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NABJ members’ deaths put focus on jobs’ pressuresBy Chris Jones Monitor Staff NABJ Immediate Past President Will Sutton sits in the Hyatt Regency Dallas lobby with a grief-stricken stare as he thinks of an old friend, St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Greg Freeman. Freeman was a longtime NABJ member who died in December and is this year’s recipient of the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award. “I’ll miss him,” said Sutton, who will present the honor to Freeman’s widow during the special awards banquet Friday night. “To realize when I saw him it was the last [time]. . . . It’s just not a good feeling.” Freeman is one of more than 28 NABJ members and associates who have died since last year’s convention in Milwaukee. They will be featured in a video memorial presentation during the banquet in the Hyatt’s Landmark Ballroom at 7 p.m. Friday. Though friends, colleagues and family members still mourn, some observers say the deaths raise concerns about health within the black journalistic community and what should be done to increase longevity. “We’re dealing with a lot of health issues,” said Region VII Director Cheryl Smith, who is moderating the Saturday panel, Let’s Get Real Healthy, Physically, Mentally and Spiritually. “I had a good friend, Lawrence Young of The Press-Enterprise in California, who died of a heart-related illness. Between family, deadlines and the pressures of day to day, the work of our industry can be stressful.” The number of deaths has increased by more than 40 percent since the Milwaukee convention. Last year’s presentation, which honored 20 people, was a first for the organization, said Vice President-Print Bryan Monroe, who produced both videos. “Last year’s had a tremendous impact, and it put it all together,” Sutton said. “These were people I used to call and send e-mails. One tribute made me realize how important life is and how we will never know how the end will come.” This year, more male journalists died than females. “Statistically, more men are dying than women,” Monroe said. “That’s another reason why us brothers need to take care of our health, check our prostates, blood pressure, and lose weight.” Malin, a panelist on the health seminar who does not use her last name, said she agrees that the community as a whole needs to eat healthfully and become more physically fit. “Lack of exercise is a cause for a lot of illnesses within our community,” said Malin, a personal trainer who owns ABC Health and Fitness in Dallas. “We need to watch our diets. We tend to make the wrong choices in food.” But her comments were in no way meant to pass judgment on those who have passed on. For Monroe, putting the video memorial together has not been easy. “It’s always hard to go through the process, but I feel like I’m honoring them for their work,” he said, noting that only those who died before the project’s completion were included. Monroe said he always fears who might be added to the list next, but it’s something he cannot control. “You just have to live right, put God first, and the rest is out of our hands,” he said. OBITUARIES Among the black journalists who have died in the past year: Greg Freeman, columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, died Dec. 31 at his St. Louis home. He was 46. Freeman joined the Post-Dispatch as a reporter in 1980 and began writing columns in 1989. He became a regular columnist in 1992 and was known for his writings about everyday life and racial harmony. Freeman is also this year’s NABJ Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. Sam Lacy, sports columnist of The Baltimore Afro American, died May 16 of heart and kidney failure at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. He was 99. The revered sports writer’s journalism career spanned six decades and was monumental in helping erase color lines within baseball nearly 60 years ago. Wallace Terry, a pioneer journalist whose Vietnam War coverage led to the 1984 book “Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans,” died May 29 of a rare blood disease at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Fairfax, Va. He was 65. During the 1970s, the independent journalist became a Harvard University Nieman Fellow and taught journalism at Howard University. He later went on to work for the Washington Post and USA Today and wrote for Time and Parade magazines. |
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