Steve Rupp listed two things on his resume that you don’t often see. He was an Eagle Scout and he had won Centralia, Wash., High School football team’s Most Improved Player Award.

The first told me he was resourceful and demonstrated good follow-through. No teenager attains Eagle rank without sweat and the ability to complete all of the job.

The second told me he wasn’t the star, but his coach noticed him. As an offensive lineman he had one job: make sure his quarterback wasn’t in the hospital when next week’s game kicked off.

So I hired him – three times, once as a news intern and twice as my sports editor.

I hired him first for an internship at the Camas-Washougal Post-Record, a weekly mill-town newspaper on the Columbia River where I had landed as editor after emigrating from England. He was one of three candidates I considered from Western Washington University, but the only one who wore shorts to the job interview.

He was so good that when my sports editor left to join the rival Vancouver Columbian in December I covered winter and spring sports until Rupp graduated the following May. The wrestling coach at Camas introduced me to nearfalls and (ugh) spitting to make weight; the Washougal girls’ coach helped me learn the difference between a rebound and a Rebok.

So Rupp graduated from WWU, one proud Viking in his mortar board and gown, a cigar in one pocket and my job offer in the other.

And he proceeded to teach me what community journalism should be. He taught me it’s telling it how it is, except when not to. It’s treating people well; they are not raw material for stories. They are living, breathing and sometimes bleeding souls who will be touched by today’s news tomorrow. He taught me to get it right the first time, and never guess. And he taught me to celebrate your successes.

After nearly six years in Camas, I moved to the daily newspaper in Moses Lake. In a couple of years, my sports editor left. I made one phone call. No need to check references.

Rupp continued his good work, but drove me nuts. If I gave him two sports pages he wanted six. One classic argument was whether bowling should appear on his sports pages. He finally agreed, but hell would surely freeze over before he would call bowlers “athletes.”

He labeled soccer a “metric” sport, played by unmanly foreigners. Too few goals, unconscionable ties, and too few stats.

Then he went to the field to watch me serve as a linesman.

I’m sure he came to laugh at me waving that silly flag, but I wasn’t his focus for long. The moment he saw a girl with one arm playing he trotted back to his car, grabbed his giant spiral notebook and a fistful of chewed blue pens, and set to work. He had scheduled an interview by the next substitution.

For Rupp could talk with athletes. He understood their language. He wrote about their dreams and their trials using their words, their silences. He captured their cadence. Readers loved him; athletes adored him, especially the kid on the bench because Rupp wrote his story too. Time after time he showed up to cover high school sports banquets and found himself accepting awards and applause.

My favorite Rupp memory is the two of us watching the opening ceremony of the 1984 summer Olympics on TV.

I treasure a photo of him holding the actual torch when it processed through his Washington hometown on its way from Moscow to Los Angeles. Civilians weren’t supposed to get close, but of course Rupp found a way to hold it and have that photo taken.

So the torch arrived in LA and passed through a succession of star athletes’ hands until the final runner stopped in the Coliseum and Rafer Johnson, a decathlete, lit the flame with the torch Rupp had held. (You may recall, it was the Olympics when the guy with the rocket pack descended onto the field – like something out of science fiction)

By the end of it all, Rupp and I could not look at each other. We were both weeping. It was as good as being there.

My 30-year anniversary of working for newspapers passed last month. I was going to write a self-indulgent column about my career’s highs in England and America. I’d been thinking how cleverly I would describe stuff about Miss World, Prince Charles, my trips to Northern Ireland, all the famous politicians I’ve known in five states. And, of course, the time a little weekly newspaper editor scooped the Wall Street Journal when Crown Zellerbach was sold to James River.

What baloney! Yesterday’s headlines; a memoir no one will read. Instead I am writing about a protege who taught his mentor.

Rupp left me for wilder locales, including a stint in Wausau, Wis., one hour from his beloved Green Bay Packers and a paper in California, so he could go see his Oakland A’s. One October afternoon in 1997, The Bellingham Herald newsroom realized something must be wrong: it was a Friday during football season and the sports editor was not at work.

They broke into Rupp’s apartment and found his body. A lifestyle of too much work, beer and pizza – and too little exercise – had stopped this big man’s big heart. He was 36.

He died on the day I moved to Astoria, 81 2 years ago. I am the journalist I am because of him.

Patrick Webb is managing editor of The Daily Astorian. Steve Rupp wrote the best U.S. sports headline ever. See sidebar.