It was almost 40 years ago that I met Stu Nahan.

In 1966, we came to Los Angeles and I went to work at KNBC-TV (Channel 4) as the weekend sports anchor. In 1968, Stu returned to the city of his birth after moving to Canada when he was two years old. He joined the sports staff of KABC-TV (Channel 7).

Nahan loved to kid people, and be kidded in return. He always told my sons when he saw them, “You know guys, your father was my idol when I was growing up. I would watch him on television.” When Stu saw my wife with me, he would invariably tell her, “Lin, I’m glad you brought your Dad with you.” He would always say that I was from Shawnee, Kansas, not Oklahoma, as his way of teasing me. Pro athletes had a field day razzing Stu constantly. He would feign displeasure, but he loved it.

In the 1970′s, Stu and I were both doing the sports segment on the weeknight 11 PM newscasts on rival stations. He lived in Studio City and we lived in Tarzana. There were nights when we would get in our cars after we got off the air, Stu in Hollywood and me in Burbank. And at about 11:45 on the 101 Freeway going west, we would wind up driving side by side. One of us would honk, we would both roll our window down, and shout at each other hoping to be heard as we sped along, laughing as we went. In 1977, Stu replaced me at Channel 4 when I went to the Dodgers.

Stu was a minor league goaltender so hockey was his favorite sport. But, he also liked baseball very much, and enjoyed playing a verbal game of giving out the initials of an old time player, and seeing if you could guess who it was. He would take great pride in stumping you, or correctly identifying your mystery initials man.

It was almost one year ago—last January 19th—that I got a phone call while sitting in the Oklahoma City airport with Lin waiting to catch a flight home. A friend told me that Stu had been diagnosed with cancer, and the prognosis was not good. After surgery, he remained positive. Whenever I called him, he was encouraged. We are grateful that he lived 49 more weeks. When he died the day after Christmas at the age of 81, I got an e-mail from our son, Wes, who was visiting in Missouri. He wrote, “Too bad Dad. Stu was a very nice man.”

Yes, he was. I agree with Tom Lasorda who said, “I never heard anyone say a bad word about Stu Nahan.”

Ross Porter