Tag: RIP

Tom Squitieri, A Man in Full, RIP

I met Tom Squitieri when he was a young reporter for the Lowell Sun newspaper covering the Massachusetts congressional delegation, including Barney Frank, for whom I worked at the time.

We bonded at the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco. He was covering the Convention and we tore up the town. He convinced his editor to let him do a story after the convention on Ken Kesey, the beatnik writer from Lowell who gained fame in the 50’s and 60’s as a precursor to the hippie generation. He got the paper to pay for a convertible that he drove down the California coast re-enacting some adventure that Kesey wrote about. Tom invited me to join him. It turned into a full page spread in the paper. It is one of the regrets of my life that I couldn’t go.

He went on from there to have an extraordinary journalism career, including stints as a war correspondent and cable news talking head during the Clinton Administration. After he left journalism, he took up poetry and gained renown, having many of his poems published. He also had some poems performed both live on stage with musical accompaniment and in at least one movie. He leaves his former wife and two children, who he adored.

He was a humble man who packed a lot in what turned out to be his too short life. He covered the breakup of Yugoslavia, which turned out to be extremely violent. I had a hard time imagining him in the middle of a war zone, like some real-life Rambo. But he did it at extraordinary risk to life and limb.

For all his courage professional accomplishments, Tom had a child-like reaction to praise. Watching him react to the deserved accolades for his poetry, he seemed genuinely abashed. Frankly, when complimented for his work in journalism or poetry, he would acknowledge it and quickly turn the conversation to his admiration of others, rather than drink in the praise for himself.

And what a sense of humor. Laughter came to him easily, and often at his own expense. I will miss his laughter. He had a face that begged to be caricatured. The thick hair, the bushy eyebrows and the broad smile. I can’t believe i won’t see that again.

While I knew Tom for 40 years, our friendship was episodic. We would connect for a while and then drift apart, sometimes for years. Our most recent reconnection, the one that endured to this day, happened some years ago when I saw him in Trader Joe’s. I spotted him from across the store and went over to say hello, thinking he was, like me, a shopper. I was surprised to see he was working the cash register. Another guy, with a career like his and not as comfortable in his own skin, might be embarrassed to encounter an old friend in this manner. But not Tom. He was in a situation where that was the job he needed at the time and he was grateful to have it. He claimed to enjoy the work and, particularly, the people he worked with. And he proved he wasn’t bullshitting because when he got back into journalism, covering the Pentagon, and kept the TJ’s gig.

I visited Tom in the hospital about a month ago when he was being treated for a sudden onset of leukemia. I was thrilled to get his text on August 3rd reporting that the cancer was gone and he was in remission. We were in the middle of scheduling a celebratory lunch when I got news of his passing. The leukemia came roaring back and took him. I’m still reeling.

Tom was a great friend. A good man who made an impact on the world, which will be a lesser place without him. And I have a hole in my life that can’t be filled.