Stephen Bray

Stephen Bray

April 22, 2025

Olympia, Washington - Stephen Bray-longtime journalist, sometime teacher, and ever-present father, died on Tuesday, April 22, in Seattle, WA, from complications of intestinal ischemia. He was surrounded by his wife, Diane Dakin, and two children, Aaron and Joel. He was 73.

Born September 7, 1951 in Lafayette, IN, he grew up in West Lafayette, graduated from W.L High School in 1969, and received his B.A. from Yale University in 1975. He received M.A.s from UC Berkeley in American History and Journalism.

Stephen covered the Seattle Mariners for The Olympian in the 1980s and 90s. He wrote a regular baseball column with trademark seriousness, wit, irreverence, and personal reflection. Never content to be a stenographer, his hard-hitting questions got him chased with a baseball bat on at least one occasion. But his despair at the Mariners' mediocrity belied complete journalistic detachment. Baseball was never just baseball; it was also academic, from its labor economics to its racial politics, a lens by which to critically view and comment on society. But when it was simply baseball, Stephen was, at first and at heart-and when not jaded by its quantification and commercialization-just a fan. A devotee of the Milwaukee Braves and especially Hank Aaron, he shared that love of the game with his children.

Stephen's writing was not limited to sports journalism. A student and admirer of I.F. Stone and early muckraking journalists, Stephen wrote dispatches from Nicaragua and Costa Rica in the 1980s, critiquing U.S. imperialism as it ravaged Central America and displaced thousands of refugees northward. Despite his strong political beliefs, Stephen preferred to hear others' views rather than argue his own. He enjoyed nothing more than one-on-one conversations, and, in later years, back-and-forth email correspondence as well. And when he listened, people felt heard.

Stephen and Diane moved to Olympia, WA in 1984, for the sunshine. (They were misinformed.) But they stayed, and between Stephen's baseball column and Diane's work as a family doctor for over 38 years at Group Health Cooperative (later Kaiser Permanente), the two built lives for themselves and their children interwoven in the fabric of their community.

Stephen also taught a journalism course at The Evergreen State College and, once, a seminar on the experience of cancer through literature, memoir, and film. In later years, he teamed up with his friend Oscar Soule to teach a full-credit program on baseball-its history, economics, art, and politics.

Stephen's life was altered by his being a medical marvel. The litany of health problems that shadowed him for the last 25 years of his life was the consequence of the experimental and life-saving chemotherapy and radiation treatments he received at Yale-New Haven Hospital between 1969 and 1971, which cured the cancer that he developed as a freshman in college, but which left lasting damage to his arteries that only became evident later in life. Until then, however, this lengthy reprieve gave him years hiking and traveling with his family-whether by dugout canoe on Amazonian tributaries with Diane, by bus in the Dominican Republic, by car through the American Midwest, or on foot in the Northern Cascades-and playing multiple sets of tennis with his friends.

And once a father, Stephen was a father first. He taught his children to play chess, tennis, and baseball, with the occasional bruise from an errant curveball to show for it. He taught them to cook by way of countless delicious and healthy meals. Assisted by overflowing bookshelves, he taught them to love books, appreciate ideas, and to never hesitate to share either.

Stephen was an avid learner throughout his life. As sports ebbed as a central focus of his life, and he lost the right to vote for the Hall of Fame, he developed new interests. He became fascinated by dinosaurs, human evolution, and archaeology.

Stephen is survived by his wife, Diane Dakin(Olympia); his two children, Aaron Bray( Elizabeth Jerison), who lives in Chicago, IL, and Joel Bray, who lives in Boston, MA; and his granddaughter, Naomi Jerison-Bray. Stephen is also survived by his brother Peter Bray and sister-in-law Bridget Reel; sister Sharon Bray and brother-in-law Leizer Goldsmith; and fifteen nieces, nephews, niblings, and grandniblings.

A Celebration of Life will be held in August.

A longer obituary is available at Legacy.com