A true friend, and a good writer

Democracy needs more gumshoe journalists

In September of 1988, the newspaper at which I had worked for barely one month published a special section on the 50^th anniversary of the Hurricane of 1938. I was only dimly aware of this historic storm, which had slammed into the New England coast without warning and killed more than 600 people.

That morning at The Day of New London, Conn., I began to read the section’s lead story, written in vivid and powerful prose. I could almost hear the screaming wind and see the terrifying waves that once pummeled the shore just steps away from the building. I didn’t know the reporter who wrote the article, a man named Stan Simon, but that was no surprise; I was still getting to know people at the paper, where I would spend the next 17 years. I found Stan in the newsroom and introduced myself as his latest fan. I was 30. Stan was more than 20 years older. We became instant friends.

Stan died last month at the age of 88, and I can just hear him saying that I am doing way too much telling and not enough showing in the paragraph above. He’s right, of course. I spent two fruitless hours on the internet trying to find that story that so captivated me, the spark to our friendship. So my memory will have to do.

Stan bought a sailboat without knowing how to sail.

He was a terrific journalist, the kind of dogged, never-give-up reporter a healthy democracy will always need, never more so than now. In one investigation, Stan uncovered criminal wrongdoing by Connecticut’s state police in the deaths of two brothers; his reporting showed the police shot the men in the back and planted guns on them. Stan developed a recidivism study that showed two out of three prison inmates in Connecticut were ending up back in prison within five years. He also covered the 1970s trial of the self-declared revolutionaries, the Black Panthers, for The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Hartford Courant. He directed reporters covering a protest even when two bombs exploded, the newspaper’s office caught fire and had to be evacuated.

Photo by Rafael Garcin on Unsplash

He was always in the thick of things. That was Stan.

I thought of him when the federal government eliminated thousands of web pages with needed information on topics such as climate change (the existence of which the administration denies) and any health topic remotely having to do with gender, such as HIV or transgender bias. I thought of him again when President Donald Trump exiled the Associated Press from White House coverage, but shamefully, welcomed a reporter from Tass, the Russian news agency, into the Oval Office. As Trump acts more and more like a Kremlin stooge, we will need all the gumshoe reporters like Stan to push back, to speak the truth.

I wish I could talk to him about all this.

We both loved sailing. When we had lunch last year, I asked Stan to tell me all over again one of my favorite stories from his long life, even though it had little to do with journalism and more to do with dumb luck.

In 1979, Stan had invested some money and had about $18,000 in the stock market – about $80,000 today. Feeling flush, he quit his reporting job and bought a 34-foot sloop to sail from Connecticut to Florida. Except he didn’t really know how to sail. Details! Details! No worries; Stan found an experienced hand willing to sail south and, along the way, teach him.

But without warning, his nascent teacher deserted him in Virginia, about 400 miles into a 1,200 mile voyage. Stan had to fend for himself. He managed to sail to Key West, Florida, and docked in triumph. That’s when he discovered that his investments, which he relied on for support, had all gone bust. In the days with no computers, no cell phones, and without a thought to making expensive long-distance calls to his stockbroker, Stan had lost everything. He had just enough cash to stay overnight at a bed and breakfast while he pondered what to do.

The next morning, other guests asked him if he really had a sailboat. Yes, he did. They asked if they could pay him for a cruise in the nearby waters. Why, yes, he could. And that’s how Stan managed to live the good life after all, taking people on trips and sailing his boat for years in the Caribbean, the Bahamas and off the East Coast – before finally agreeing to return north, and work for The Day, where I met him.

He always told me he wanted to write his autobiography, but never got much past the first few words, which were, “I have sailed on a sea of serendipity.” That he did. But he was a hell of a journalist, too, and luck had nothing to do with that – just a fierce desire to find the facts and write with power and grace. And as Wilbur, the always-radiant pig, once observed in E.B. White’s timeless children’s tale, “Charlotte’s Web,” “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.”

Stan Simon