Why wouldn't Dan Coughlin and I be friends? We're both Irishmen. We both graduated from St. Edward High School. We grew up in the same town and then moved to the same town to raise our families.
Oh, and he was 27 years my senior.
A nearly three-decade gap made no difference. We'd get together to watch high school football (he insisted on driving because everyone gave him the primo parking spots.) We sat together in the stands eating hot dogs he'd smuggled in thanks to an oversized winter coat. They were individually wrapped in foil. We talked shop, and politics and sports and people. He beamed about his kids and his grandkids, who were romping about somewhere in the cheering section.
Dan got me one year when he asked me to help him with the annual fundraiser he hosted at St. Edward. "You're in radio," he said. "Just help me read some of the auction items."
You don't say no to Dan, so I said yes and at the end of the night, unbeknownst to me, he told the crowd something like, "I have an announcement tonight. Mike McIntyre is the new host of this auction." Brilliant move. I couldn't even muster anger at this sly handoff.
Dan died Sunday. On Monday, one of his sons called and asked if I'd write his obituary. You don't say no to Dan's kids, so I said yes.
But how do you condense such a colorful life of 86 years into a few hundred words? First, you go way over the word count. Dan of all people would understand and there's plenty of space on the McGorray-Hanna Funeral Home web site. Second, you try to employ just a sprinkling of humor that you know Dan would have appreciated. Then you skim through his four books again, talk to his kids, and, finally, let your admiration flow from your fingertips.
What an honor it was to write this obituary. Here it is, for Dan, and with his family's permission:
Remembering a man who was 'woven into the fabric' of Cleveland
Dan Coughlin was a master storyteller whose wit and generous spirit made everyone he met feel like a close friend.
In newspapers, on the radio, on television, in books and in person, whether one-on-one or in front of a packed house, he crafted richly detailed stories, always centered on people and the qualities that make them unique.
His stories lured in every audience and drew waves of laughter, and sometimes tears. He could find the drama and humor in any situation.
Dan is referred to by colleagues and fans alike as a legend. He interviewed the biggest stars in sports, had a front-row seat to the biggest competitions, he even flew in a helicopter to his assignments. As much as he loved to tell a story, what he loved more was his wife Maddy and the family they raised together – four children, 15 grandchildren and an endless supply of love and laughter.
Dan Coughlin died at his home in Rocky River on October 6. He was 86.
Dan was born in the Collinwood neighborhood of Cleveland on September 17, 1938, to Arthur and Ruth (nee Strain) Coughlin. He was preceded in death by his wife Madelyn (Maddy), whom he married in 1980. He is survived by his sisters Ruth (Craig, deceased) Andrews and Cathy (Bill, deceased) Breninghouse; four children, Joe (Jeana), John (Hallie), Mike and Mary Bridget (Brian); 15 grandchildren, Danny, Grace, Evy, Tommy, Emmett, Finn, Jack, Annie, Maggie, Ben, Mollie, John, Cora, Joy and James.
Dan worked his own mortality into many of his stories. In his last book, “Just One More Story …” in 2018, he recounted his ill-fated attempt to race a stock car at the Barberton Speedway in 1996 for a Fox 8 television feature. He flipped the car, hurt his back and was taken by ambulance to the hospital. He said the back pain stayed with him the rest of his years.
“I’m now hobbling around like the Hunchback of Notre Dame,” he wrote. “Victor Hugo can write my obit.”
The family tried convincing Hugo, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” author, to pen this obituary, but without success: He died in 1885.
Dan, who grew up in Lakewood, was a 1956 graduate of St. Edward High School and remained an ardent supporter of the school, where he and Maddy sent their three boys and where he served on the board of trustees for two decades. He was a parishioner of St. Angela Merici Catholic Church in Fairview Park.
Dan was the legendary master of ceremonies at the St. Edward Wings Auction, the high school’s annual scholarship fundraiser. He also was the recipient of several of St. Edward High’s most esteemed honors: the 1994 Bronze Eagle Award, the 2015 St. Andre Bessette Award, the 2023 Alumnus (he’d convince God to send a lightning bolt if someone had called it Alumni or Alumna) of the Year, and was inducted in 2013 into the St. Edward High School Athletic Hall of Fame. He also organized the legendary Mahle’s Restaurant Lunch for the guys of the 1950s 1960s and now 1970s classes. St. Ignatius grads were also welcome, but they had to sit at another table.
If he wasn’t working in the press box or on the sidelines of an Eagles game for Fox 8, which he did the Friday before his death when St. Ed played rival St. Ignatius, he was in the stands shaking hands, sharing laughs and occasionally watching the action.
When covering his last Ed’s/Ignatius’ game, he developed an idea for his report in which he labeled the matchup the “Holy War,” which it’s been called for years. His grandson Danny, who was his right hand on the sidelines for all his “Friday Night Touchdown” work this season, told his grandfather on camera, “You can’t say that. The schools don’t want you to call it that.”
Dan, ramping up mock indignation, replied: “Well, why not? Is it sacrilegious or something? Listen, this is football. This is not the Altar & Rosary Society, for Pete’s sake.”
Classic Dan Coughlin, right to the end.
After attending the University of Notre Dame, he served in the U.S. Army 1st Armored Division before beginning his journalism career at The Plain Dealer in 1964. Over his 18 years there, he covered every sport except golf and horse racing. He started his career at the PD, as he ended it on Fox 8, on the high school beat. “I’m back to where I started and enjoy it just as much,” he wrote in his last book. He was inducted into the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame in 2017 and the Cleveland Press Club Journalism Hall of Fame in 1996. He was twice named Ohio sportswriter of the year.
Over the years at the PD, Dan covered college football, professional soccer and boxing – having chronicled the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier matchups. He covered 17 Indianapolis 500 races. He was the backup beat writer for the Browns and Cavaliers and spent two years on the baseball beat covering the Cleveland Indians, where he topped every story with what he called “four lines of light verse.” He wrote a poem for every game. For the 1990 season, he was the Indians TV play-by-play voice.
He joined the Cleveland Press in 1982, three months before it folded, and then transitioned to a career in broadcasting, first in radio on WHK and then on television for Channel 8, where he worked for more than three decades, earning an Emmy Award. He wrote sports columns for suburban Cleveland newspapers. And he wrote his first collection of stories for a book, “Crazy With the Papers to Prove It,” in 2010 and completed four such books for Gray & Co. publishers.
Gray & Co.’s founder David Gray said Dan’s books were quintessential Cleveland.
“He was just ingrained in Cleveland. He was woven into the fabric,” David Gray said. “I think people who didn’t know him might have thought he was making this stuff up. But he was there. He was everywhere.”
Inspired by Dan from his Tribe-covering days, we end this obit with four lines of light verse:
There was no other wit like Dan
At heart, a real family man
He told stories for you and me
Want more? Look up – that’s where he’ll be
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