Thank you, Gary Housteau, for everything

This was a day we all knew was coming, but did not want to face.

In fact, back in September I joined about 300 people in celebrating our friend Gary Housteau at a birthday party at a golf course near his hometown of Youngstown. Gary was celebrating his 57th birthday. He knew and we all feared it would be his last.

How do you celebrate somebody’s last birthday?

Well, you do it with a lot of memories, a lot of laughs and, yes, a few tears. And that’s exactly what we did on that late-summer Sunday night, enjoying a little bit of pizza, a few drinks and, for some, a cigar as the man of honor mingled with everybody who came to celebrate him.

My friend Gary Housteau passed away on Friday. His death came just shy of five years since he was first diagnosed with colon cancer. The cancer eventually spread to his liver and that is ultimately what cost him his life.

Gary fought that cancer with every fiber of his being. He worked out regularly and diligently followed the treatment paths he was given. He routinely shared on his Facebook page how difficult it was to ride the roller coaster with different diagnoses, flirtations with remission and the terrible, gut wrenching side effects from years of chemotherapy.

It was in August when his doctor gave him the worst news of all: He had three to six months to live. The cancer was going to eventually shut down his system. It had become unstoppable.

Still, Gary trudged on with a smile. He staffed every OSU home game for us this season and joined us on the road at Indiana and Michigan as well.

I know Gary as a great father. He loved his daughter Chloe and was beyond proud when she chose to attend The Ohio State University. As she was growing up, he proudly shared stories of her exploits as a child actor on the Youngstown-area theatre scene. Last spring, Gary and Chloe set out on a car trip to criss-cross the country. He mixed in some business as he stopped by Southlake, Texas, to look in on quarterback Quinn Ewers (remember him?). They saw family members and did sightseeing, sharing photos from the trip we’ve all wanted to take on social media.

I know Chloe has been enveloped by prayers from family and friends throughout this whole ordeal and I pray for her well being in the years ahead. I know her aunt (Char) and uncle (Ray) as well as her mother (Angela) will be there for her.

Folks here on Bucknuts know Gary as a regular contributor over the past 18-1/2 years – roughly the same amount of time I have been on the staff here as well.

Gary provided recruiting features and content throughout his time with Bucknuts. But he also worked as a photographer for Ohio State football home games and some road games for each of the last 19 seasons. He also wrote features and news articles on OSU football during his tenure.

I know Gary as one of my most loyal and best friends. Beyond the members of my family, I’m not sure I can name anybody who has been more loyal to me over the years.

In fact, the things Gary did for me in the years following my move to Bucknuts in 2003, I could never repay.

Over the last two decades, I have been approached to start new Ohio State websites several times. But I’ve never yet made that leap and there is a good reason – it’s hard.

I first came in contact with Gary probably in 1997 or 1998. At the time, I was the editor of Buckeye Sports Bulletin. We traded various college publications with other publishers and one that crossed my desk was The Valley Playbook. This was a tabloid-style newspaper Gary and his brother Chuck (who passed away in 2010) had begun a few years earlier. It was devoted to covering Youngstown State football, which a coach named Jim Tressel had made into a national powerhouse.

Gary and his brother covered YSU as well as high school sports throughout the Mahoning Valley. They were beloved on that local sports scene as they gave a spotlight to dozens of athletes and coaches who otherwise would not be covered. And, obviously, they lionized Tressel as he won four Division I-AA national championships with the Penguins.

When Tressel became the Ohio State head coach in January 2001, Gary made it a point to gain a photo credential to cover his games at Ohio Stadium. We also began to use him at BSB as a correspondent, both covering recruiting stories as well as helping out with our OSU football coverage.

The world changed for me in the summer of 2003 as I left BSB.

I was lucky in many ways that Mr. Bucknuts had, a few years earlier, started this website, Bucknuts.com. It was largely considered a “garage site” that covered topics regarding Ohio State football and recruiting, but did so from arm’s length. The site did not have credentials or an entrée to direct coverage with OSU’s coaches and players.

I came on board in the fall of 2003 and was able to bring that in-person aspect to the site’s coverage. We had Kirk Larrabee as the webmaster, Duane Long on recruiting and Dave Biddle and Charles Babb as part-time contributors.

While this was going on, Gary was becoming entrenched as one of the go-to guys for what was happening on the scene in northeast Ohio high school football.

He became very close with Ted Ginn Sr., the head coach at Cleveland Glenville. He was on the ground floor as Glenville sent a handful of players to high major programs, including Ohio State, every year. One of OSU’s biggest prospects was a running back from Warren Harding named Maurice Clarett. Warren, of course, was right in Gary’s backyard.

If we needed a game or a story covered in northeast Ohio, Gary was there. And he’d send back gripping features and dozens of photos every time to capture those moments.

Well, I leave BSB and I go to Bucknuts. And I asked Gary to come along on this new adventure. BSB had offered him the chance to continue to shoot the OSU games and contribute stories and features. I sold him on the idea that we could build this new website together.

He thought about it long and hard … and he made the decision to jump with me to Bucknuts. And we were off and running. Keep in mind, this was at a time when there weren’t many websites out there. BSB had its newspaper and its site, the O-Zone was a free site focused almost entirely on OSU sports and not recruiting and there was us, the virtually new start-up.

He and I started breaking one story after another on recruiting and people took notice. We had the boost of appearing on Channel 6’s pregame and postgame shows for nearly every game between 2004-08. We eventually added more staffers, including Biddle fulltime as well as the likes of Bill Greene and NevadaBuck.

In the span between August 2003 and December 2006 (when we abruptly left the Scout.com network over a litany of issues), we had quadrupled the subscriber base of the Bucknuts website. We had established our position as an industry leader – both locally and nationally. And there is no way I/we could have done it without the boost Gary helped provide in those early years. He specialized in one-of-a-kind content items that went behind the scenes and shared the human side of these athletes and coaches.

At the same time, we had also obtained the popular JJHuddle.com website and also begun Ohio High magazine. Gary was a natural to contribute features, articles and photos to that site and that magazine.

One of our most poignant moments was probably in the spring of 2003. Gary and I were on a tour of high schools in the Cleveland areas and we made a stop at Glenville on the city’s near-east side. I have to admit I was a bit skeptical as we pulled into the parking lot.

We go inside and Coach Ginn and his assistants and his players could not have been more welcoming. They treated Gary and, by extension, me as long lost friends. He had gained their trust as someone who could share their stories – stories of survival, resilience and triumph against all odds.

As Coach Ginn would put it, “We are doing this for the children.” I could see it with my own two eyes: They were saving peoples’ lives, and Gary was right there almost as a partner in this incredible mission by letting people know all about it.

As the Smash Mouth lyrics go, “Well, the years start coming and they don’t stop coming.”

We eventually got away from high school coverage and concentrated fully on Ohio State with Bucknuts. The roles for all of us changed a bit. The site was an independent for a while, affiliated with ESPN and TEAM for a short period and finally joined 247Sports.com in 2011.

Gary continued to shoot OSU games and write stories for us. Each year on the February signing day, he would go out and hit as many high schools as he could to share photos and interviews as kids signed with the Buckeyes.

I think about all the places we sent him. He went to the Big 33 game in Hershey, Pa., when that was still a thing. Ditto for the Ohio All-Star Classic when it would feature a handful of OSU signees. He was a fixture…