Stephen Bray-longtime journalist, sometime teacher, and ever-present father, who covered baseball, politics, and his kids-died on Tuesday, April 22, in Seattle, WA, from complications of intestinal ischemia, surrounded by his wife, Diane Dakin, and two children, Aaron and Joel. He was 73.
Stephen covered the Seattle Mariners for The Olympian in the 1980s and 90s.
Stephen wrote a regular baseball column with trademark seriousness, wit,
irreverence, and personal reflection. Never content to be a stenographer, his
hard-hitting questions got him chased with a baseball bat on at least one
occasion. But his despair at the Mariners' mediocrity belied complete
journalistic detachment. He also covered the San Francisco Giants and Oakland
A's for the Martinez News-Gazette during his earlier residence in the Bay Area.
Baseball was never just baseball; it was also academic, from its labor economics to its racial politics, a lens by which to critically view and comment on society. But when it was simply baseball, Stephen was, at first and at heart-and when not jaded by its quantification and commercialization-just a fan. A devotee of the Milwaukee Braves and especially Hank Aaron, he shared that love of the game with his children-at the ballpark, in the pressbox, and playing catch on the front lawn.
Stephen's writing was not limited to sports journalism. A student and admirer
of I.F. Stone and early muckraking journalists, Stephen wrote dispatches from
Nicaragua and Costa Rica in the 1980s, critiquing U.S. imperialism as it
ravaged Central America and displaced thousands of refugees northward. His
journalism, photography, and videography later supported the work of local
community groups, including the Central American Action Committee and the
Thurston Santo Tomas Sister County Association, which, through their building
of community and interpersonal relationships, resisted U.S. interference
abroad.
Despite his strong political beliefs, Stephen preferred to hear others' views
rather than argue his own. He enjoyed nothing more than one-on-one
conversations, and, in later years, back-and-forth email correspondence as
well. And when he listened, people felt heard.
Stephen also taught a journalism course at The Evergreen State College and,
once, a seminar on the experience of cancer through literature, memoir, and
film. In later years, he teamed up with his friend Oscar Soule to teach a
full-credit program on baseball-its history, economics, art, and politics. He
regularly volunteered as a math tutor in his children's classrooms in the
Options program at Lincoln Elementary School.
In many respects, Stephen was also a medical marvel. The litany of health problems that shadowed him for the last 25 years of his life was the consequence of the experimental and life-saving chemotherapy and radiation treatments he received at Yale-New Haven Hospital between 1969 and 1971, which cured the cancer that he developed as a freshman in college, but which left lasting damage to his arteries that only became evident later in life. Until then, however, this lengthy reprieve gave him years hiking and traveling with his family-whether by canoe on Amazonian tributaries with Diane, by bus in the Dominican Republic, by car through the American Midwest, or on foot in the Northern Cascades-and playing multiple sets of tennis with his friends.
And once a father, Stephen was a father first. He taught his children to play
chess, tennis, and baseball, with the occasional bruise from an errant
curveball to show for it. He taught them to cook by way of countless delicious
meals. Assisted by overflowing bookshelves, he taught them to love books,
appreciate ideas, and to never hesitate to share either. A consummate writer,
Stephen's careful editing helped his children develop their own voices. He even
homeschooled his youngest, Joel, for 5th grade, developing a curriculum that
covered coal mining and labor unions, Negro league baseball and segregation,
and the American Civil Rights movement.
Stephen was also an avid learner throughout his life. As sports ebbed as a
central focus of his life, and he lost the right to vote for the Hall of Fame,
he developed new interests. He became fascinated by dinosaurs, human evolution,
and archaeology. He asked thoughtful and curious questions as his youngest's
queer coming out presented him with an opportunity to reflect on his own lack
of conformity to traditional gender roles as a stay-at-home-father. In 2024,
Stephen was honored to attend his first drag show to see Joel's debut
performance.
Stephen Daniel Bray was born on September 7, 1951, in Lafayette, IN, and grew
up across the Wabash River, in West Lafayette. His father, Ralph Bray, was a
physics professor at Purdue University, and his mother, Felice Bray, was a
community volunteer, activist, and founder of the local senior center. Elected
high school council president, Stephen excelled in academics and at sports, but
bemoaned that his height had stifled his basketball career.
In 1969, Stephen left Indiana for Yale University (with a muddy detour to
Woodstock with family friends) with aspirations to be a scientist like his
father. Instead, he found himself with a cancer diagnosis less than a month
into the school year. What followed were multiple rounds of chemotherapy and
radiation and a prognosis that left him with a survival chance of less than one
percent. He debated with his classmates whether the suffering he endured in the
treatment was worth the slim chance of success.
He persevered, and the treatments succeeded. Stephen spent a year solo
traveling the country in a van, during which time he experienced innumerable
highs and lows: Once, he passed out while drinking backstage with his musical
hero Kris Kristofferson; another time, he was hijacked at gunpoint by a
hitchhiker. Ultimately, he returned to his parent's doorstep in the dead of
winter, nearly hypothermic, very much alive.
Upon returning to Yale in 1972, Stephen's life outlook had changed. The
competitive teenager was now a contemplative adult. While he had initially
dropped his science classes because they were too far of a walk up a hill, he
found himself more interested in people than particles. He would go on to major
in American Studies, but first, and much more importantly, he met Diane, whom
he would later marry in 1980 and with whom he would spend the rest of his life.
After college, Stephen and Diane moved to the Bay Area-Diane for medical
school, Stephen for a graduate degree in history at Berkeley. Once again,
however, expectations were subverted, as Stephen realized that his interests
lay not in archival research but in listening to people tell their stories. As
he transitioned from history to journalism, he began covering Bay Area baseball
for the Martinez News-Gazette, initially for press credentials rather than
payment.
In 1984, Stephen and Diane moved to Olympia, WA, for the sunshine. (They were
misinformed.) But they stayed, and between Stephen's baseball column and
Diane's work as a family doctor for over 30 years at Group Health Cooperative
(later Kaiser Permanente), the two built lives for themselves and their
children interwoven in the fabric of their community.
Stephen is survived by his wife, Diane Dakin, who continues to live in Olympia;
his two children, Aaron Bray, who lives in Chicago, IL, with his wife,
Elizabeth Jerison, and Joel Bray, who lives in Boston, MA; and his granddaughter,
Naomi Jerison-Bray. Stephen is also survived by his brother Peter Bray and
sister-in-law Bridget Reel; sister Sharon Bray and brother-in-law Leizer
Goldsmith; and fifteen nieces, nephews, niblings, and grandniblings.
Stephen's public writing was simple but eloquent. Some of his finest work was
reserved for the annual holiday letter that, in the 2013 edition, he knowingly
called his "usual scintillating, witty, self-deprecatory and philosophical
epistle." There, he departed from the genre's clichés and instead openly
shared the quotidian details of family, work, politics, and illness.
As he reflected in 1992: "In sharing our lives with distant family and
friends we face the same dilemma encountered by the news media every day – what
to report. Do we emphasize happy or sad events, the exciting moments or the
everyday routines? Which is the more accurate picture of our lives? What do our
readers really want to know?"
