Awful news: Neil Sheehan, who obtained the Pentagon Papers for the New York Times, died this morning at age 84. He was a tireless chronicler of the Vietnam War and earned the Pulitzer Prize for "A Bright Shining Lie":
This, from Neil Sheehan, feels especially resonant: "If you’re afraid of going to jail you have no business being a newspaperman."
After obtaining the Pentagon Papers, he pushed for publication even as NYT's publisher felt that “the entire operation smelled of 20 years to life”
Thomas D'Alesandro III died Sunday at 90. He led Baltimore as mayor during the 1968 riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., left politics and decades later saw his sister, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, pick up the family mantle:
"If to report now be called theft, and if to publish now be called treason, then so be it. Let God give us the courage to commit more of the same."
Full quote from Sheehan, after winning a reporting prize for Pentagon Papers 👇
"Happy people don’t often make good copy editors. Dave was the exception to that." My obit for David Larimer, a versatile and beloved Washington Post editor who oversaw breaking news coverage in sports and helped shape early reporting on covid-19:
RIP Claudia Levy, a Washington Post reporter and union activist who battled for women's equality in the newsroom. She helped bring a sex-discrimination complaint against the paper in 1972, leading the Post to prioritize hiring women and minorities.
Pour one out for Norma Miller, whose acrobatic flips, slides, leaps and twists made her one of the great Lindy Hoppers of the 1930s and '40s. She reinvented herself as comedian and singer and led dance workshops into her 90s. RIP, Queen:
"Hearing people still have so many misconceptions - like deaf people can’t read or dance or cry or laugh. The movie shows that we have the same worries and feelings, abilities and aspirations." RIP Mark Medoff, author of "Children of a Lesser God":
"Only when the many shapes of personhood are recognized will justice and human rights be possible." RIP Mel Baggs, a disability rights activist who championed the humanity of all, including those who couldn't speak:
Farewell to Judith Krantz, who "spun ornate, breathless tales with only-in-your-dreams endings. Her powerful heroines had showgirl names, fabulous wardrobes and beauty so astounding it defied the English language." From
@nbkrug
:
The Post obit for Jim Sheeler, a master obituary writer who honored fallen troops — and the Marine Corps major who helped their families grieve — with his Pulitzer-winning article "Final Salute":
RIP Mary Pratt, who threw a no-hitter, had a 20-win season and still knew the Rockford Peaches anthem by heart: "Oh, we’re all in bed by 10 o’clock, that is a dirty lie/We are the Rockford ballclub, our motto Do or Die." Yes, there is crying in baseball:
Kathleen Bruyere, Navy captain who helped win the right for women to serve at sea, dies at 76. "Some people thought it was treason — 'How dare I try to challenge the system?' But others kept saying, 'Good for you, good for you.'"
Ralph McGehee, disillusioned CIA officer who wrote a scathing memoir, "Deadly Secrets," dies of coronavirus at 92. "He just yearned for America to be better":
Working mainly from memory, he banged out JFK's obituary in a few hours for the Baltimore Sun. "By the time he stopped typing, he had gone through four packs of cigarettes and never smoked again."
David went birding most weekends with Matilda, his 7-year-old daughter. They were trying to see 100 species this year and recently checked off No. 40, a purple martin.
If you want to help support Matilda’s education, you can do so here:
Newsroom email: "Lord Stanley is in the house"
Journalist-neighbor, upon learning the lord was actually a trophy: "I thought it was, like, a bespoke haberdasher from Hong Kong"
New: Daniel R. Smith, a civil rights activist and federal worker whose father was born into bondage, died Wednesday at 90. Dan was one of the last surviving children of a formerly enslaved Black American. Marched at Selma, went to Obama's inauguration. RIP
"The Torah taught me that we are all created in God’s image," Rabbi
@RutiRegan
said, "and Mel taught me more than just about anyone else how to mean it."
A great journalist, and an even better person. "Once, her sister said, Ms. Levy was assigned to write a story about a homeless shelter. She brought a family she met there into her home for a year and helped support one of the children through college." RIP Claudia.
Yes, there is an obituary writer of the year award at a ceremony called the Grimmy, and a tombstone-shaped trophy to take home ☠️ Honored to call these wonderful, very charming reporters my colleagues.
"Her efforts to get women equal pay back in the day — that was like career suicide, and she didn’t care," her sister told
@bernsteinobits
. "She did it anyway."
George Holliday, who video taped L.A. police officers beating Rodney King, has died of covid-19 complications. His footage documented racial racial injustice, suggested a new era of citizen journalism and helped spark a week of deadly riots
Lisel Mueller fled Nazi Germany at 15, learned English as a second language, published her first poetry collection at 41 and won a Pulitzer decades later. She died Friday at 96 and had given readings in recent years from memory, her eyesight failing:
“What amazes me most is that we are so willing to lose things that we can never get back — even further, we appear hellbent on our own destruction. It’s riveting.”
Allan Gerson died Sunday at 74. The son of Jewish refugees from Poland, he was a self-described "dreamer" who went after Nazi war criminals as a trial lawyer and spent a decade obtaining justice for victims of the Lockerbie bombing:
Some advice from transgender model/actress/socialite April Ashley, who died last month at 86: “Be kind to yourself, and to others. Be beautiful on the inside, and that will show on the outside. But most of all, be brave. Because you’ll need to be.”
New: Roger Mudd, probing TV journalist and network news anchor, dies at 93. Hailed as "the best Washington broadcast reporter of his generation," he reported on the Pentagon's profligate spending and conducted a devastating interview with Ted Kennedy.
accidentally left my phone at home before the first date, didn’t realize she’d be showing up a little late, and ordered a bar hot dog when I thought my future fiancée had blown me off. she had not! (though she was a vegetarian.) thankful every day that she walked through the door
Lots of great detail in this NYT report by Janny Scott, who interviewed Sheehan in 2015 for the advance obit — including a pretty scathing characterization of Daniel Ellsberg: “It was just luck that he didn’t get the whistle blown on the whole damn thing.”
Najmaldin Karim died Friday at 71. He devoted nearly all his life to the dream of Kurdish independence, serving as a peshmerga fighter and doctor to Mustafa Barzani, spending decades in exile in Washington, then returning to Iraq to rebuild his hometown:
Wild letter from Gerald Ford, long after nominating Stevens to SCOTUS: “I am prepared to allow history’s judgment of my term in office to rest (if necessary, exclusively) on my nomination 30 years ago of Justice John Paul Stevens to the U.S. Supreme Court”
Deb Price, first nationally syndicated columnist on gay life, dies at 62. More than two decades before same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide, she "made it very clear that queer people were just like straight people, except for the people they love":
.
@autistichoya
: Mel "fought unceasingly for the principles that all people count, regardless of type or degree of disability, and that all people deserve to exercise their own agency and to receive necessary care and support, even and especially if others do not understand why"
My Post obit for George Butler, who directed documentaries on NASA rovers and John Kerry but was best known for "Pumping Iron," which helped introduce bodybuilding (and an Austrian weightlifter named Arnold Schwarzenegger) to the masses:
Ronald Rosser, Medal of Honor recipient who fought to avenge his brother’s death in combat, dies at 90. He charged a Korean hill three times while facing enemy fire, driven in part by the memory of a kid brother killed in combat the previous year:
"I experienced the psychiatric system as being so inhuman because nobody spoke with us. A person cannot be more devalued than to be considered unworthy or incapable of conversation." RIP Dorothea Buck, a Nazi sterilization victim turned artist and author:
"An obituary may be the briefest kind of biography, but, in the age of the coronavirus, even they have started to run long—not individually but, tragically, collectively." Love this
@cncep
essay on the importance of obits, now more than ever:
"Prozac Nation" author Elizabeth Wurtzel died earlier today at 52, after breast cancer metastasized to her brain. She helped launch a personal memoir boom while chronicling her struggles with depression and drug addiction:
Sad news: War correspondent Joe Galloway, author of "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young," has died. Awarded a Bronze Star for evacuating a wounded private at Ia Drang. “He was a soldier in spirit, he was a soldier in actions and he was a soldier in deeds.”
Don Baker, who chronicled Virginia politics as the Post's veteran bureau chief in Richmond, died on Christmas at 90. “His interest was above all in the human dimension—he wanted to know what made politicians tick,” said his former colleague
@harrispolitico
Nixon aide Egil Krogh has died at 80. He was a leader of the secret White House "Plumbers" unit, and spent years atoning for a break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. "You have to be willing to question what you’re being asked to do."
some personal news: i’m moving to brooklyn! with help from some very generous friends and a streeteasy-obsessed fiancée, i even found an apartment.
please send clinton hill-area recs my way. (there’s tex mex in bklyn, right?) and if you live in nyc…let’s be friends!
"It’s a new age of terrorism that can’t exist without the Internet."
Read
@craigtimberg
,
@drewharwell
and
@raz_nak
on the link between far-right internet forums and the Capitol siege, drawing on some of my reporting yesterday:
Pretty amazing White House photo here, circa 1970. Nixon is shaking the hand of Terry Lenzner, who would deliver Watergate subpoenas to the president's lawyers just a few years later.
At center is Donald Rumsfeld, then head of OEO.
At right, arms folded, is Dick Cheney.
Russ Kick, the writer, editor and self-described "rogue transparency activist," died earlier this month at 52. He used FOIA requests to pry loose government records and edited "The Graphic Canon," which reimagined works of literature as comics
The biennial professional obituary writers conference just kicked off in DC, which basically guarantees that someone of world-historical importance will die in the next 36 hours, while we’re here away from our desks. Apologies.
"Mrs. Rogers," a memory-keeper for her husband's message of kindness, died Thursday at 92. Beautiful
@EmilyLangerWP
story on Joanne Rogers, who inspired the gentle puppet Queen Sara Saturday on "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood":
Top Simon & Schuster editor Alice Mayhew has died. She helped pioneer the modern Washington political chronicle, editing "All the President's Men" and working with Woodward on 19 books. She had declined to give her age but was 87, according to records:
Lawrence Ferlinghetti—poet, bookshop proprietor and self-proclaimed "last of the bohemians"—dies at 101. "He was the bearded guru of San Francisco’s art scene, as closely identified with the city as summer fog and the Golden Gate," writes
@emmersbrown
.
Robert Forster was on a 27-year downswing before Quentin Tarantino and "Jackie Brown" revived his career, earning him an Oscar nomination. His latest film, "El Camino," premiered Friday, the same day he died at 78:
Ken Spears, co-creator of Scooby-Doo, dies at 82. “We were worried it wouldn’t last but one season, much less 38 years,” he once said. “It was up against ‘The Hardy Boys’ on NBC and we thought we’d get clobbered in the ratings.”
When Katherine Johnson joined America's space agency in 1953, she was classified as "subprofessional," not far outranking a secretary or janitor.
She went on to develop equations that helped NASA send astronauts into orbit and onward to the moon. RIP:
This is a lovely dispatch on obit writing in the age of coronavirus by
@matthewkassel
, who somehow succeeded in interviewing 10 obituarians (!!!) for a 900-word piece:
My WaPost obit for Todd Gitlin, the SDS leader, sociologist and media scholar who shaped politics on the left for more than half a century. “I never thought about a career,” he once said, “because I thought the movement was going to be my life.”
Michael Denneny, a dean of gay publishing, died last week at 80. He co-founded the Christopher Street lit mag, created the first gay imprint at a major publishing company, and edited writers from Ntozake Shange and Randy Shilts to Gordon Liddy and Mr. T.
"If we go back to the moon, or to Mars, we’ll be using her math."
RIP Katherine Johnson, a "hidden figure" at NASA who was recognized only in her 90s for her trailblazing work as a mathematician:
Dave Hickey, the roguish art critic behind books like "Invisible Dragon" and "Air Guitar," died this month at 82. "Being an art critic is one of the few professions in which one is actually paid for one’s eccentricity, and paid to be disagreeable":
Duane E. Dewey, Medal of Honor recipient with “a body of steel,” dies at 89. He smothered a grenade with his body in Korea, saving fellow Marines from injury or death
Spent the past seven hours walking NW DC, where most people took the mayor’s advice and stayed home.
One woman was looking for champagne to celebrate the inauguration. About half were walking their dogs. Almost everyone was cautiously optimistic about the next four years.
Novelist and short story writer Stephen Dixon died today at 83. His humorous, freewheeling fiction traced the shocks and jolts of romance, aging and everyday life, in an experimental but plain-spoken style. Farewell to a Baltimore institution:
Washingtonian laid off its four journalism fellows on Monday, citing a business outlook that is “unfortunately not good for the near future.”
I wouldn’t be at The Post today without that fellowship program. If you can contribute to the fundraiser below, please do.
Yesterday was a shitty day. I really don't know how we're going to function without our amazing fellows. If you want to contribute to a Venmo fundraiser, a picture of my account is below.
Doug Hill, the veteran Washington meteorologist, died Tuesday at 71. "Doug was passionate about getting people prepared for even average weather," said his colleague Bob Ryan, "but especially when any weather was dangerous, he was at the top of his game."
Anne Ferguson-Rohrer, Washington Post editor and “traffic cop” of news flow, dies at 58. “She’d always find ways to say things more clearly. But more than once, she saved our bacon by catching holes in the reporting.”
folks, now that i've got the blue check mark these tweets will be Very Good, prepare yourselves for some excellent content
until then let me just say that i've made my way to the end of sex and the city (first time viewer) and carrie should NOT have gone to paris
Marge Champion, dancer who gave life to Snow White as a live-action model for the 1937 film, dies at 101. Animators used rotoscoping to
trace her moves. She also danced as Dopey (in bulky clothing), the hippo in FANTASIA and the Blue Fairy in PINOCCHIO:
George Laurer, an inventor of the bar code, has died at 94. "I was truly playing 'bet your job' by designing a new code and symbol rather than supporting what the brass wanted," he said. "My arguments must have been persuasive."
Ramsey Clark, the former attorney general and last surviving member of LBJ's cabinet, dies at 93. After leaving office, he redefined himself as a relentless critic of American foreign policy. Post obit by
@emmersbrown
:
Good morning from Fortress D.C., where
@lateshiabeachum
and I are far from the barricades, talking to Washingtonians about how they’re spending
#inauguration
day.
Follow
@postlocal
team’s full coverage here:
Gray day, cold wind, open DMs.
Haunted by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stephen Lukasik decided to become a physicist at 14. He went on to direct DARPA, the Pentagon research lab, and was linked to advances in AI, email, the Internet, WiFi and Bluetooth. RIP.
Asked to reflect on his legacy, Walter Mondale replied: "Well, you know, Minnesota doesn’t believe much in bragging. I did the best I could." He died Monday at home in Minneapolis.
My obit for W.S. Merwin, whose poems about the fragility of the natural world and the horrors of the Vietnam War earned him two Pulitzer Prizes and made him one of the preeminent English-language poets of the past five decades:
New: Songwriter Tom Whitlock died Saturday at 68. He helped "Top Gun" soar, writing the lyrics for hits like "Danger Zone" and "Take My Breath Away," which earned him and wingman Giorgio Moroder an Oscar
"We constantly underestimate what kids will understand or what they can deal with. They understand a lot more, and the really fortunate ones carry that special understanding into their adulthood. And if you lose that, I think you lose something very important." RIP Norton Juster.
Children's author Beverly Cleary has died at 104. She created beloved characters such as Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins and Ralph S. Mouse, and found the whole of human experience within the ordinary high jinks of growing up
Jan. 22, 1930: “Fell in Love”
At my girlfriend’s house on Long Island we found the diary of her great-grandmother, Sydel Bloom of Brooklyn. She got engaged a little more than three months later — to Harry Raffman, a dentist — then spent her honeymoon in Europe.
B.J. Thomas has died at 78. The five-time Grammy winner recorded "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" and "Hooked on a Feeling." "Ever since the beginning I’ve tried to do positive music."
Very proud to have been a finalist at the
@SPJDC
Dateline Awards this year, for obits of Joan Didion and meteorologist Doug Hill. Huge congrats to the winners, including
@bkesling
for his story about a Marine named Walter O’Haire
In 1959, she was questioned by police after being hospitalized following a self-induced abortion. Asked if she had given herself an abortion, she replied, “Sure I did. Want me to demonstrate how in court?”
Teared up while reading some of Judith Kerr's work today. She somehow found a way to write beautiful, sweet, funny children's books about widowhood, World War II and the death of a beloved cat. "Mog thought, 'I want to sleep forever.' And so she did."
Twitter's "Trends for you" feature is an absolute terror for an obit writer. "Jimmy Carter." "Bob Dylan." "Axl Rose." Glad people are in the news while, uhh, alive, but please stop this madness.
Joan Didion, virtuosic prose stylist, dies at 87. "Try to rearrange one of her sentences," John Leonard once wrote, "and you’ve realized that the sentence was inevitable, a hologram." RIP.
Tony Dow, the all-American Wally on ‘Leave it to Beaver,’ dies at 77. "People say the show is milk and cookies, but I disagree. I think it’s the essence of growing up."
Honored at age 24 for her reporting on the militant antiwar group the Weathermen, she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting, and one of the youngest Pulitzer winners in history.
Catherine Hamlin "treated women who had fistula with a kind of compassion, and a respect for the wholeness of their lives as human beings, that was extraordinary." Farewell to a legendary OB/GYN:
Charles Webb, author of "The Graduate," has died at 81. His novel was made into a Hollywood classic, though it never made him wealthy. "It’s something that I cannot shake," he once said. "It has defined my whole life. I just want to run away."
Gloria Allen, the Chicago LGBTQ icon who ran a charm school for transgender youth, died at 76. "She heard what was on their minds. She heard what had happened to them. And she said, You’re important, and I see you and I love you, and I want you to succeed"