October 2007

Spotlight on Staff: Ed McKee

By Jill Lindstrom

For Ed McKee, there’s nothing better than a baseball game. He follows both the Nationals and Orioles—and is equally fond of watching games on TV or listening to them on the radio—but the St. Louis native’s first loyalty is to his beloved home team, the Cardinals.

Sports also are part and parcel of McKee’s career. As GW’s director of sports media and campus/community relations, McKee maintains contacts with GW athletic alumni and works with athletic archival materials. In the fall and winter, he sells group basketball tickets and handles many of the management responsibilities for men’s and women’s basketball home games, including coordinating cheer and dance teams, the GW Brass Band, and halftime activities. In the spring and summer, McKee is busy planning the Senior Honors Luncheon and other athletic-related events, such as team reunions, alumni games, and the GW Athletic Hall of Fame.

Q: What are the goals for the Colonials this academic year?
A: We want each of our 22 teams to be as successful as possible both athletically and academically. Last year, 64 percent of our student-athletes had a 3.0 grade-point average and were members of the Athletic Dean’s List. We’d also like to see all of our teams bring positive attention to the University.

Q: What have the successes of the Colonials meant for GW?
A: GW has always had outstanding name recognition and stature on the East Coast. In the past 20-plus years, however, we have gained far more national recognition. Athletics is one way to get the University’s name out there, to make people more aware of who we are, where we are, and what we offer students throughout the country.

Q: Give me an interesting factoid.
A: Well, I know of at least 72 former GW students who met as GW athletes from one team or another and eventually married. Thirty-six married athletics couples—that’s quite a number! And I know there probably are more.

Q: What are you doing to combat climate change?
A: My wife and kids would say I’m over the top about recycling! We separate newspaper, plastic, glass, cans, cardboard, and loose paper. I make periodic trips to the county landfill, which accepts recyclables. I also keep an eye out for packing foam—even picking it up from the sidewalk sometimes!—and computer boxes on campus and drop them off at a local UPS store, where they are reused as packing material. In addition, I’ve been in carpools or used Metro for more than 20 years.

Q: Do you have any phobias?
A: I’ll admit that I am a fair-weather flyer. I don’t really enjoy flying in bad and shaky weather. Oftentimes, I’m a white-knuckle airline traveler.

Q: Do you have a hidden talent?
A: Well, at 6-foot-8, it’s not a hidden talent: I always get to change the light bulbs—and anything to do with reaching high places!

Q: How about your family?
A: I have been very blessed. My wife Linda and I have been married for nearly 40 years. We have a daughter, 35, and a son, 29, both great kids. And we had a daughter who was 20 when she died. She attended GW as a freshman, then was a student at Virginia Tech until 1989. Our family certainly misses her, but we have 20 years of happy memories of her life and plenty of stories, which we remember daily.

Q: What is your dream vacation?
A: I would get a car and drive around the U.S. to see friends, family, and the nation’s sights. One of the real joys of life is taking back roads and state highways and listening to local radio stations, enjoying good tunes and Major League Baseball broadcasts with hometown announcers. That’s true Americana!

Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu