Today is my last day at the Daily Item. After 44 years as a newspaperman, it’s time to retire.
Today is also my 67th birthday, but I stopped keeping track years ago. The truth is, I haven’t grown up much since I landed my first job as a sports writer at the old Beverly Times in 1976. I’m still a goofy imbecile. Maturity is unlikely when your employer insists you cover high school athletics, the Red Sox and golf. When I moved to the Lynn Item in ’78, my boss, Red Hoffman, a hard taskmaster, forced me to write about high school football, the Sox and golf … and he had the audacity to insist I attend the occasional Bruins and Patriots game. The heathen even sent me to Montreal in 1979 to cover the Bruins-Canadiens too-many-men-on-the-ice Stanley Cup semifinal seventh game.
I was doing OK for a Beverly Farms boy whose fourth-grade teacher actually wrote on my report card, “William has poor work habits. He lacks the basic skills to succeed in life.”
She might have been correct. I’ve never been interested in covering “real news,” like fires and crime and city politics. Writing about sports was terrific, but the arts, especially music, is what got me most excited. It always bothered me that high school athletes got a write-up and picture in the paper when they received a college scholarship, but the high school musician, actor, artist or dancer who landed a scholarship to Berklee, Juilliard or Montserrat was ignored.
When a position opened on the Item‘s Lifestyle desk, I was foolishly given the job, expected to write about local people, places and things with a focus on entertainment and the arts. My first assignment? Get a facial and write about it from a man’s perspective.
Lifestyle was my life for another decade. My maturity process actually regressed during that time. I was paid to sip champagne (yum) and taste caviar (yuck) at charity events. I chatted with Bob Guccione, Penthouse magazine publisher, in his Manhattan mansion while 12 gorgeous women in various stages of undress walked around us before Lynn’s Corinne Alphen was crowned Pet of the Year. I sipped scotch and sherry with the Boston College alumni in Orlando, Fla., while cheering on Doug Flutie and teammates.
I sat next to golf course architect Robert Trent Jones as he drove a cart and described how Ipswich Country Club’s acreage would become an 18-hole gem. I played one hole of golf with Arnord Palmer. I played a lot of golf.
There were offbeat stories: Lil Snooty, a felonious feline, stole women’s underwear from every laundry line in town; a woman didn’t know she was pregnant until the baby popped out; a Lynn baker had great success making outlandishly-shaped porno cakes.
But there were plenty of tough stories about having to grow up too fast. I fought back tears as wives described how a new disease, Alzheimer’s, turned their husbands of 40 years into complete strangers. The Cambodian community shared personal stories of horror and determination in reaching America for a better life. Men and women who conquered cancer and overcame addictions held nothing back when talking about their struggles.
Mostly, entertainment dominated my calendar. In the ’80s, Boston had a vibrant theater scene and many shows stopped there before opening on Broadway. I reviewed most of them, and I got the chance to interview, in person, such luminaries as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Jane Fonda, Rex Harrison, James Whitmore, Edward Albee, Peter Falk, Andrew Lloyd Webber, James Earl Jones, Pearl Bailey, Rita Moreno, Lauren Bacall, Twiggy, Ali McGraw.
I got to meet and interview many of my music heroes: Ray and Dave Davies of The Kinks, Bryan Ferry, Johnny Rivers. I drank beer with Miami Steve Van Zandt backstage at a Springsteen concert at the old Garden.
I reviewed hundreds of concerts, for both the Item and the Boston Herald, where I ran the Features desk from 1988 to 2016 and was the guy who came off the bench when staff music writers Larry Katz, Dean Johnson, Sarah Rodman and Jed Gottlieb were unavailable. I saw nearly every major act live, and people like Hozier, Brandi Carlile, the Tallest Man on Earth, Gin Wigmore, ZZ Ward, and others when they were starting out.
Herald staffers wrote for the Travel section. I wrote about a three-week bike tour my wife Alison and I took in Portugal and a new romantic boutique hotel in Paris. At the American Royal World Series of Barbeque in Kansas City, I convinced the organizers my best friend Gene Wood and I were qualified to serve as judges in the competition. While in KC, I also got to visit the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and the American Jazz Museum.
Five years ago I “retired” from the Herald and returned to the Item and Essex Media Group to rejoin old chums Steve Krause, Thor Jourgensen and Ted Grant, now the publisher. Before long, Jim Wilson, who started at the Item and ran the photo desk at the Boston Globe for many years, was back. Ted got the old band back together.
It’s been a blast. I’ve loved working with younger photographers, page designers and reporters and writing silly drivel about the unpleasant customers at Whole Foods, Royal couple Harry and Meghan’s move to a condo on Oxford Street in Lynn, and my battles with yellowjackets and field mice. Hopefully they provided a laugh or two. I was proud to chronicle how important the arts community has been in the city’s downtown rejuvenation. Exhibits and shows at the Auditorium, Lynn Museum, Galleries at Lynn Arts, Raw Art Works, and such groups as the Downtown Lynn Cultural District, Beyond Walls and Lynn Cultural Council have all played an important role in the Lynnaissance.
I sincerely thank all of you who have made these 44 years fly by. Hopefully, our paths will cross many times again. To quote Ray Davies, my favorite songwriter: “Thank you for the days/Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me/I’m thinking of the days/I won’t forget a single day, believe me.” My byline will likely reappear every now and then, whether you want it to or not.
My wife deserves heartfelt thanks, too. It’s not easy being married to a newspaperman, let alone one who behaves like an adolescent. Work often kept me at the office when we were due at another couple’s house for dinner or when I had to work Christmas and other holidays. Reporters don’t make much money, but the payoff comes in many other ways. My friends often told me, “You have the best job in the world.”
Now, while Alison and I are still young and relatively healthy, it’s time to sign off. So we can enjoy life together on our terms, COVID be damned.
I look forward to days that are filled with leisurely bike rides, hikes, cross-country skiing, golf, travel, and I hope, live music. It will be nice to visit museums, galleries and theaters without bringing along a reporter’s notebook and pen.
Who knows, I might actually grow up one of these days. Nah, that’ll never happen.
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