Katz, a 29-year-old, sports-obsessed sportswriter for the Dayton Daily News, was also a counselor and it didn’t take him long to notice Liss and try to woo her as only he would do.
“That first night I met him, he had one of those bigger portable cassette players and he put in a tape that included the music for Script Ohio that the Ohio State marching band does before (football) games,” she said.
“He had a megaphone next to it so it would amplify the sounds and the next thing I know, he’s marching out the whole Script Ohio, all by himself!
“I wouldn’t say that was the moment I fell in love with him. But as I look back at it now, it certainly gave me a clue as to what my life would entail.”
She recounted the tale as she sat with their three children — Rachel just in from Washington, D.C. where she works for C-SPAN; Aviva from Chicago and her position with Crate & Barrel; and Alex who works for CBS Sports and lives in Westchester, N.Y. — at the table of the Lincoln Park condo she and Marc moved into in 2020.
The memory gave them all a muted, but much needed laugh after two days of crushing sadness and loss.
Katz — the 77-year-old retired sportswriter of note who was long involved in the Jewish community here and whose best achievement is embodied in those three kids at the table and the six grandchildren they have added to the family — died Friday after a devastating fall the day before.
For the past couple of years, Katz had been dealing with health issues including Parkinson’s disease and a colon issue. While those were being controlled, he was diagnosed with orthostatic hypotension, which brings a severe drop of blood pressure when you sit up fast or then stand. It can cause falls.
He was home alone Thursday when he fell. After a long time paramedics revived him, but his injuries were severe and he passed away Friday.
He is survived by Julie Liss-Katz, his wife of 46 years; Rachel and her husband Geoff Storchan, and their sons Noah and Ethan; Aviva and her husband Michael Waitz, and their children Jonah and Emma; and Alex and his wife Elena Mayer, and their children Rami and Maya.
He’s also survived by his brothers, Barry and Howard and his wife, Beth.
The funeral service is Monday at 2:30 p.m. at Beth Abraham Synagogue, 305 Sugar Camp Circle.
Julie has been receiving condolences from across the nation and in them several people who knew Marc best have made mention of his ability to find a sports connection in almost anything that occurred.
When he and Julie downsized from their home in North Dayton and moved here, Julie said he was elated when he heard their new address.
“The address is 755 and he was like, ‘This is the best address I’ve ever had!’” she said.
“I asked, ‘Why?’
“And he was like, ‘Why? 755 is Hank Aaron’s home run record!’
“Everything to him was always seen through a sports lens.”
That was even the case Friday, she said:
“One of Rachel’s friends called and told her, ‘You know today is Jackie Robinson’s birthday!’”
Marc’s cousin Marty sent a note and said, ‘Marc also would have known that Friday was the birthday of Ernie Banks and Nolan Ryan.’”
Those three Hall of Famers would have felt right at home with Katz. He understood their sport and he knew how to treat an athlete said one of Dayton’s most famous sporting sons, Keith Byars.
Katz covered him at Ohio State and was there in New York when he finished as the runner-up for the 1984 Heisman Trophy. He wrote about him during his 13-year NFL career, covered the youth camp he ran here with fellow pro Martin Bayless and became a friend.
“Marc always treated me very fairly and that’s all an athlete really wants,” Byars said. “You just want to be given a fair shake.
“Our relationship grew from that off the field. He was just a darn good person and he’ll be missed. I loved Marc Katz.”
I’ve heard the same sentiment from people in all facets of the sports world the past two days and these aren’t just manufactured feelings that are being pulled out when somebody passes.
I worked alongside Marc for decades. We sat next to each other in football and baseball press boxes and on basketball sidelines. We rode together for Ohio State games around the Big Ten and Wright State tournament games.
Byars wasn’t alone. That’s how he treated athletes.
And there’s one thing I’m not ashamed to admit,. He knew sports —especially the trivia and history — far better than me. But I’m not alone there.
The folks going to Ohio University with him in the late 1960s got the same lesson.
“At the time the Quiz Bowl was very popular on TV and he told the people in the dorm he thought he could beat any one of those teams of four people all by himself if the subject was sports,” Julie said.
“They put a team together and when Marc walked in, the dorm lobby was packed. Everybody had come to watch. It came down to the end — four against one — and he beat them.
“It was his college claim to fame.”
Covering the big events
After graduating from OU’s respected journalism school, he worked a year at the Sandusky Register and then was hired at the Dayton Daily News.
Over the years he covered big events — the U.S Open Tennis Tournament, the Super Bowl, the World Series — as well as Ohio State football for two decades, Wright State and Dayton Flyers basketball, the Cincinnati Reds and Dayton Dragons, you name it.
He also was an influence on two young Dayton guys who became celebrated sportswriters in their own right.
“Marc really took an interest in Alan Abrahamson,” Julie said. “When Alan was 12 or 13 Marc would pick him up every Saturday night and bring him to the newspaper so he could help put out Sunday edition.”
Abrahamson has gone on to become an award-winning sportswriter and best-selling author, who worked many years with the Los Angeles Times and NBCsports.com and has a website 3 Wire Sports.
And Bill Rabinowitz, who grew up next door to Katz on Elsmere Ave., now covers Ohio State football for The Columbus Dispatch and is a well-received author himself.
Saturday he talked about the influence Marc had been in his life, not only in journalism, but in the way he saw him with his wife and kids.
“You won’t come across a nicer family,” he said. “And with Julie, Marc knew he had hit the jackpot.”
Sports and family
Julie said her upbringing in Detroit and Marc’s in Columbus were much the same and when they wed in 1978, they built a foundation for their life on their Jewish faith and their sense of family.
That’s not saying she — and their kids — didn’t have to get used to some of the quirks that came with Marc’s passion for sports.
‘’All us kids had to get used to updating the baseball batting helmets Dad had,” Alex said as Rachel and Aviva joined in his laughter. “He had batting helmets for every Major League team and he used to keep them arranged around the soffits in the kitchen,
“They were separated by divisions and arranged according to the standings, so we had to get the newspaper, look at the standings and then get the step ladder and rearrange the order when teams moved up and down.”
Julie shook her head: “When we moved here he wanted to put those helmets in the living room, but I said ‘No!’ “Then he thought we had high enough ceilings, so maybe he could put a basketball rim in here. I said ‘No!’
“He once said he’d found an age he was comfortable with and had stuck to it. He said it was about 16.”
While he couldn’t get Julie on board with his helmet idea, Marc did find a willing partner in Rachel’s 10-year-old son Noah.
“Dad taught him to read the sports page and so now he’d bring the paper in every day and go right to sports and start reading,” she said. “He would call my dad before big games and maybe trash talk or just ask who was going to win.
“He’s got little helmets on magnets and he arranges them according to the standings on our refrigerator door.”
Alex said he found he uses some of the same parenting tricks — a special spit to rub away an ouchy and make it better — his dad used on them.
Rachel said she’s pulled out a line of her dad’s to end any difference of opinion one of her kids has with her: “I say, ‘Well you know what Grandpa says: Life isn’t fair.’ That ends the conversation because it comes from Grandpa.”
And yet time and again the past two days I’ve heard people talk about Marc’s fairness and respect when dealing with them.
“Marc was always a professional in covering our team,” said Dragons president, Robert Murphy. “He covered our team like we were a Major League baseball team. I felt that respect he gave our organization elevated the Dayton Dragons at that critical time of starting up a franchise.”
Murphy said he and the organization are “saddened by the news. Our hearts and thoughts are with his family.”
In a touching note to Julie, Marc’s cousin Marty talked about what a “great” mate she had had: “Our thoughts and love are with you and all the progeny, who I hope know they were touched and loved by someone who is …unique.”
Julie smiled as she read that last word aloud.
In a time of heartbreak, unique brings back memories of a guy who started a love affair that would last a lifetime by marching all alone to Script Ohio, as a boom box blasted his accompaniment into the night … and a young woman’s heart.
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