Don Jellison and his son Jeff started the Hamilton County Reporter. In the Wednesday online edition, many wrote about their memories of him. Below are some of those memories.
by
Jeff Jellison
Publisher
Hamilton County Reporter
Hamilton County Reporter’s co-founder Don Jellison died this past Sunday at Harbor Manor Care Center. Don, in his nearly 60 years of newspaper reporting and coaching, touched so many lives. He impacted the community on a scale that is immeasurable.
I was recently asked, as the publisher of the Reporter, how do you describe Don in an article? Don was bigger than any newspaper. Don was a walking hard drive of sports history in Hamilton County, and from a news standpoint he challenged his community to be the best.
So how does a newspaper write an article on Don? You don’t. You let the people that he touched do all the talking.
Since Don’s passing the Reporter and the Jellison family have received hundreds of phone calls, emails and messages. Below are just a few from those that Don touched.
- Former Hamilton Southeastern baseball coach Ken Seitz said, “Don was great ambassador of youth / high school sports in the county.”
- Mark Resch, a former player for Don and an avid reader of Don stated, “If you do not know who Don Jellison was, you truly are not a Noblesvillian.”
- “Don helped lay the foundation for what Indiana baseball has become,” said Rob Barber, a long-time travel baseball coach.
- Noblesville Common Councilman Wil Hampton said, “A caring man who truly loved our community. This is an enormous loss for Noblesville.”
- Carmel High School Athletic Director Jim Inskeep was quoted in the Indianapolis Star: “Don had an institutional knowledge of everything in Hamilton County,”
- Former Noblesville Boys Basketball Coach Dave McCollough was also quoted in the Star, saying, “For a long, long time, he was there for everything. He was there for volleyball, baseball, softball, wrestling. And he wasn’t afraid to be opinionated.”
- Sheridan Football Coach Bud Wright was quoted saying, “If you got beat or got beat bad, he tried to see the brighter spots. He didn’t dwell on a lot of negativity.”
- Former Sheridan football player Brian Bragg stated, “Don was the guy everyone wanted to read after the big game.”
- One reader stated, “Noblesville’s legacy and history as told by Don will never be duplicated. Others from around Hamilton County described Don as a great reporter of the truth, a Hamilton County sports icon and a man that touched so many young men and women.
Don had a passion for sports and his community, but his love was family.
He was a committed husband who loved his wife Mattijane. The last week of Don’s life was a struggle with complications from pneumonia and Parkinson’s disease. During that time he never complained of feeling ill, but often said he was concerned that Mattijane had a cold.
Don was a father who taught his two sons the importance of work and family.
His granddaughter, Shelby, the only girl born to the Jellison family, was the apple of his eye. His grandsons, Drake, Zack, Vaughn, Matthew, Josh and Cameron adored him.
There is no replacing Don. No sports writer in Hamilton County will ever be more respected. No newspaper editor will ever have the ear of community leaders like Don did.
So, what does the publisher of the Hamilton County Reporter have to say about Don? Rest in peace Dad. I love you.
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by
Richie Hall
Sports Editor
Hamilton County Reporter
The first time I met Don Jellison was probably the most appropriate place in the world: A Sheridan football game.
It was the state championship game in 2005. Don was covering the game for the old Noblesville Daily Times. I was there for the Lebanon Reporter; we covered Sheridan because part of its enrollment is in Boone County. It was my first state football game, and I’m guessing it was not Don’s first.
The one thing I remember about sitting next to Don is that he didn’t say very much. He made a comment or two here and there. You got the feeling after sitting with Don that he was one of those people who could say a lot without having to say a whole bunch.
The next time I sat next to Don was June 8, 2007. How do I know this? Because it was the date that the Hamilton Southeastern softball team played in the state semi-final game at Cherry Tree Softball Complex in Carmel.
I had moved to Carmel about 10 months beforehand but was still working at Lebanon. I had heard about the Royals’ team, their star pitcher Morgan Melloh, and their undefeated season heading into state. Cherry Tree isn’t far from where I lived, so I got done at Lebanon early and decided to go watch HSE play.
I wound up parking at the Hazel Dell Christian Church, then walked to the field and saw the game. (Southeastern won, of course, then won the state championship the next day.) On my way out, I bumped into Don. He offered to give me a ride back up to the church parking lot.
I got in the car, closed the door, then heard him say: “Know anyone who wants to come work at the Times? Our sports reporter quit today.”
Nineteen days later was my first day at the Daily Times. Ever since then, I worked closely with Don, up until last year when he retired. It’s impossible to go a day without thinking about Don, since he put so much effort into reporting Hamilton County sports, then the last four years building the Hamilton County Reporter into what it is today.
I remember the early days when the Reporter was a print-only, weekly paper. It was a different feeling for me since I had gotten so used to the pace of a daily paper, and I’m sure that feeling was amplified about 10 times for Don – after all, he had 50 years of daily paper experience.
But there’s one thing I think people don’t realize about Don: He may have had the appearance of someone who was part of the “old guard,” but the truth is, he stayed up-to-date on everything: Journalism, sports, marketing, the demographic changes in the county, even technology. He whole-heartedly embraced the concept of an email daily paper. I think it re-energized him – he and all of us at the Reporter were part of something that was unique to the newspaper world, and still is today.
Did Don make me a better reporter? Yes. Because he had confidence in me, even during times when I didn’t have confidence in myself. Making a jump from eight years of reporting in Boone County and its three schools to Hamilton County and its nine schools is a daunting jump, to be sure. But Don believed I could do it. That made me believe it, too.
My favorite memories of Don are the times I got to see him in person. We emailed each other constantly and spoke on the phone almost every day, but we always worked in different places, so we never got to see each other all that much.
I always loved seeing him. He had friendly eyes and smiled very easily. The best was getting a chance to actually watch him cover an event in person. It was like watching a master at work. He had a great way of putting people at ease.
That’s what I’ll miss most about Don, is that friendly way about him. I’ve seen all the tributes to him, and heard people talk about him over the past year, saying what a great man he was. I think what made him great was not just because he was an extraordinary reporter, but it was also because of how much he loved what he did. That’s the only way someone can do what he did for over 50 years. He loved the kids, he loved the coaches, he loved the schools, he loved Hamilton County. And Hamilton County loved him back.
There were times over the past year when I would think about something involving that day’s paper, and start thinking, “How would Don handle this?” And then I would wind up doing exactly that, whatever Don would have done.
I’ll miss working and being friends with Don, but I think as long as I just remember that thought – “How would Don handle this?” – he will never be far away.
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by
Fred Swift
Hamilton County Reporter
Hamilton County won’t be quite the same without Don Jellison, the dean of local sportswriters, who died last weekend.
For more than half a century Don covered sports in our county like the proverbial blanket. If you wanted local sports, you read Jelly’s sports.
He brought newspaper readers results of every sports contest at every county high school. That was not an easy job, not by any stretch of the imagination.
Although Don turned 80 this year, he never quite retired. In fact he, along with son Jeff, launched the publication you are reading here when he was in his 70s.
I’m going to miss Don, and I’m not the only one, not by a long shot. I’ll miss his sports stories like so many others will, but I’ll miss him on a more personal level as well. We worked together off-and-on since 1964.
Don was already sports editor of the Noblesville Daily Ledger when I got a job on the newspaper staff right out of college. Although I enjoy high schools sports, I didn’t do sports at the Ledger. But, on a small staff we had a lot of contact with one another. We tried to help each other if one of us got wind of a story the other might want to pursue. We would good naturedly spar over politics and sports. Since Don was a Noblesville grad and a Democrat, and I was a Carmel grad and a Republican, we sometimes saw things a little differently, but always with good humor.
In more recent times when Don and Jeff started the Reporter, I was asked to write a general interest column. We call it the County Line in honor of our Ledger mentor Jim Neal who wrote a column by that name for many years.
As most readers know, Don hasn’t been able to keep up his writing during most of the past year. He wanted to get back to it, and I encouraged that when visiting with him at Harbour Manor over these past months. But, each time he began recovering from a bout of pneumonia, he suffered another setback.
Now, with Don having left the scene, another chapter in Hamilton County history closes. There will never be another Don Jellison, and county sports coverage will never be quite the same.