Two reporters in heaven
Rob Price

When I read Wednesday morning Myron Cope had passed away, I raised my voice in the office and said, "Does anyone know who Myron Cope is?"

One of our ad reps said: "What's he sell?"

"Nothing," I said. "He just died."

But actually, Myron Cope did sell something: Himself, first as a sports journalist, covering men like Arnold Palmer, Muhammad Ali and Roberto Clemente; later as a sports personality, providing radio commentary for the Pittsburgh Steelers through the great 1970s and on, for 35 seasons of Steeler football.

It was Cope who invented the most visible symbol of Steeler fandom: the Terrible Towel you see Steeler fans waving at the games. But Cope did more. He had a voice that was so terrible, so irritatingly grating, and so infused with the ugliest dialect of English on the planet - that of southwestern Pennsylvania - that it became perversely a totally beloved voice for anyone who loves the Steelers. "Yoi!" Cope would yell when Franco Harris barged through the defensive line for another touchdown. "Double Yoi!" he'd yell when Terry Bradshaw floated a touchdown pass to Lynn Swann or John Stallworth.

Once he played golf with Arnold Palmer, who hadn't enjoyed Cope's published remarks that professional golfers aren't really athletes (They're professional "marksmen," Cope opined). Cope was short: maybe 5' 4", and weighed about 140 pounds. Arnold Palmer is about 5' 10", and in those days had muscles that made him look like a steel driver. Palmer razzed Cope throughout the entire build-up to teeing off. "Look at his clothes, they don't fit," Palmer teased. "Look at his grip; he looks like a kangaroo." On the first tee, Cope said a prayer, eased back the driver and then creamed the ball 200 yards down the fairway. "Stick that up your a----, Palmer!" he yelled.

In short, Myron Cope was a man of spunk and excellent speaking and writing skills. And the most curious thing about his death is how it coincided precisely with the death of another notable journalist and public figure: William F. Buckley, the conservative columnist and publisher of "National Review," whose maid found him dead in his study at just about the same time news of Cope's death was hitting the wires.

The New York Times obituary of Buckley credits him with helping to found the modern conservative movement that climaxed with Ronald Reagan (In 2006, Buckley wrote he didn't believe George W. Bush was a true conservative.). In founding "National Review," Buckley described the magazine's mission as an ideological rebuttal of the American liberalism honed and handed down by the New Deal. Buckley just had a unique way of putting it. The magazine, he wrote in its first issue, "stands athwart history yelling Stop!"

A journalist who uses the word

athwart" shouldn't expect to stay in the business long, but Buckley endured. He wrote more than 45 books and 5,5000 newspaper columns, and he hosted one of the longest running television shows in history: "Firing Line," a debate format that pitted Buckley against a huge cast of characters ranging from Barry Goldwater to George McGovern to Muhammed Ali.

Along the way, Buckley found time in 1965 to run for mayor of New York, even though he lived in Connecticutt and couldn't vote in the city where he worked but, under NYC law, would be permitted to serve as mayor. Reporters asked him how many votes he expected to get, and Buckley said, "At least one, my secretary's." When they asked him what his first act would be if he won, he answered, "Demand a recount." In the end, he got 13 percent of the vote.

Buckley might best be described as a Brahmin who just happened to take to the rough and tumble world of politics and newspapering. His family was wealthy, and he attended private schools in the U.S. and Europe before attending and graduating from Yale. He spoke in a curious northeastern dialect that sounded like a cross between a Bostonian drawl and a British clip. He sailed in the summer, skied in Switzerland during the winter and played the harpsicord year round.

He was as unlike Myron Cope as a man could be, and it is difficult for me to imagine the two journalists arriving at St. Peter's pearly gates on the same morning. Perhaps someone will have to make a joke out of it, something along the lines of: "Two reporters get to heaven at the same time, and St. Peter tells them there's only room for one."

But for now, all I can think of is Bill Buckley holding out his hand to Myron Cope. "I understand you're a man of letters, Mr. Cope," he says. "As am I."

"Double Yoi!" yells Myron.