Text of our part of the Memorial Service

Here is the text of what Janice and I read at the memorial service last night.

Thank you again who all who came to celebrate and remember our father.
- Ellen

~~~~~

I think everyone knows that our dad was irreverent - whether telling a cop off in Providence, or asking our highest-level elected officials "how they were going to pay" for whatever rosy-sounding project they had proposed, our father spoke truth to power. Like any good reporter, he was cynical.

But he was not all cynic. He hewed close to some basic values - and was a man with firm principles, and fierce integrity.

Here are some of the values he held most dear:

Family

• He was gentle, supportive and affirming with us - helping us believe that not only did we have the responsibility to make a contribution to society, but that we were infinitely capable of doing so.
• As much as he was a man of words, his actions said perhaps more about how he felt about family. Mom and Dad together prioritized our well-being, sometimes even above their own. When dad was looking for a house in Albany at the time of the big move from Rochester, he saw about 20 kids playing outside on a cul-de-sac in Delmar. While the house wasn't perfect, they were sold. Since it would be best for his girls, that's where they would live.
• While dad did like the metaphor that paying for our college educations was like buying a new car every year and driving it off a cliff, he did it: he and mom lived frugally so that we would enter our adult lives debt-free, enabling us to choose careers in education and public service that pay in ethical and spiritual, but not so much in material, rewards.
• He almost never missed a sporting event of ours, setting earlier deadlines for the other reporters so that he could make our games.
• It was important to him that we spend holidays together as a family, especially Christmas, of which he spent all but three in his entire life in the house that his grandfather built outside of Lowell, MA. He loved meeting the new additions to the family at holidays, and got a twinkle in his eye when he played with his nephews, and later his nephews' children.

Public Service

• Dad thought that there was no higher calling than helping citizens hold their elected officials accountable for serving the public. He told me he was never more proud of me than when I worked in Colombia trying to decrease human rights abuses by the government.
• This appreciation for public service was at least partially hereditary: his father, uncle and sister were reporters, and his grandfather was on the board of selectman.
• While Dad had ink in his blood, he also had teaching in his veins. His mother, sister and daughter were all teachers, and dad's commitment to mentoring young reporters expressed what he always said was his second career choice: a history teacher and coach. He had dreams of teaching in his retirement, perhaps as a professor. He loved that his job, and the book he wrote, gave him the opportunity to travel the state and explain NY government to different groups of people.
• In his last year, Dad got more involved in local politics. He helped a friend with his campaign and frequently attended school board meetings, at which he put his same keen eye to their budget (and its affect on his property taxes) as he did to the state budget.

Fun

• As much as dad was committed to his work, he also loved weekends, which would find him sailing his tiny sunfish, golfing with friends, or sitting in front of the tv rooting for his beloved teams: Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins, Pats and Bills. Vacations were great because they were expanded weekends, and were especially good if they included Aunt Judi, water views, and a long bike ride that ended at an ice cream stand.
• Dad loved games, especially ones he could win. When I started trouncing him at the word game Boggle in my early teens, we switched to ping pong. Which he beat me convincingly at, with both his left AND right hand.
• He loved music and dancing.
• Most car rides between our house and his family's house in Boston as a kid consisted of me sitting in the front seat with dad, belting out oldies tunes for hours. He was never happier than when a falsetto part of a beach boys song came on. The LCA's commitment to reworking oldies' songs AND letting dad have at them was, perhaps, the real key to his longevity in Albany.

Principles of Journalism

• Dad was committed to accuracy, directness, attention to detail, and fairness.
• When we would say something like “there were 3 or 4 people there” he would ask: "Well, was it three or four?" If we said we’d arrive around 8, he’d want to know if it was 8:15, 8 or 8:30.
• Dad asked direct questions that went to the heart of someone's perspective: upon meeting a political theorist friend of mine, he asked the eternal big question: "Why is everything so screwed up? in politics" which launched them into a really interesting conversation about why politics is so, well, screwed up.
• Knowing statistics and facts helped him order the world. Dad knew the populations of most countries and cities. He could tell you the important Red Sox sluggers since he was a kid, along with their batting averages. And he of course knew more details about NY state budgets and elections than one should.
• Dad was fair. The quickest way to get on dad's bad side was to lie to or cheat him. Or let him see you lying to or cheating others.
• His fairness translated into his child-rearing philosophy: I knew that the quickest way to get something from my dad, was to point out that Janice already had it.

Simple pleasures and routine

• In the end, dad was a simple guy, and a creature of habit.
• He kissed mom every day when he came home from work. And hugged us when we drove in from far away, and incidentally, also hugged most everyone he met this past year.
• He started every day, no matter where, with a newspaper, OJ and grape nuts, he ate dinner at 6:30, and followed a consistent, if bland, diet. After a hard tennis match or bike ride, he enjoyed lobster, tater tots, cold beer, or a cold lemonade like no one else: He would sit back in his chair, close his eyes tight, and dramatically take in the beer/fried potato/lemonade slowly, opening his eyes only after the treasured food had percolated inside him for a while.
• Also, he believed that any food in the world could, and should, be turned into a sandwich. For example: filet mignon and salad. Scallops and clams in a biscuit.
• He loved spending lazy summer afternoons visiting with his siblings, cousins, and later niece and nephews on Long Pond.

Love

• For the love of his daughters, dad travelled to Bogota, Colombia and the Amazon in Ecuador when we knew he would probably prefer to be sitting on his screened-in-porch with the Sunday crossword. But because Ecuador and Colombia is where we were, he came to visit and managed to have a good time.
• Dad would turn off the TV, even if there were just 12 seconds left in a Celtics/Lakers game, when mom got home.
• Dad told me that he was happy I was with Allyson because I was happier when we were together. It comforted him to know I'd found love and a partner, and he hoped that my relationship would bring me as much joy as his had with mom.
• Dad was deeply kind. Even when we knew he had a difference of opinion with someone, he would refuse to speak badly about them, and change the subject if others did. Critiquing someone based on a factual error or opinion was what he did - but he didn't personalize his critique.

Community

• Dad enjoyed and believed in the power of connections.
• It was no secret that Dad was a fallen-away Catholic. He found his spiritual home and community in the Albany Unitarian Universalist church, where mom could go to Pagan drum circles, and he could be as cynical as he wanted to about organized religion. He enjoyed the fellowship he shared with others, going to Silver Bay and hamming it up at the Annual Dinner
• The LCA Show was something he looked forward to every year, and he would marvel aloud what a great country this was - where pols would laugh at the reporters' jokes, rather than put them in jail. He saw the show as a way to both be irreverant and contribute to the greater civic duty of holding politicians accountable and keeping them grounded.
• It was important to him to be connected with our neighbors - from watching the superbowl with the guys, to assisting the Moshiers in a small way after Tim's death in Iraq.

Life

In the past year, dad worked to deal with his increasing physical discomfort. Shortly before he died, he had to decide whether the suffering had been enough. He opted for a potentially traumatic major surgery in order to have a shot at extending his life. He confronted cancer bravely, but also let himself feel and react to its injustice. He struggled to find hope given the dire statistics of pancreatic cancer. He loved life and wanted to live longer, and while he told us he was ready and at peace with dying at the end, he desperately wanted more time here with all of us.

Humility

• While the last year was sad in so many ways, kind emails from close friends and strangers alike moved him more than anything else. He was thankful and moved that so many people cared about his health and well-being. He was a man who gave a lot to others without expecting their appreciation in return. So he was deeply grateful when it came.
• He, and we, were most struck by all the people who told dad that his work had mattered and made a difference. Whether this work was mentoring an intern or younger reporter, letting politicians know that the public was holding their feet to the fire, or giving readers straight news and sharp analysis, Dad was touched and surprised that his work affected so many people.
• He would be deeply honored, and humbled, by all of your presence here tonight. Thank you so much for sharing in our father's life.