Reusse: A tribute to Gregg Wong, a fine sportswriter and a fine human being

The 1980 Winter Olympics were scheduled to take place in the hamlet of Lake Placid, N.Y., from Feb. 13-24. The calendar of events was not extensive in that era, with skiing (Alpine and Nordic), speed skating, figure skating, ski jumping, bobsledding, luge, biathlon and men’s hockey.

There was considerable interest here, based on the hopes for Lutsen’s downhiller Cindy Nelson, and the fact that the hockey team was coached by Herb Brooks and loaded with Minnesotans. Any optimism for great accomplishment in the Olympic tournament for Herbie’s club was tempered by a 10-3 loss to the Soviet Union shortly before the athletes arrived in Lake Placid.

There was a more lopsided rivalry taking place in the Twin Cities, as coverage of those Olympics was being laid out by the daily newspapers. The Minneapolis Morning Tribune and the afternoon Star were sending a combined five (or was it six?) reporters to Lake Placid.

Over in St. Paul, where I was then located, the system for sports was to write for both the morning Pioneer Press and the afternoon Dispatch. And when word came down a few months earlier from the budget keepers that a single reporter would be going to Lake Placid, there was a quick consensus:

“We better send Wonger.”

Gregg Wong actually was a skier and already tight with Nelson. He had covered the Gophers for stretches and got along very well with Brooks — which is more than could be said for a share of us, including numerous players.

Basically, this was Wong’s specialty as a sportswriter: Everything.

The “everything” trait was demonstrated in the mid-1960s, when he went from Central High School in Minneapolis to the University of Minnesota, and wrangled a job as a student assistant to Otis Dypwick in the sports information department.

Make that, as “the” student assistant, since this was pre-Title IX, and decades before websites, and it was a two-person staff — Otis handling football and basketball, student Wong assisting with those and being responsible for getting out notes and stats on all other sports.

Of course, there was that Saturday in October when Wong also had solo football duties if there was a game at Memorial Stadium and it fell on the “Pheasant Opener,” a Minnesota holiday to which Mr. Dypwick was devoted.

Wong was early in a job in the St. Paul sports department in 1969 when he received a draft notice. He was stationed in the States, fortunately, and got out a couple of months early thanks to a pleading letter to his superiors from a young, ill-prepared PP&D sports editor (to whom Wong dictated the letter).

There were nine of us rowdies hired within a three-year period, and Shooter Walters came along a bit later, and it was more fun than a county fair — the goofball (Charley Hallman) and the grouch (Carl Peterson), the international man of mystery (Mike Augustin) and the excitable gent (Chuck Dixon), and all of us in between.

Gregg Wong will turn 79 on Thursday, and it’s a birthday that arrives with love and sorrow for all of his friends, for the memory gods have wronged the Wonger greatly with Alzheimer’s over the past year.

From the outside, you might guess that Sid Hartman, a legend before he died at 100½ years, had the largest circle of Minneapolis-St. Paul acquaintances of any sports media person imaginable. Knowing both well, I have to put Sir Sidney second to Wong.

Starting in grade school, to being the smallish Asian quarterback on a Central High football machine filled with great Black athletes — through retiring in 2002 from sportswriting to make lunch a three-day-a-week ritual with large varieties of friends, Gregg Wong was the Minneapolis guy who did know “everyone.”

Post-Pioneer Press, he went to work for pro Marty Lass at Edina Country Club. No task was too much of an ask for Wong, and he still had time for agitating members on the practice green and getting in a late round.

“The big thing for Gregg wasn’t getting paid; it was playing rights,” said Jon Roe, a Star Tribuner in his day, and an ultra-close friend to Wong. “He got me on Edina to play so often that people were asking me if I had joined the club.”

Married in 1979, Gregg and Donna had good jobs and a wanderlust to see great world capitals. “We both retired early so we could travel,” Donna said this week.

I ran across a piece written on Gregg’s involvement with St. Paul Urban Tennis that was written in the spring of 2024. It was an organization that he started with Sandy Martin in 1991, and then with much involvement from Michael and Mimzy Lynne from their tennis shop.

SPUT, it’s called. I had never heard about SPUT.

“Oh, yes, Gregg put a lot of time into it,” Donna said. “There were two people at the start — and now there are 65 volunteers involved and 2,700 kids in the program this summer, I believe."

Gregg Wong: A sportswriter devoted to helping others. I’ll be danged.

To which Gregg responded with a laugh: “Well, Patrick was just the opposite. ... He’s been a great friend for a long time. We often had a different outlook on things.”

I got a little misty reading that, knowing that you couldn’t really be a great friend of Gregg Wong, if he failed to slip in mild agitation.