Casagrande: The tragic death of a writer and the words left behind

This is an opinion column.
A day later, the words are haunting.
On his daily podcast, you see journalist Wes Rucker delivering what amounts to his mission statement. He’s explaining the journey to this moment and why he does what he does.
It looked liberating. Where he once was wired to rush into the debate and fight the man, the tone had softened in some sense. Rucker was voicing my internal monologue that’s been echoing through this vacuous columnist’s skull for months now.
Haunting because they were among the final words he spoke on this earth.
Rucker was killed in a car wreck an hour after the podcast wrapped in a tragedy that paralyzes the fingertips of professional keyboard tappers.
The father of a 4-year-old boy had recently announced his wife was expecting a daughter in May was suddenly gone.
A 43-year-old fighter who relearned to walk after a stroke nearly killed him a decade ago.
This is all so unfair. Unjust, considering just how well he captured the beauty and complexities of life.
The Valentine’s tweet he posted to 140,000-plus followers left all husbands feeling inadequate. Describing his wife as “a 5-foot-10 statue of perfection,” Rucker said her existence “is the reason I regret nothing in my life, because every step in that life led me to her.”
And, the kicker.
“I love you. I’m sorry I covered three games today.”
It’s spill-your-guts-out sad now.
Or the clip from December when, fighting back tears, Rucker thanked the East Tennessee Children’s Hospital staff whose multiple kidney surgeries saved his son’s life.
You just can’t watch it with dry eyes.
Not then. Especially not now.
Rucker found the words effortlessly. That’s what I always found so impressive about him as a colleague. The guy always found a clever way of saying exactly what was on his mind. If something happened in Knoxville, Rucker had the news and the perspective that put it in context.
He covered Tennessee for the Chattanooga Times Free Press before moving to 247Sports and eventually landing at WBIR-TV.
And he wasn’t lying about the online presence he brought. The guy wasn’t one to provoke on social media without a plan. Rucker knew his stuff and would regularly run circles around a fool who stuck his hand in the lion’s cage.
That probably includes some of you reading this right now. You probably deserved it.
Not that Rucker was never wrong, he just had the confidence and experience that made him stand above so many in this business. He didn’t have to fake it.
That’s what made his final professional words so profound to me. And why I wanted to share them with you, because they speak to what I want to convey in this space.
I’ve been fortunate to have this job as a sports columnist for nearly three years. It’s the job I’ve worked my whole career to achieve.
Some days are easier than others in the quest to translate the voice and tone I hear banging in this cavernous cranium to the screen you’re reading now.
In the hour before his death, Rucker spoke the words that explain my professional purpose. He spoke about the phase of his career when he was in an all-out blitz on the powerful.
“Now, I just kinda say, ehh, this is what I think,” Rucker said. “If it bothers you, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to bother you. But, you know, we say what we think.
“You do not need to agree with me. I do not make that a requirement. At all. But you will always know what I think because I’m not smart enough to hide it. I’m not and I don’t care to.”
Transparency, Rucker said, is the only way forward.
“If we want the people we cover to be open, accountable, honest, candid, why do we not expect the same of ourselves?” Rucker said.
Yes.
He acknowledged that most readers or listeners don’t really care about who is delivering the message. You’ll read this slice of the internet whether it’s me or someone else banging these keys because you’re passionate about the sports we cover. It’s not about us.
But while we’re here, we should be as authentic as it gets.
“My parents did not raise hypocrites,” Rucker said. “And we don’t abide by it, and we don’t tolerate it. I’m just trying to be the example you want to set in the world.”
It’s crazy because this wasn’t a message Rucker was teeing up as his Jerry McGuire career-manifesto moment. The short clip that circulated on social media was clipped from an off-the-cuff conversation coming out of a commercial.
Yet it’s something that’ll stay with me moving forward. I can’t claim to be Rucker’s best friend, though it was a pleasure getting to know him in the various press boxes, media hotels, and events over the years.
He’s always someone I respected and will miss moving forward.
His son, Hank, and the daughter he never met will know their dad had a voice that wasn’t silenced Thursday. He was loved and respected by the 5,400-plus people who combined to raise more than $500,000 in the first 12 hours of a GoFundMe launched to support his family.
Rucker was smart, funny and insightful.
Above all, he was no hypocrite.