SAXON KIM CHAPIN

SAXON KIM CHAPIN Saxon Kim Chapin, a devoted husband and father, writer and journalist, died November 23, 2011 at home in Santa Fe. He was 69. Kim was born and grew up in Bay City, Michigan. He started playing tennis competitively at age 10 and twice went to the national junior championships. The day after his 15th birthday, he began covering prep sports for The Bay City Times, the newspaper where his father worked. Kim won a Grantland Rice Memorial Scholarship for prospective sportswriters from the Thoroughbred Racing Association to attend Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he wrote for the college paper and played on the tennis team. After college he became a sportswriter under the famous Jim Minter at the Atlanta Journal. From there he was recruited by Sports Illustrated magazine where he was a reporter and then a writer. His contributions there included pieces on Grand Prix driver Jim Clark, NASCAR stars Gary Bettenhausen and Billy Vukovich, runner Jim Ryun and tennis legends Rod Laver and Billie Jean King. In a "Letter from the Publisher," published in SI in 1968, associate editor Bob Ottum is quoted as saying about Kim's relationships with stock-car drivers, "He talks their language though he talks it a lot more quietly." Kim left SI to write books and freelance magazine articles. His books include a novel, Dogwood Afternoons (Farrar Straus and Giroux), Fast as White Lightning: The Story of Stock Car Racing (Dial Press), Tennis to Win (Harper Collins) and Billie Jean (Harper & Row) with Billie Jean King, The Beauty of Running (with Gayle Barron, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.), Namath: My Son Joe (with Bill Kushner) and a young adult novel, The Road to Wembley (Farrar Straus Giroux). With filmmaker Lance Bird he wrote the script for a documentary about endurance racing, called The Speed Merchants. In 1974 Kim came to Santa Fe for six months as the sports editor of the new newspaper, The Santa Fe Reporter, founded by longtime friends. He also freelanced many newspaper and magazine articles in various cities here and abroad. Upon moving permanently to Santa Fe in 1993, he wrote a sports column for The Reporter. Kim enjoyed coaching his sons in baseball and soccer in Regents Park while living in London, England. After moving West, he served as a referee with the Northern New Mexico Soccer Association, officiating at adult and youth soccer games. Living in Santa Fe, he particularly enjoyed the mountains, the ski runs, the hiking trails and the tennis courts, especially in the company of his family. Kim is survived by his wife, Anne Constable; two sons: Alexander Burnet Chapin of Salt Lake City, and Nicholas Constable Chapin of Portland, Oregon; and his mother, Roberta Chapin of Bay City, Michigan His father, Wendell Phillips Chapin is deceased. Funeral services will be at St. Bede's Episcopal Church.