Published by The Evansville Courier

One Friday afternoon two members of The Courier's sports department visited the Spot for a bite to brace themselves for the night's flood of high-school football games.

After making their selections, they looked around for a table - there were four or five lined against the outside wall. About halfway down they saw their sports editor, Dan Scism, and he motioned for them to join him.

Sitting down, both noticed that Scism was attacking three bowls of soup - chili, vegetable and bean. Evident, too, were crumbled crackers that had missed their targets.

"These were the only things I saw that I liked," he explained with a wave of his spoon.

This was typical of the man who spent 42 years as sports editor of The Courier. He formed his own opinions, didn't much care whether everyone agreed with him and could come up with a logical conclusion for about anything he liked or disliked.

When facing a typewriter he was a master of stringing words together. He was the only Evansville sportswriter ever to be honored with one of his stories published in a book that recognizes the best sports stories of the preceding year. And it happened twice, once in 1954 and again in 1964.

His "Sew It Seams" column on Dark Star's 1953 upset victory over Native Dancer in the Kentucky Derby brought him the 1954 honor. Then, in 1964, his column on the 1963 Derby appeared in the book, published in New York by E.P. Dutton & Co. and edited by New York Herald Tribune editors.