This isn’t a fun time to write columns.

Today will mark the second in my last three where I’m remembering someone on the local sports scene. Two weeks ago, it was Hilldale coach Don Hendrix. Today, it’s former Phoenix sports correspondent Kelly Bray, who died in the wee hours Thursday morning at Muskogee Regional Medical Center.

Kelly’s work graced the pages of the Phoenix and the Fort Gibson Times for the better part of two decades, the last round from 2002-2007, during which time I got to know him as a colleague. If you were one of the coaches, players or perhaps readers or area sports fans who had that opportunity, you probably noticed he wasn’t the picture of health.

For 16 years, his body required bi-weekly dialysis treatments for a spinal condition and complications from high blood pressure. The effects of that kept him from a 40-hour week. The busier he got, or wanted to get, the more likely he’d spend the next week in the hospital.

It made me wonder what I was doing to this guy.

But when Kelly’s sister-in-law got word to me how grateful the family was that we were letting him work for us at all, remarking how it had made such a profound difference in his attitude in his personal battle, I knew he needed a slave driver like myself.

On a week where the nation is dealing with a health care bill it may or may not be able to shoulder, the timing of Kelly’s death Thursday morning at the age of 44 gives reason to pause. I’m not certain of the specifics behind it, but as I understood it, he had to leave us in 2007 because in order to keep the full coverage of health benefits that covered his dialysis and other related treatment, he couldn’t work. His hours, so I was told, more than exceeded anything he was allowed in order to maintain coverage he couldn’t otherwise afford and he would face penalties for working at all now.

There was only one option and against the advice of this particular friend, he rolled the dice in search a full-time job with a chance at insurance. Kelly got that somewhere else – it turned out he didn’t qualify for the benefits – but Kelly wanted so much to be self-sustaining for his wife Janice and son Michael that he took the gamble, willing to try and pay for everything himself.

He lost that bet.

He took a couple of hospital trips during a six-month period and wound up having to quit – not what you need to do when most companies give employees a 90-day probation period to prove their worth.

But facts are facts. Kelly’s heart, though full of determination, was weakened by his condition, as were his other organs. He wouldn’t have taken the government’s help by choice, but then he also wanted a purpose. It’s a tough balancing act he simply couldn’t juggle legally.

He would later find contentment in his other love, preaching the gospel. He opened a storefront church at Fort Gibson with a food and clothing ministry. To keep himself clean with the authorities, every offering was put back into the church – he had no salary. Health issues would hit him here and there and finally, for the past year, he’s spent at least one time a month hospitalized. I’d visit him when I could and there were times I thought I would be seeing him for the last time.

But as with his desire to work, Kelly fought on from the hospital bed until it was his time.

Kelly will be missed here. I’m sure he was appreciated elsewhere. His determination in facing his obstacles keeps my priorities in focus in a business that has seen its share of tough times, especially in the shaky economic times we all find ourselves in.

Maybe, just maybe, his fight will inspire someone out there facing the same situation now.

He would have wanted it that way and it’s a privilege to do it for him.