The uproar over tickets for the basketball state finals earlier this spring brought to my mind a similar experience I had in 1995, when the Lady Hatchets reached the state finals. This was before I began working at the Times-Herald, so I took a six weeks position helping out in the Washington High School Athletic Office during the basketball tourneys, which is how it happened that I was the guy who had to sell state finals tickets that year.

The demand was overwhelming — we ended up selling over 2,000 tickets that year — and the dissatisfaction with the ticket process was just the same as it was this year. People couldn’t buy as many tickets as they wanted, they didn’t like the seats they got, and so on and so forth. I got that all day the first day of ticket sales, which lasted somewhere around 48 hours and might well be the longest day of my life.

In fact, the only way I made it through the day was because of one person, someone who didn’t have to be there but who was, someone who saw a situation where he could help out and did, who helped me until the last person was gone from the ticket window. That person was Dirk Combs.

It’s one of the great paradoxes of life that some of the worst people among us live to a ripe old age in prison, while those who represent the very best we have to offer leave us far too soon. That was the case last week, when he passed away at the age of 47. For years — in fact, the entire time I’ve known him — Dirk battled serious health problems with courage and determination, but an infection in his heart was a tougher foe than he could fight off.

Dirk was tireless worker who never let his physical difficulties keep him from helping people. Many of us complain for days about a little cold, but Dirk was never heard to complain about much bigger physical problems. And Dirk was always a cheerful presence wherever he was.

And Dirk was everywhere — working ballgames for WHS at the soccer fields, at Hatchet Hollow and the Hatchet House. He was also a longtime IHSAA swimming official, so well known that Sandy Searcy, the IHSAA Assistant Commissioner who oversees swimming, made the drive from Indianapolis to Washington last Friday to pay her respects to Dirk’s family, including his wife Pam and daughter Amber.

One night a few years ago at the Hatchet House, Dirk and I were working at a Hatchet basketball game when he began having some problems, which eventually led to him having to be taken by ambulance to the hospital. I’ll never forget seeing the EMTs wheel Dirk out Gate 4 when, just before they got to the door, he remembered that Amber was going to be at the game later on that evening.

Dirk reached out to me and said “Don’t tell Amber. I don’t want her to worry about me.” Here we were all worried about Dirk, and he was worried about his daughter worrying about him. Dirk touched a lot of lives in his time on earth. Places like the Hatchet House just won’t be the same without him around next year.

mmyers@washtimesherald.com