm broke the story.
The year before, U.S. Army General Norman Schwarzkopf commanded Operation Desert Storm, earning, for a time, the nickname “Stormin’ Norman.” Clarke became the Rocky’s version when he got the scoop he’d been hired six years earlier, expressly to get.
I called him “Stormin” and he called me Max (never mind why).
Stormin had a remarkable knack for being where huge news occurred, throughout his career: the Beverly Hills fire that killed 165 in Northern Kentucky . . . The MGM Grand fire that killed 85 in Las Vegas . . . Hurricane Iwa that devastated Hawaii . . . the Bay Area earthquake that interrupted the World Series for a week . . . the skiing accident in Aspen that killed the late Bobby Kennedy’s son Michael . . . and countless others.
In each instance, what set his stories apart were the quotes he elicited from survivors. He had a unique ear for dramatic, emotional, story-telling descriptions and reactions, and a special ability to get witnesses to express them.
But that’s not why Stormin’s life is worth your time today.
As Norm Clarke relates in his autobiography, Power of the Patch, which was published just days before he died, he lost his right eye in a childhood accident. (He wore an eye patch for much of his life.)
Norm wanted his story to be an inspiration for anyone who encounters a disability or setback in life. It doesn’t mean you can’t succeed, he emphasized passionately. (Stormin was everybody’s generous friend.)
I edited Power of the Patch for my dear friend, and he asked me to spread his message as far and wide as I could if he didn’t live to do it himself. So here it is.
Norm Clarke grew up in tiny Terry, Montana. (I’ve never known anyone who is or was as proud of where they’re from as Stormin was of being from Montana.)
He had struggled with having sight in only one eye until his mother relented and allowed him to play 8-man football in his junior year. “It saved my life,’ he often said.
He was a grocery store clerk when he wrote his first newspaper story, about his hometown high school winning a state basketball tournament game on a last-second shot.
He was stunned a short time later when a nearby daily newspaper, the Miles City Star, offered him his first full-time newspaper job.
That began an almost 60-year journey that saw him receive numerous awards, including the Denver Press Club’s prestigious national Damon Runyon Award in 2015, and gain widespread fame that included his name and face on billboards across Las Vegas and many items from his Las Vegas Reviews-Journal column reprinted online by The Drudge Report.
He left Denver and the Rocky Mountain News in 1999 to become the R-J’s celebrity columnist. That distinction is very important; don’t ever refer to him as a gossip columnist.
In Las Vegas Stormin’ used his newshound instincts and skill to revolutionize the genre. He regularly broke news in Vegas Confidential, and declined many opportunities that would have been financially rewarding, always because he wouldn’t compromise his principles as a journalist.
His trademark eye patch, he wanted the challenged, in particular, to know, wasn’t the only example of persevering through adversity.
Norm Clarke was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004. His column appeared six times a week for the following 12 years, before he retired in 2016.
During that time, he participated in two clinical trials and overcame the loss of his bladder. He was participating in a third trial when he died a few months short of his 83rd birthday.
Power of the Patch is a highly readable account of a remarkably successful life against the odds.
True to Stormin’s desire that it be an inspiration to those facing obstacles, it can be ordered at no charge, except shipping, online at books@powerofthepatch.comj or by calling 720-326-8400.
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Denny Dressman’s 17th book, a collaboration with Kansas City artist Anthony High titled Black Baseball’s Heyday – Capturing An Era in Art and Words, will be published in late June. You can write to Denny at dennydressman@comcast.net.