After Visiting Friends

by Michael Hainey

  Peter Bhatia, Examiner news editor after Houck and now executive editor of the Oregonian in Portland, said: “Bobbie was one of the most knowledgeable and able national and international editors I have known. Her ability to prepare the news for readers in a way that offered context and explanation was without peer.”

  Later she reinvented herself as a Style editor. Spinning off her love of mysteries and thrillers, she created the Book ’Em Bobbie column, reviewing the latest releases in the genre. After the Hearst Corp., then-owner of the Examiner, bought the Chronicle in 2000 and merged the staffs of both newspapers, Ms. Hess worked on the Datebook copy desk.

  Throughout, Ms. Hess did the small things that made her newspaper world like a family. She was “Aunt Bobbie” to her co-workers’ kids. On Oscar night, it was always Ms. Hess who turned it into a potluck and ran the office Oscar pool.

  Among friends and family, Ms. Hess’s generosity was legendary. There were cookies and stockings, Ms. Hess also gave much of her time, and her shoulder was always there for friends to cry on.

  She volunteered for the San Francisco Ballet Auxiliary for years, and served as a stalwart steward of her union, the Northern California Media Workers Guild. She liked entertaining friends and she engineered more than one lasting romance with her dinner parties. Ms. Hess was the first to open her wallet for a good cause, once bidding $500 to win a three-ravioli dinner, cooked by a colleague, in a leukemia benefit auction—then she invited her friends to share it.

  Ms. Hess traveled the world throughout her life, most recently visiting Spain this summer.

  But Tiffin, Ohio, stayed at the top of her travel list, and Ms. Hess returned every Christmas to see her family. Last year, when her brother and mother both fell ill, Ms. Hess went home for three months to help out. Her brother, Richard Collins Hess of Tiffin, died.

  Ms. Hess leaves her mother, Rosemary Hess, and a brother, Tim Hess, in Tiffin. Her father, Raymond, a General Electric foreman, died seven years ago. Also surviving Ms. Hess are eight nieces and nephews.

  Plans for a memorial service will be announced.

  # # #

  I do what any reporter does when he’s coming into a story cold: Circle back to the names in the clips. The E.R. report says my father died in Bobbie’s living room. Was he alone? Had there been a party? I start with Jim Houck—the city editor of the Visalia Times-Delta in Visalia, California. It’s a small town in the San Joaquin Valley, just west of the Sierra Nevada. Houck tells me that he recruited Bobbie from the Sun-Times to come work at the Examiner. “I’d heard about her from people in the business. I met her at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago and offered her a job. She found a big place on Chestnut Street, near the bay. There were constant parties there. I know more than one couple met there and fell in love and got married. She was something of a matchmaker.”

  “What was she like at work?” I ask.

  “She had excellent training at the Sun-Times. She smoked Marlboro Lights. And she always defended Woody Hayes.”

  “Well,” I say, “my father worked at the Sun-Times with Bobbie and—”

  “I know.”

  “The thing is,” I say, looking for him to confirm what the report says, “I know that my father was with Bobbie the night he died. What can you tell me about that?”

  “I know that your father died in her bed. It was a heart attack or something. She never spoke of it. Bobbie was like that. I heard the story from someone else at a newspaper convention.”

  “Who was that?”

  “So far as I know, only three people know the story of that night. The first is Craig Klugman. He’s the one who told me. The other two are Paul Berning and the woman who wrote Bobbie’s obit, Carol Ness. I know that Bobbie loved your father deeply. It was a longtime affair. I remember that she could not go to the funeral and that was upsetting to her. That’s about all that I know.”

  #

  I look up Carol Ness on the Chronicle’s website and learn that she is now one of their food-and-wine writers. I call her, cold. Ness repeats most of what she wrote in the obit: Bobbie was nice, baked cookies, babysat.

  If you want a good obit, be a newspaperman.

  “Your obit said she died at home. Was it sudden or . . . ?”

  “Look, she died alone. It was sad. I really don’t understand what you want from this.”

  “Bobbie and my father dated. His name was Bob Hainey.”

  “I know who you are. And I think you should let it go.”

  “I’m just trying to learn about her. It would help me with my life.”

  “All I can tell you is that he was the love of her life.”

  “The what?”

  “That was how she would refer to him. She’d be telling me a story about something in her past and she’d say, ‘That was back when I was dating the love of my life.’ ”

  “The love of her life?”

  “It’s what she said.”

  “And did she ever marry?”

  “No.”

  “Did she ever have another serious relationship or a—”

  “Look, I don’t know what you hope to get out of this. I think you should let her rest. Okay? She’s gone.”

  She hangs up. No good-bye.

  #

  I find Paul Berning at his law office. I tell him I’m Bob Hainey’s son and wonder if I can ask him about the night my father died.

  “How do I know you are who you say you are?”

  “Ask me anything you want,” I say.

  “What did Bob Hainey do at the Sun-Times?”

  “He was the night slot,” I say. “His brother was Dick Hainey, the executive editor of Chicago Today. Used to work at the Tribune.”

  “Well,” he says.

  He pauses.

  “I never knew your father. But I know probably as much as you do.”

  He tells me that he was from Morris, Illinois, and that in the spring of 1970 he was just out of the University of Missouri J-School. “I was set to start on the copy desk with your father. I went to my parents’ house, and my mother’s at the table, the paper cracked to the obits. She says, ‘What kind of place are you going to work at where men drop dead at thirty-five?’ Your father’s death terrified her. She didn’t want me working on the copy desk.”

  Silence.

  “I started only days after your father died. What I remember most is that I got his locker. They were on the fourth floor, in the hallway, built into the wall. They had padlocks and I had to get the combination. Your dad’s stuff was cleared out by then. I always felt proud of the fact that I got his locker. I had never met him, but everyone talked about him. Almost in hushed tones. I wanted to live up to his reputation.”

  He tells me he worked on the copy desk and then was a night wire editor from ’73 to ’78.

  “The Daily News got shuttered in ’78 and a lot of Sun-Times people started to leave. I looked around and thought, What is this? I had worked in newspapers for about ten years and realized it wasn’t for me. So I went to law school. That’s how I ended up out here, in San Francisco.”

  “Tell me about the night he died,” I say. “When he was with Bobbie.”

  “Bobbie called the ambulance. But she didn’t try to cover it up to make herself look better. She did the right thing. It sticks in my mind that she was concerned about your family. She wanted to protect you. I remember that when the police got there and it looked like they were going to call your mother—since she was next of kin—that’s when Bobbie invoked Dick’s name. And then things started to happen.”

  “What things?”

  “Well, they let her call Dick, and he came, and then that’s probably when the story got hatched.”

  “And Bobbie? What was her life after he died?”

  “Think about what she had to deal with. She had to go back to that newsroom. Newspapermen are paid to know dirt on people. But Bobbie never hid. People never talked about it in the open. But we all knew it. I think that it all hit her pretty hard. I think she lived
a pretty unhappy life after that night. She was a Catholic girl from small-town Ohio. She was twenty-four when your dad died. And he was her love. She never married. I don’t even remember her ever having a boyfriend. She was not one to go weeping about it, but her grief hurt her mightily.”

  “Was it a short affair? How did they meet?”

  He tells me that he heard the story only a few times. “It always came up with a guy named Tom Moffett. He worked on the desk when your dad was the night slot. I think your dad was the youngest slot man they ever had there. Not an easy job. Your dad sat at the bottom of the horseshoe, in the center. And around the top of the horseshoe was a basket where the copy went. The copy would come in and it was all brought to your dad, every story. And he had to deal the copy out to the guys on the rim. Everybody smoked—pipe, cigarette, cigar. Nobody used ashtrays. The floor was scarred with burn marks. There might as well have been spittoons. Not that it would’ve mattered. Guys always spat in the waste can. I never wanted to have to dig out old copy. Your dad would have sat at the center with four guys on his right side and his left side. Bobbie was one of those guys,” he says. “She was one of the first women on the desk at the Sun-Times.” Berning tells me that as the slot man, my dad would have worked 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. and was responsible for putting out three editions of the paper: the three-star and the four-star and the five-star. I ask him what those are. He tells me that the three-star (for suburban home delivery) locked and printed at 10 p.m., and the four-star (for city home delivery) locked and printed at 1:30 a.m.

  “The turf edition, the final edition, locked at 4:30 a.m. We called it the turf because it had the final racing info for that day.”

  “But what about Bobbie?” I ask. “How’d that start?”

  “Young girl, just out of Ohio State. She worked 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. That’s how they met. Most of the details I know from hearing from other people. Have you talked to Natty Bumppo? He was a friend of hers on the desk. And Tom Moffett?” he asks. “After your dad died, Moffett took the slot. He was there for all of it with Bobbie. He lives in Wisconsin. I always remember his address because he lives on Jail Alley.” He pauses. “I have a question for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What was it like growing up without a dad?”

  “That’s not a short answer,” I say. “Where do you want to begin?”

  “How old were you when he died?”

  I tell him that I had just had my sixth birthday.

  “And your brother?”

  He was eight.

  I hear him choke up. It’s only for a few seconds, and then he catches himself. It stuns me so much that I don’t know what to say.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I can’t imagine what would happen if . . . I . . . ”

  I tell him how he is a stand-up guy for telling me the truth.

  “Haven’t other people?” he asks.

  “No.”

  #

  I call Tom Moffett in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. A woman with a Scandinavian accent answers. I ask for Moffett. When he picks up the phone, I introduce myself in the same fast-nervous way. I still haven’t been able to get past my feeling that the other person is about to slam the phone on me: My-name-is-Michael-Hainey-and-you-don’t-know-me-but-I-think-you-worked-with-my-father-Bob-Hainey.

  “I remember your old man. But, uh, listen. We’re about to sit down to dinner. Send me an e-mail and we can make a time to talk.”

  Early next morning, an e-mail response:

  Mike:

  Can you give me a little idea of what you want to know about your father so I can rack my brain? A lot of years have gone under the bridge since 1970.

  Tom Moffett

  I don’t want to spook him, so I say that I’m just looking to talk a bit about what the newsroom was like back then, as well as the local saloons. He writes back:

  I’d be happy to chat. A good time is Sunday mornings.

  And let me say it here: I worked under your dad for only slightly over a year, but he was one of the finest newsmen I ever got to know and a human being WAAAAAAAAY too decent for his own good. I look forward to your call.

  #

  Sunday morning I get up at six. Jack myself on coffee. Not that I need to. I have my usual nervousness. Fear that I am taking people back to somewhere they don’t want to go. I’ve become the Grim Creeper. Creeping up on these people, dragging them into the past. A past they thought was behind them, forever.

  I call Moffett at 8 a.m. I tell him what I told the others: I’m trying to close a circle in my life. He tells me how he started at the paper in ’68, working the lobster shift with my father on the copy desk.

  “The guys who work at night—your dad excepted—are not as good as the guys in the day. Drinking hard was encouraged. And when you took your ‘lunch’ at 10 p.m., you usually went out and had a few snorts. Not your dad, though. I remember he always brought his lunch from home. But on top of it all, if you’re working those hours, your only friends tend to be people in the business. And newspaper people are a pretty rough bunch. What’s more, when you get off work at two in the morning, it’s not like you go home to bed. You do what you do—go out to the bars and drink some more. Most nights, we’d spend from two to four in the morning at Andy’s. Your dad liked Andy’s because it was close to the Sun-Times and it was a shot-and-a-beer joint.”

  I let him go on this way for almost an hour, and when I think that he’s lulled himself into security I say, “What happened that night with Bobbie?”

  “You know that story?”

  “I do.”

  “I lied to your mother back then. And I don’t regret it. I was your dad’s alibi. Nights he was out with Bobbie, I was your dad’s cover story—that he was out for drinks with me. The morning after he died, your mother called me. She said someone had told her that Bob had been helping a friend from the paper move furniture in their apartment after work and that he died doing that. She asked me if that was true. Well, I dummied up fast. But I also didn’t want your mother to go snooping around on her own and get hurt. So I told her, ‘Listen, I’m sure you got more important things to do right now than be calling around to people looking for what happened to Bob. Let me see what I can find out for you.’ I wanted to throw her off the hunt, see? Well, the next day, I go to the wake, and no sooner am I in the door of the funeral home than your mother comes walking up to me, asking me what I’d found out. I can see your dad laid out dead over her shoulder. I tell her he died like she heard. On the street. Alone.”

  “And she believed you?”

  “I think she probably suspected the truth. But I don’t regret the lie. I did what I had to do.”

  “You think it’s okay?”

  “I was his friend. What else was I supposed to do? I don’t think the aneurysm was a surprise to Bobbie or your mother. Bobbie told me that two weeks before he died, they were on an overnight trip. It was a long drive back and Bobbie suggested they stay at a motel. Your dad said no. She asked why and he said, ‘Because I don’t want to die in a motel room.’ I guess he’d had a recent physical and knew that he was not in the best of health.”

  “They went on trips together?”

  “He took her to see where he came from, to McCook.”

  “How could he pull that off?”

  “It was a different time. No cell phones. Nothing. He picks her up, drives.”

  “So, how did he die?”

  “I’d always heard that it was in her apartment. Whether or not it was in bed, I don’t know. But I think the best thing Bobbie did was call your uncle. He showed up and got the cops to agree that he was not found in the apartment but on the street.”

  “I still can’t believe cops would agree to alter the scene of a crime.”

  “It wasn’t a crime,” Moffett says. “It was a tragedy. And the cops and your uncle and Bobbie were trying to rewrite the ending. To keep it from drawing in you and your brother and your mother. Their hearts were in the right place.”


  “Well, I think in the end they made it worse.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And it was a bad cover story,” I say. “Everything my father and uncle valued in newspapering—good reporting and editing—in the end, it’s what undid them.”

  “No, you undid them.”

  # # #

  Moffett and I arrange to meet the following weekend in Chicago. He’ll drive down. We agree on a small place in the shadow of the old Water Tower—a survivor of the Chicago Fire, now sitting like a misplaced chess rook in the middle of Michigan Avenue. When I arrive, Moffett’s already seated. Stout and strong. Blue button-down. No tie. Hair like a monk’s, around the base of his skull.

  “Well, you’re quite a bit like your old man, that’s for sure.”

  Even now, still—a moment of pride.

  He says, “I want to know how you found out. After I got off the phone with you, I was so rattled I called Paul Berning to warn him and he tells me you’d already gotten to him. We agreed you are a damned good reporter. You got us both to give up the goods.”

  I tell him that it wasn’t easy to learn the truth, that he and all of the guys stuck together.

  “Proud of it,” he says.

  “Why?”

  “It’s what a man does. It’s the newspaperman’s code.”

  He gulps some of his tap.

  “I’ll tell you,” he says. “When you called me that first night, you caught me off guard, but I managed to get you off the phone. When you wrote back that it was about your old man, I told myself, if you had the story, I’d confirm it. Because I know what it’s like to be searching for the truth and all you get is silence.”

  He tells me about family secrets. Tells me that when he was a boy growing up on the North Shore of Long Island, he always wondered what happened to his mother.

  “She went to a hospital ‘for a spell.’ She was gone a long time. My father and my grandmother, they’d never answer my questions about why she would leave me behind. It was only years later, after she’d died, that I figured out she’d been pretty damned depressed most of her life. So when you called, I got to thinking about all that. About life. About children. About where my mother had gone. I know what it’s like to seek the truth from others but not be told it.”