ShareThisWASHINGTON - Lance Gay was an immensely talented reporter and unlike so many of that breed no prima donna. Thus, when The Washington Star folded it was a mystery why no other publication had snapped him up.
His explanation was that he had vowed not to take a job until he had found one for a Star librarian with a criminal record. I told Lance that while Scripps Howard News Service did not have an opening for a bookie it did have one for him and to just come on over when he was ready.
He did, arriving in a monstrous old Chevy sagging on its rear springs from the weight of his unfinished doctoral thesis in the trunk. The thesis went into storage and the Chevy was replaced by an MG of astonishing unreliability, followed by a succession of tiny Mazda Miatas. This in itself wouldn't be noteworthy except that Lance was a very large man.
As a labor reporter covering the AFL-CIO's regular gatherings in Miami Beach, photos of him lounging on a deck chair would regularly appear in the nation's newspapers with cutlines broadly hinting that here was a labor goon vacationing on the members' dues.
He was a fearless but not reckless reporter although he did manage to be taken prisoner by the Contras on the Nicaraguan border until it was explained to them the poor p.r. consequences of taking an American hostage when Washington was their sole benefactor.
He volunteered to stay in Baghdad throughout the "mother of all" bombings during the Persian Gulf War, but when Saddam threatened to intern all Western reporters for the duration, the office ordered him out. He decamped to Bahrain. He couldn't have been there more than a day when I phoned his hotel and in that special English reserved for foreigners told the operator I badly needed to talk to a Mr. Gay. "Oh, you mean Lance. He's in the bar. Let me get him for you," she said. Lance had the good reporter's knack for quickly making useful friends.
One of the great sights of that war, we were told, was the sight of Lance departing for Kuwait in a brand new Burgundy Chrysler New Yorker laden with emergency supplies of spare tires and scotch. The car was returned singed and discolored by the smoke from burning oil wells and dinged by shrapnel kicked up from the roads. Even by Lance's standards, it was a major expense account item.
Born in New Zealand, Lance came up through the business the old-fashioned way, basically a form of apprenticeship that began with running errands as a copy boy and then doing stints on the suburban and city desks before attaining the heights of the national staff.
Even though Lance fit the stereotype of the old school, chain-smoking, hard-drinking reporter and sported bushy Dickensian mutton chop sideburns, he was by no means a newsroom dinosaur, adapting seamlessly to new technology, sometimes too seamlessly.
Once in uncharacteristically furtive fashion he phoned me from Berlin to say he might have to change hotels suddenly and without notice, perhaps doing so under an assumed name. In any case, he'd get back to me.
It seems that unable to get a dial-up connection from the phone in his room, he had removed the wall plate and hardwired his laptop into the hotel's computer system. We got the story but he caused the hotel's computer system to crash, taking with it their reservations, billing records and cash registers. He departed just as the technicians were approaching his floor.
Lance had started at the University of Maryland intending a career as a historian and he remained a constant reader of histories. Our wire service used to have a feature called Point-Counterpoint, and I am reasonably certain we are the only American news organization to carry a Point-Counterpoint on whether Richard III had been treated unjustly by history.
He had a thorough if quirky grasp of contemporary history. The high point of many Scripps Howard news interns' stay in Washington was Lance's introductory tour of Capitol Hill, that included the usual visits to the press galleries and document rooms, the best way to buttonhole lawmakers and a visit to the pillar on the Capitol's west steps that was the site of a celebrated lovemaking during an all-night session of Congress.
Lance believed that no reporter should return from an assignment empty-handed. An editor would call him with a preposterous idea for a story -- it happens -- and Lance would argue, invariably correctly, that the assignment would take up too much time and at the end of it there would be no story.
The editor would forget the idea and start to move on to something else but almost immediately the phone would ring. It would be Lance saying, "You know, there's a way we can make this work if we just . . . " Once implanted, it could be very hard to talk Lance out of an idea, especially if he sensed there was a conspiracy involved.
Faced with growing mobility and breathing issues, Lance took a buyout in 2006, leaving a huge hole in our operation. There was no story he could not cover and write about quickly and cleanly, and in our business this is praise of the highest order.
The newspaper was Lance's great love, but in retirement this fast-talking reporter straight out of "The Front Page" found a greater one -- as a fulltime grandfather. "Doting" doesn't even begin to do justice to Lance's love for those kids.
Lance died of respiratory disease Sunday night at home, with his daughters at his side.
Lance will be remembered as long as newspaper people gather to tell stories about the wonderful characters who ply their chosen trade.
(Contact Dale McFeatters at mcfeattersd(at)shns.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
AN APPRECIATION
