Some days you never forget. Ever. They stay with you. For whatever reason, their impact lingers long after the event has faded away.
One of those days occurred 30 years ago Saturday when I received a phone call at home from Tom Dalton, friend and former colleague, that our executive editor, John S. Moran, had died unexpectedly in Florida after having a heart attack. He was only 52.
After the shock wore off, I reflected on the 11-year carnival ride that working for “The Big Guy” had become and concluded that few people, at the time, had influenced me more as a reporter and a writer. Thirty years later, that opinion has not changed.
John was definitely a “Runyonesque” character. In fact he even looked like Stubby Kaye’s “Nicely Nicely” from “Guys and Dolls” — which is a collection of Damon Runyon tales. He didn’t wear a pinky ring, but he should have.
John had a larger-than-life personality too. Everything he did, he did big, whether it was walk (you could hear him rumbling down the corridor from a mile away), talk (a distinctive voice that rose to the level of a growl as if on cue) or smoke (he loved his cigars and his chewing tobacco).
He had a way of connecting with people that was genuine and effective.This even extended to when he was cross with you (and I was on the receiving end of a few Moran rampages, but it was all good when it was over).
Believe it or not, John could hold his own rubbing elbows with the heavy hitters despite his lack of panache. He just knew instinctively how to handle people.
He was a newspaperman’s newspaperman. He could sniff out a local story from half a world away, and he was the very definition of news junkie. As such, he asked you to do some odd things, and some darn near impossible things.
One of my favorite Moran stories came during the San Francisco earthquake in 1989 that happened right before Game 3 of the World Series. The phone rang at 11 at night and it was him.
“We got a Swampscott kid at that game,” he says, as I’m wondering how in the world he even knew this.
“Here’s a mobile phone number. Call him and do a story.”
Ever try to call a mobile phone in the middle of an earthquake? Somehow, I got the story, because when John said to do it, you did it.
Then there was the time he wanted to know whether Joan Kennedy was going to go to Yom Kippur services in Marblehead with Dr. Gerry Aronoff, a pain-management specialist she’d been seen with after she divorced her husband, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.
“Go to the temple and hide in the bushes and then call me,” he said.
Much to his delight (and my everlasting embarrassment), she not only showed up, but sussed me out and shot me a withering look.
John loved what he did, and that love was infectious. Community journalism was his world. He once rushed out of his office to announce to the newsroom, “you know, that New York Times is a helluva newspaper” as if there was no difference between the “Old Grey Lady” and The Item.
He made me believe in being a local reporter. I came to The Item at age 25 convinced this was but one stop along the way to being a nationally syndicated columnist, a la Mike Royko.
It was John, with his insistence on treating every story with the respect it deserves, who made me realize there were many rewards in being the conduit between ordinary people and local notoriety.
It’s a lesson I never forgot, and one that became very important when it came to covering youth sports: high schools are our Red Sox and Patriots.
John also listened. He had an open door to his office, and it was usually occupied by someone who’d come in off the street to seek him out. John gave those people his time and undivided attention, and gave them a sense that they mattered.
John strove to be fair. I don’t know how many times he’d give you something to do on a person, or a group, that was taking it on the chin around town for its view on a local issue.
“Hey, be fair to these people,” he’d say.
Most of all, John walked the walk. Name a committee in Lynn or Swampscott, and John was on it. There was Little League, Pop Warner, Lynn Community Health Center, the Salvation Army (he received the prestigious “Others” Award that the SA gives out) and so many others.
If there was a little kid going through a tough time, and that kid wanted to go to a Red Sox game, John made it happen.
Lastly, John nurtured us. He set the table for a generation of Lynn-area journalists, many of whom are still writing. I daresay there wouldn’t even be an Item today without John having pushed and prodded the likes of Bill Brotherton, Thor Jourgensen, Jim Wilson, myself and our publisher Ted Grant, who — along with his group — purchased The Item five years ago and has since put into practice Moran’s philosophy on local journalism.
You ask anyone who spent time with him and they’ll tell you the same thing. He created a unity at The Item, whether that unity sprung from his sense of ethics (or, as he would have said, “ethnics”), his sense of humor, or the inordinate number of time we all spent laughing at his antics and/or malaprops.
Thirty years! Johnny, we hardly knew ye.
Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].
