We’ve all had them. A late-night phone call or text bearing news so shocking it shakes you to your core.
I received such a text on Thursday night. That’s when I found out Knoxville, Tenn. media personality Wes Rucker, my longtime friend, had passed away.
My first reaction was disbelief. Here was a guy, 43 years old, at the height of his powers and popularity, who was so tough he fought through a stroke suffered 11 years earlier and after relearning how to walk and overcoming partial paralysis and migraines, came back stronger than ever. What the hell had happened to this rock of a man?
For Wes, it was apparently a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A car stopped on I-40 in Knoxville created a multi-vehicle pile-up. A truck hit and rolled on top of Wes’s car. In the blink of an eye, one of the most outspoken and articulate media members on the University of Tennessee beat was silenced. His death was rumored at first, but sadly, eventually confirmed via a Facebook post by his father-in-law David Goldberg.
I’ve known Wes for 20 years, having met him in Chattanooga, where he worked for the newspaper there. But my friendship with him grew after he moved to Knoxville and began covering Tennessee athletics for Knox News and 247Sports. Wes was made for the new age of media, where instead of simply writing stories, a sports journalist must post on numerous social media platforms, make videos, create podcasts and host television shows.
Wes was proficient at all of it, but he was an early pioneer of the social media platform formally known as Twitter, where he quickly built a group of followers in the six figures. That was no small accomplishment in a medium-sized media market. But Wes knew instinctively that Twitter was where he could meet his audience where they lived and breathed, and he wasn’t afraid to joust with anyone with whom he disagreed. He was funny and warm, but if someone wanted to come at him after he made one of his many controversial opinions, he was up for the task. Wes also didn’t mind making personal posts, about his wife, Lauren, their son Hank, and the impending arrival in May of their second child, a girl.
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I haven’t covered the Tennessee beat full-time since 1999, having left the newspaper business to pursue other media opportunities. But I go to several of the Vols’ basketball games every year, and I always looked forward to seeing Wes, usually decked out in what could best be described as his uniform—some kind of wind shirt or outdoor vest, jeans and a ballcap, which he occasionally turned backwards.
The conversations Wes and I had could be lengthy, as we tossed strong opinions at one another, sometimes just to see how they landed. But we never got into an argument. Not even close. The 2000 graduate of Tennessee was well connected in the school’s athletic program, and he was always quick to share information with me. He and I weren’t competitors, but even if we were, Wes wouldn’t have minded if I used any intel he’d slipped me. He was that kind of guy.
Wes was respected in Knoxville, and nationally, too. He was a voter for the Heisman and Biletnikoff trophies and had a vote on the Associated Press Top 25 football and basketball polls. He won numerous awards — on a state and national level — for his writing.
But the thing that stood out the most about Wes was he was a great human. I don’t want to say it’s rare to find great humans. But it’s rare to run into as great a human as Wes Rucker.
Tributes have poured in since the accident, even from the school he covered and sometimes had to criticize.
“Today is truly heartbreaking on Rocky Top as we come to terms with the tragic news about Wes,” Tennessee director of athletics Danny White wrote on Twitter. “Our hearts go out to his family and loved ones during this incredibly difficult time. We are keeping them in our thoughts and prayers.”
On Friday, basketball coach Rick Barnes made it a point to start his weekly press conference with a comment about Wes.
“We lost a friend and a colleague yesterday in Wes Rucker,” Barnes said. “It’s just heartbreaking. Our hearts and prayers go out to Lauren, his son Hank, and the one that’s on the way. We just ask that God will place a holy hedge of protection around his family. Wes was a wonderful person. We just ask at some point today you say a prayer for Wes and his family.”
I’ll miss Wes forever, but today I grieve for his young family — his loving wife, a son who lost his big bear of a playmate, and a daughter who’ll never get to experience how great a man her father was.
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