Once More, with Feeling

Although they were slow in coming, tributes to Seattle freelance travel writer Nick Gallo have been appearing since his unexpected death from a heart condition on October 11. The latest, and perhaps best yet, is actually a paid obituary in The Seattle Times, written by Nick’s friend, longtime office mate, and fellow freelancer, Dean Paton.

My favorite part of Paton’s obit is this:

Though primarily a freelance magazine journalist, [Gallo] was first a poet, and so his journalism had depths of meaning and a polish uncommon in that genre. He once began an article about a trip to Mexico: “Like a jaguar on the prowl, the morning sun creeps out from a thicket of clouds, and stretches itself across the sky. I hardly care, huddling in the sand under two blankets, shivering with headache, fever and chills. First day on vacation, and I’ve brought a respiratory virus from home.”

He knew how to keep readers wanting more.

Nick could tell you, with a mix of forethought and savvy, why the Seattle Mariners front office had bungled its latest trade, and then, if you weren’t in utter agreement, back it up with a trenchant quote from Pablo Neruda, the glorious Chilean poet. He certainly knew the president was a hamburger, tried relentlessly to laugh away his anger and sadness with the state of our world, and, almost as important, he was born to play shortstop.

Nick had a cannon of an arm and for maybe 20 years was the spiritual heart of a rag-tag softball team called The Rocket. He played in a local pick-up basketball league for middle-aged guys who wanted to moderate their testosterone, and coached Little League baseball, partly because he was still a kid himself, and partly because Nick figured if he took the job it would prevent one more screaming failed-jock militarist from psychologically scarring young boys and girls. He could never understand those coaches who thought it helpful, or permissible, to yell at nine-year-olds. (Umpires, of course, a different story.)

You can read all of Paton’s remembrance here.

Meanwhile, thanks to the Web site set up in Nick’s honor by his sister-in-law, Cathy Brown, I discovered a fine blog called Mexico Premiere, which covers news, information, and travel writing related to America’s southern neighbor. Nick was known to many of that site’s contributors, and was apparently a friend of editor David Simmonds, so it is not surprising that Mexico Premiere should have put together it’s own tribute to our friend, Mr. Gallo. What is surprising, and quite endearing, is to read Simmonds’ concluding news that “Mexico Premiere will be establishing an annual excellence in writing award focused on Mexico travel, to be named The Nick Gallo Award. One day, perhaps twenty years from now, some young journalist will ask ‘Just who was this Gallo dude?’ Nick would like that.”

I can imagine him laughing about it right now, in fact.

Again, for those who haven’t been keeping up, a memorial service will be held for Nick Gallo this coming Saturday, October 27, at 4 p.m. at Seattle University’s St. Ignatius Chapel. Click here for directions.

See you there.

READ MORE: “Letting Go,” by Charles Smyth (Spiraglio).

The Times of Our Lives

The Seattle Times today features a short but moving obituary about Nick Gallo, written by staff reporter Erik Lacitis. Other than Candace Dempsey’s recent blog item at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer site, it’s the only coverage of Nick’s death that I’ve seen in the major Seattle media. Which is strange, considering how many friends he made in local journalism circles over the years. Even Crosscut Seattle, the recently inaugurated local news site spearheaded by David Brewster, who for many years worked with Nick at Seattle Weekly, doesn’t seem able to muster any original comment on his passing, even though it posted two remembrances of local historian Walt Crowley, another Weekly alumnus who died within the last month. Instead, Crosscut today just dropped in a link to the Times obit. Lacitis (who apparently knew Nick from their joint participation in regular media basketball games years ago) called me yesterday for some comments, but what I have to say here is far from the most compelling part of his Times article. More interesting are the things he heard from Nick’s wife, Laurie Brown, about their life together before he graduated from the University of Oregon journalism school in 1977:

... [I]n the early 1970s, Mr. Gallo and his wife were hippies, she said. Brown said the couple worked from June until October in Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington, picking fruit. On good days, she said, they earned $100 together. They lived on their savings the rest of the year, with Mr. Gallo writing poetry and Brown doing art projects. But even as a hippie, she said, Mr. Gallo showed his fastidiousness, going to orchards the night before and scoping out which trees would yield the most fruit and what height ladders the couple would need.

That sounds just like Nick, always readying himself for the tasks ahead. He was a thoughtful, prepared writer who never acted as if he knew everything (unlike some other Seattle media folk of my acquaintance). The anecdote with which Lacitis begins his story, telling about how Nick called his editor at Alaska Airlines Magazine from his hospital room in Athens, Greece, on the day before he died, just to let him know that he’d be down for a while, and therefore unable to address any changes the editor thought necessary on an article he’d recently submitted, simply confirms Nick’s precision. In my experience with him over the years, acting as his editor on different assignments, Nick was never anything less than professional, with the highest standards for his work. Also interesting from Lacitis’ piece are the circumstances of Nick’s demise. According to Laurie, he “was diagnosed with pericarditis--a swelling of the membrane around the heart--and pneumonia.” She adds that Nick “had been in good health, although he had rheumatic fever as a child, which can affect the heart. Brown said autopsy results are expected in 10 days.” All of this only reminds us again how surface appearances can be deceptive. I would have thought that Nick, who I’m quite sure was in better shape than I, would one day be attending my memorial service, rather than the other way around.

Saying Good-bye to Nick

In case anyone is coming to this blog looking for information about memorial service plans for our recently departed friend Nick Gallo, you should know that the service will be held on Saturday, October 27, at 4 p.m. at the St. Ignatius Chapel on the Seattle University campus. More updates about this memorial, plus additional pictures of Nick and a selection of his editorial work, can be found on his sister-in-law, Cathy Brown’s Web tribute pages. Meanwhile, travel writer and former Alaska Airlines Magazine editor Candace Dempsey has posted a fond remembrance of Nick Gallo in her reader blog at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer site. The piece also carries a bit more news about the circumstances surrounding our friend’s death: “It turns out he was trying to get to Greece for a cushy assignment while I was eating my way across Italy. He collapsed on the plane from NY to Athens. He died in the hospital there of an inflamed heart. I guess. Nobody knows all of the details yet.”

Memories, Yes I Have a Few

It was just three weeks ago that I learned my colleague and friend, Walt Crowley, had died at age 60. Now the second shoe drops: Nick Gallo, with whom I also once worked at The Weekly (subsequently retitled Seattle Weekly), has suddenly passed away. That news came to me via a short e-mail note from Paul Frichtl, the editor of Alaska Airlines Magazine, a monthly to which both Nick and I have sold articles over the years:

If you’ve not heard, we’ve lost a good writer and friend. Nick Gallo died Wednesday in Athens of a heart inflammation. In our small community of magazine journalists, Nick has always stood out as one of the most talented, enthusiastic and passionate writers and editors. And he’s been a caring friend to everyone he’s worked with.

Nick will be sorely missed.

I’d understood from our mutual friend, Charlie Smyth, that Nick had flown off to Greece on a travel-writing assignment, one he’d been looking forward to taking. He was scheduled to return home to Seattle this month. Any journalist who’s toured around the United States or the world on behalf of a publication--especially since September 11, 2001--wonders at some point, What would happen if I got mortally sick on the road, and couldn’t get back? But that’s supposed to be idle speculation, nothing to be taken too seriously, just the backtalk of human fear.

You’re not supposed to die for the sake of a travel-writing gig.

After I heard about Nick’s demise, I tried to tally up what I really knew about him. We’d never been close friends, not like Charlie and me; but since our Weekly days together, we had seen each other periodically, mostly at magazine editorial events, restaurant openings (to which freelance writers often wangle invitations), and author readings about town. Oh, and sometimes at Seattle’s Green Lake, around which he liked to walk his dog.

If my memory is correct, Nick was 57 years old. He was born of Italian stock and grew up in Connecticut. He went to Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, but in the 1970s came west to attend journalism school at the University of Oregon. He was a big baseball fan who’d played sports in his younger, more limber days. He’d been married for many years to a woman named Laurie, and they had two sons together, Alex and Noah, at least one of whom is now going to college himself. Nick left The Weekly well before I did, and wound up freelancing for a variety of parenting, health, and airline magazines. He was also a stringer for People magazine. I remember that last job of his well, because during the early 1990s, while he was off attending to some other business (I don’t now remember what), he asked me to pinch-hit for him at People. This was an unlikely substitution, to be sure; I didn’t read People, and wasn’t really interested in covering the brand of celebrity or pathos-heavy stories I associated with that weekly publication. (What can I say? I was a snob.) Fortunately, his editor seemed to understand my biases, and sent me out to interview authors Mark Helprin and Charles Johnson, both then living in Seattle, and a little-known Canadian comic-book writer by the name of Todd McFarlane, who lived in southwestern British Columbia. (It wasn’t long after I talked with McFarlane that he became famous as the artist behind the Spider-Man series, and then went on to create the antihero Spawn and become an entertainment mogul.) I subsequently tried to return Nick’s favor by asking him to write a chapter or two of the original, 1993 edition of the Seattle Access guidebook, which I edited.

What else do I remember about Nick? That he was fond of tequila. If I didn’t know this before, I found it out one night during a small birthday party, many years ago. Herding Charlie Smyth and me into the kitchen of the home where this fête was taking place, away from a crowd in the living room, Nick drew out a handsome bottle of the stuff that he’d recently brought back from Mexico, and proceeded to pour us shots. In those days, I could usually hold my own in drinking contests, but Nick had a capacity far exceeding mine. He’d probably perfected it during his many trips south of the border. Nick relished every opportunity to travel through Mexico, whether for business or pleasure, and he often wrote about his journeys (see here, here, here, here, and here). Every once in a while, I’d suggest to Nick that he pen his own book about that Latin American nation, but he seemed reticent--reluctant to commit himself to the task of writing a book, and somewhat unsure that he could pull it off, anyway.

There will be others who knew Nick Gallo better than I, people who can share their adventures together and recall jokes he told or embarrassing incidents in which he was involved. I’ll look forward to hearing what they have to say. My strongest memories of Nick aren’t event-oriented at all. I remember him as a kind and generous individual, a writer passionate about getting his best work into print (despite the roadblocks of humorless or otherwise thickheaded editors), and a friend who never seemed too busy to sit and talk about politics, journalism, or the quotidian frustrations of life. There aren’t enough Nicks in this world. It’s beyond sad to have lost the original.

UPDATE: Cathy Brown, Nick’s sister-in-law, has assembled an excellent portfolio of photographs celebrating his well-traveled life. You can find that here.