Turning 91

TigerBlog can't begin to imagine how many emails he's received on his Princeton email account since he first started there.

It was his first email account. He didn't even understand how it worked. His first question was how much did it cost to send one.

Little did he imagine the impact that email would have on his job and the ability to transfer information quickly and easily, as opposed to the existing way of putting everything in the mail. 

He still remembers having to get prints made of head shots of all of Princeton's football players and then put them in the United States mail to the legendary Kathy Slattery at Dartmouth for her football program. It was an arduous project, and Kathy didn't get the pictures until just before she needed them. 

When TB had to send the same pictures to Rick Bender at Dartmouth a year ago for program in advance of the game at Yankee Stadium, the entire thing took about two minutes. 

TB has kept a few emails through the years. Most of the ones he gets he deletes without ever opening. How did he end up on so many lists? 

One of his favorites is from Sept. 9, 2003. That would be more than 17 years ago already. Wow.

It came from his former colleague and longtime friend John Cornell, who had been the publications director for the Office of Athletic Communications. That was back when there were a lot of publications, there was a separate OAC position to design them. There were only two people who ever had the title of publications director, and John followed Mike Zulla in the position.

By September of 2003, John was working for the state of Maryland's Division of Natural Resources, where he came up with the slogan "saving the bay one fish at a time." Well, at least he joked about it anyway. Funny guy, John Cornell.

The email TB saved was sent to seven people, and it was entitled "You know you worked in the OAC in 2001-02 if ..." Then it listed a whole bunch of inside jokes.

Reading it back yesterday, TB couldn't help but laugh out loud. They're hysterical, actually, but, hey, you know, you had to be there to appreciate them.

And of course, they took TB right back to 2001-02. There were a few references to the fact that once upon a time, everything that had to be printed, produced, copied or anything had to have a job number, and the list of job numbers was kept in the OAC. Anytime anybody anywhere in the department needed to do any of those jobs, they had to first call the OAC and get a number while also giving the OAC person the account number for which to bill the work. 

It was a huge pain.

Anyway, you'll have to take TB's word for it. The list is still great. 

To that list, TB could have added three simple words: You love Yav.

Everyone in the OAC back then loved Yav. He was an almost-every day part of doing business at Princeton then.

Yav is the nickname for the great Harvey Yavener, a longtime local sportswriter at the Trenton Times (and briefly before that at the Trentonian). Yav was the one who got TB started on the Princeton beat back in 1989.

Yav stopped writing around 10 years or so ago, a combination of age and the changing landscape of the newspaper business. He was, without a doubt, a classic old-school newspaper guy, and he never would have been able to, or wanted to, be part of what sportswriting has evolved to these days.

Nope. He was all about the longform feature, and the epic postgame story. And the wrap  - his one-man crusade to give as many column inches as possible to every single college event on any given day played by Princeton, Rutgers, Rider, the College of New Jersey (then Trenton State College) and Mercer County College. 

Yav had a notebook, in which he write in pencil, every event coming up. On the busiest nights - "killer wraps," he'd call them - there could be 30 or 40 events in his notebook.

His best things were his ability to get a great story from any subject, often taking an hour to interview an athlete where others might only take 15 minutes, and his commitment to gender equity long before anyone else in the newspaper business - especially a man - ever considered it. 

Yav turned 91 yesterday. TB spoke to him to wish him a happy birthday. He's still sharp, even if his hearing isn't very good and he moves slowly. He mentioned how he never thought he'd live this long, let along live this long and still be mentally where he is.

If you remember Yav, then you remember Polly too, his longtime companion (more than 60 years together without ever having actually gotten married). Polly, herself a saint, passed away two years ago.

Yav is still going strong though. 

TB thinks the last Princeton athlete he ever interviewed was Alicia Aemisegger, who graduated in 2010. If you came around after that, then you don't remember him.

And that's a shame. He was such a huge part of Princeton Athletics for so long. And, for TB, he's been one of the most special people who has ever been a part of his life.

So happy 91st birthday Yav.

Hopefully there are many more to come.