Len Gilbert gave me my first newspaper job when he served as managing editor of the Bridgeport Post-Telegram, the predecessors of the Connecticut Post. I was 17 years old and hadn’t a clue. The process of churning out a paper was different in the late 1970s. No computers. No cell phones. You cranked on Underwood and Royal typewriters. Carbon sandwiched by copy paper. Editors fed a conveyer belt that delivered copy to the brutes in the composing room below that cast the lead type to print the papers. Gilbert informed me my journalism career would begin by crafting obits.
Obits? I wondered. What’s that? Donuts? Journalists of that era were generally crusty sorts, but one of the veteran scribes who took pity on me was James G. Clark, legendary for his sense of humor, writing skills and drinking endurance.
“Mr. Clark,” I posed, “what’s an obit?”
“Grimaldi, you didn’t ask Gilbert that question did you because he might fire you before you started.”
I stood there quiet as the master educated me. “An obituary is something you write when a person dies.” Obituaries, Clark added, were no less important than spot news stories because it’s the last chance for people to express themselves, and they’re doing it through you.
In 1977 Lenny Gilbert gave a teenager a chance for a career in journalism. Every time I wrote something that provoked a reader complaint to his office, he always backed me up. Mr. Gilbert passed away last week. He was 99.
His obituary from the CT Post follows.