A MODERN-DAY Renaissance man, Mitch Black, a longtime Chimacum School District educator and founder of the Cowboys prep golf team, died suddenly in Bangsaray, Thailand, at age 70 in late May.
To honor his memory, the Mitch Black Memorial Scholarship has been established through the Friends of Chimacum Schools Education Foundation. Donations can be made in Black’s name at focsef.org.
Tributes from well-wishers poured in for the Port Townsend native on his Facebook page in recent weeks.
A number of former students made the point that Black was a teacher who could see the value in everybody who walked into his history, contemporary world problems or physical education classrooms.
He was able to treat his charges with respect from the outset and the kids he taught could see his kindness and interest was genuine.
And like many of the best teachers, Black’s abilities easily translated to coaching athletics.
Black picked up golf at an early age when his parents Widge and Lois Black leased and managed Chevy Chase Golf Course (now Discovery Bay Golf Club).
He didn’t end up playing golf in high school for Port Townsend, owing to differences in philosophy with coach Jack Freeman.
A lifelong guitarist and musician, Black also was active in a number of garage rock bands in his formative years.
After graduation from the University of Washington he returned to the Olympic Peninsula to teach at Chimacum, and Black would end up golfing on a nearly daily basis with Freeman, a man who became a good friend and close confidante.
“We’d play golf every night and talk politics, and I found out he was one of the most well-read conservatives I’ve ever known,” Black said in 2015.
“We could talk about issues coming from a completely different direction, and it was refreshing to be challenged by someone who didn’t feel the same way about things that you did.”
Black said Port Ludlow Golf Club’s first golf professional, Ted Wurtz, gave him the push he needed to launch the Chimacum golf program.
“Ted Wurtz had a lot to do with starting things for me,” Black said.
“His son Mark was a seventh-grader and he asked me to coach him.”
Mark Wurtz became Black’s first state champion, winning the 1A crown twice in 1981 and 1982 and going on to play on the PGA Tour, including in two U.S. Open tournaments.
“I convinced [former Chimacum superintendent] Lloyd Olson that it would tie us to the community more to start a team at Port Ludlow,” Black said.
“We had failed nine levies in a row and there was no connection to the community at Paradise Bay and Port Ludlow.”
Wurtz died in April and I reconnected with Black at the time. Black’s efforts at trying to fly home to his house in the woods off Egg and I Road in the Chimacum Valley were delayed numerous times by cancelled flights caused by the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.
I spent a year in Thailand during a college study abroad trip and Black, a Southeast Asia snowbird, and I had bonded over a shared affection for the country and its people. We went back and forth discussing each nation’s response and his life as an ex-pat overseas in our last conversations.
Black retired from teaching in 2005, but stayed on as Cowboys’ golf coach for another decade, coaching Nordland’s Chris Johnson to the 2008 1A title.
In his 39-year prep golf coaching career, Black guided two Chimacum players to state championships and took golfers to 38 of the 39 state championship tournaments in that time span. His final season in charge in 2015 also saw Chimacum earn its first-ever district title as a team and eventually end up in fourth place at the Class 1A state tournament.
Black was in the golf coach position for so long he started coaching the children of some of his original Cowboys golfers.
He also was an avid outdoorsman, a backcountry hiker in his younger years with some excellent memories of deep hikes into the Elwha River Valley, and an avid fly fisherman on rivers and streams throughout the Pacific Northwest and Montana.
And Black always was the coolest guy on the golf course, a crack shot with the confidence to laugh at himself and others on a regular basis. He racked up numerous tournament titles and Port Townsend Golf Club Men’s Club championships in his lifetime and gave back to the game in his later years by tutoring some of the area’s best younger players.
To me, Black was always affectionately known as Uncle Mitch. Our families have been friends since the 1940s as his parents and my grandparents met while stationed at Fort Worden during World War II. My grandmother watched Mitch and his sister Laurie at her in-home day care on Clay Street during the post-war Baby Boom, and I’m good friends with Mitch’s nieces and nephews to this day.
My favorite Uncle Mitch memory is of him slipping a copy of the book The Brothers K by David James Duncan into my golf bag before a Port Townsend-Chimacum junior varsity golf match — he knew I loved to read and would appreciate that story of baseball, faith and family — and as usual he was spot-on.
He was always campaigning for me to get his nephew Brett, also a natural athlete, to take up golf, but I’ve only gotten him out on the course a couple of times. Maybe we can change that in the future.
Go for the green, Uncle Mitch. You can make it in two.
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Sports reporter Michael Carman can be contacted at 360-406-0674 or mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com.
