By Doug Doughty, The Roanoke Times
Former Virginia Tech sports information director Wendell "Wendy" Weisend, whose insistence on professionalism and decorum later became a standard for his line of work, died Wednesday in Blacksburg.
Weisend, who was 82, was suffering from lung disease and had been in a hospice until returning home Oct. 17. Among his final visitors was Tech football coach Frank Beamer, who was joined at Weisend's bedside by current Tech sports information director and Weisend protege Dave Smith.
"It meant a great deal to us," said Ann Weisend, his wife of 56 years and mother of their three children. "Wendy just loved Frank Beamer."
Weisend, a native of Youngstown, Ohio, received an undergraduate degree from Ohio Wesleyan before gaining a master's in journalism from Northwestern. He worked at Duke's hospital, writing medical stories that appeared in newspapers and journals, before coming to Tech in 1956.
The World War II veteran was Tech's sports information director from that time until 1978, when new Tech football coach and athletic director Bill Dooley arrived from North Carolina with his own SID, Jack Williams. Weisend went to work in Tech's library until his retirement in 1984.
"He was a chain-smoking, hard-working veteran who took as much care with the students in his office as he did the members of the national media, all of whom he seemed to know," said ACC associate commissioner Mike Finn, a student assistant to Weisend in 1977-78.
"I always loved hearing him write on his old-style typewriter. Every now and then you would hear him berating himself when he made a mistake on the typewriter, which was often. [He'd say,] 'Damn it, Weisend, you dumb ass.' It would bring major-league blushes to Phyllis, our secretary, and quiet chuckles to the rest of us."
Weisend, who had stopped smoking by the late 1970s, also had a softer, nurturing side.
"When I was a rookie sports information director at VMI, Wendy Weisend treated me as if I had been a colleague for 20 years," said Mike Strickler, now the executive assistant to VMI's superintendent. "I have never forgotten that kindness. I discovered first-hand what so many others had told me, that Wendy was not only a professional in sports publicity but a wonderful human-being."
Although Weisend has been gone from the Tech athletic department for almost 30 years, many of his disciples remain, and not just in the sports information field. Ken Haines, an executive with Raycom, was an analyst for Tech football and basketball games through the mid-1970s.
"Wendy was a strong believer that the function of a sports information department was to distribute unbiased information and not to be a marketing arm of the athletic department," Haines said. "He believed in promotion and marketing, but felt it belonged in another department."
Haines remembered being scolded by Weisend for exaggeration. He also recalled a time on a hot Lane Stadium afternoon when Weisend, who had one available fan, wouldn't place it in the Tech radio booth because he didn't have another one for the visiting announcers.
Weisend was best known for the line, "No cheering in the press box," at a time when that was a novel concept in college football.
"I remember a time when the president of the university walked into the press box," Haines said. "Virginia Tech scored a touchdown and the president clapped his hands in delight.
"Wendy went over and diplomatically told the president that cheering was not allowed in the press box. The president left, and for the next five years I don't ever remember seeing him in the press box again."
Ex-sports editors Bill Brill of The Roanoke Times and Bill Millsaps of The Richmond Times-Dispatch are in accord on Weisend, described as "a pro's pro" by Millsaps and "an absolute pro" by Brill, who remembered a time when he read a story over a pay phone while Weisend held a flashlight over his copy.
Tech analyst Mike Burnop still uses some of the tricks he learned as a Tech player who came under Weisend's tutelage in the early '70s.
"Wendy never threw us to the wolves," Burnop said. "If you were doing an interview, he'd always school you first, tell you what the reporter might ask. To this day, if I've got a few minutes before an interview, I'll give a player an idea of what I might ask. That comes straight from Wendy."