Not that Irma was a pushover. She stood by her man, all right, but, as Pat McLoone, Daily News managing editor and longtime friend, put it, "She took absolutely no guff from him. Irma always could match Bill wisecrack for wisecrack."
Irma Steelman Conlin, a woman of incredible strength and courage who amazed her doctors by recovering from two brain aneurysms and a stroke in 2002 and returning to work as a real estate salesperson, died yesterday when she again suffered an aneurysm. She had turned 72 on Aug. 20. She lived in Washington Township, N.J.
"She was a tremendous fighter," said her husband, the Daily News sports columnist who is about to be inducted into the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame. "She was a feisty person and she had a tremendous impact on her community."
Irma was born in Atlantic City to C. Somers "Pete" Steelman and the former Laoma Lambert. She graduated from Atlantic City High School.
She met Bill Conlin when he was a hotshot member of the Margate Beach Patrol, winning swimming and boating competitions galore.
But after a disappointing loss in a boating race in July 1958, Bill was in a "blue funk," as he put it. He went to the victory party for the winning boat crew and his younger brother, Jim, who had gone to school with Irma, introduced them.
"So, you're the king of the beach!" she said to him.
"I thought, who is this feisty girl," he said. "Nobody talks to the king like that."
Bill was at Temple University, where he was sports editor and later managing editor of the Temple News, when they met. They began dating, and were married on Oct. 19, 1960, when Bill had moved on to the old Evening Bulletin.
He later joined the Daily News as a baseball writer and took Irma every spring to Clearwater, Fla., for spring training. "She became a huge fan," he said.
