Povich Column Was Monumental in Washington

WASHINGTON —  Shirley Povich, a gentle storyteller of games and players, was buried Sunday, having seeded childhoods with his love for sports and nurtured fans with delightful commentary for 75 years.

The funeral for the Washington Post columnist brought out sports figures who had felt the polite pinprick of his column, colleagues who universally pronounced him a gentleman, and readers who came to recall their moments spent with his column and the newspaper pages spread across the living room floor.

Povich, 92, died of a heart attack Thursday as he returned to his home from dinner with his son, David, and other family members. After a six-week absence, he filed his last column, considered critique of batters he had watched more than six decades apart, on Wednesday. It was published Friday.

To hundreds of mourners in Adas Israel Synagogue, Povich was their morning cereal, his column a short recess to savor life’s games as they headed out to work.

Don Mayhew hurried up the steps of the synagogue as the memorial service began, having just arrived after a 90-mile drive from Carlisle, Pa.

“Every morning, I’d find my father at the breakfast table before he went to work at 6:30. He’d say to me, ‘Read Povich today,’ and for 60 years, I’ve been reading him,” said Mayhew, a retired District fireman. “I came today for me and for my father.”

For others, the recollection was personal and filled with the humor that even strangers saw in Povich’s daily columns. His two sons and daughter shared recollections of their father’s patient exercise of the same honest judgment he applied to his columns at the service with his widow, Ethyl.

Maury Povich, the TV talk-show host and the columnist’s son, recalled his father’s unsympathetic reception to his complaints that Post television critic Tom Shales had lambasted Maury’s television show.

“But I’m your son,” Maury recalls protesting. His father replied: “I helped get Shales on at the Post. You are my son. But good writers are hard to find.”

Povich’s columns were from an old school of commentary: wry, witty, but couched in friendly prose that was forgiving as it did its damage.

“This is no time for cracks, men, those poor fellows were suffering,” he counseled after the Dec. 8, 1940, Washington Redskins 73-0 loss to the Chicago Bears. “They were trying to play football, if blindly.”

Washington Post publisher Donald E. Graham said, “Without Shirley, the Post probably wouldn’t be here today.”

Povich, hired as copy boy at the paper, officially retired in 1974 but continued to contribute columns.