By John Ellement and Kevin Cullen, Globe Staff | January
29, 2005
BROOKLINE -- When Nicholas Nyhan finished speaking yesterday
at the memorial
service for his father, retired Boston Globe columnist David
Nyhan, some 800
people in the United Parish of Brookline stood up and applauded.
They applauded when Mr. Nyhan's oldest child described the "complex
beauty"
of his father, but they were also applauding the life of the
64-year-old
newspaper reporter and proudly liberal columnist who died unexpectedly
after
shoveling at his Brookline home Sunday.
"His muscles and his words were just tools for him to express
feelings,
principles, hope, benevolence," said Nicholas Nyhan, speaking
on behalf of
his younger sisters, Veronica and Kate. "How do you get
all that in one
beautiful guy? I don't know, but we got it in Dad."
It was a celebratory service that reflected the personality
of the
Harvard-educated man who grew up proudly Irish in Brookline's
Whiskey Point
neighborhood and went on to establish himself as one of the
most insightful
political observers in both Boston and Washington.
Among the mourners were giants of journalism, including Pulitzer
Prize-winner Jack Nelson of the Los Angeles Times, who introduced
Mr. Nyhan
to his wife, Olivia. Also in attendance were the unseen cogs
of journalism
who make newspapers run, like Rose Devine and Barbara McDonough,
two retired
Globe telephone operators whose counsel Mr. Nyhan often sought
and kept.
There were powerful politicians -- US Senator Edward M. Kennedy,
who
delivered the eulogy, and US Senator John F. Kerry, Mayor Thomas
M. Menino
of Boston, and Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly. There were
also less
visible political operatives, such as Edward F. Jesser and Robert
"Skinner"
Donahue, whose friendships Mr. Nyhan valued more than their
news tips.
In his eulogy, Kennedy recalled that Mr. Nyhan had taken to
heart the advice
that poet Robert Frost gave his brother, John F. Kennedy, another
Brookline
native who went to Harvard, at the 1961 presidential inauguration:
"Be more
Irish than Harvard."
Mr. Nyhan played football at Harvard. He did not boast about
his Harvard
background, Kennedy said, pointing out that Martin F. Nolan,
a longtime
Globe editor and columnist, sat next to Mr. Nyhan in the newspaper's
Washington bureau for five years before learning that he went
to Harvard and
played football. Nolan, one of Mr. Nyhan's close friends whose
dogged
reporting earned him a place on Richard Nixon's enemy list,
nodded to
confirm the story.
"Dave was a man of amazing talent, but most of all he was
a man of the
people who never forgot his roots," Kennedy said. "He
was an uncommon
champion of the common folk. He counted among his friends not
only his
newspaper colleagues, but the men and women who worked in the
boatyard near
his summer home in Maine and the lobstermen he met along the
coast."
Mr. Nyhan enjoyed listening to the sing-song lilt of fishermen
in West Cork,
his family's ancestral home, which he visited often. In tribute
to his Irish
roots, the congregation stood and sang the traditional Irish
drinking song,
"The Wild Rover," perhaps the only time, Mr. Nyhan's
friends surmised later,
the rollicking tune was sung to the sober accompaniment of an
organ in a
Protestant church.
Mr. Nyhan's brother, John, acknowledged that Mr. Nyhan's fatal
heart attack
while shoveling snow had been a shock to his family and friends,
who knew
him as a robust man who into his 60s continued to play bruising
games of
pickup basketball at the Colonel Daniel Marr Boys and Girls
Club near the
Globe in Dorchester.
"Our mother, Peg, used to say that she would rather wear
out than rust out,"
John Nyhan said. "It is clear that David's heart wore out
Sunday morning,
but not his spirit."
Another brother, Chris, said his brother was never happier than
when on
Chebeague Island in Maine's Casco Bay, where he had a summer
home. Mr. Nyhan
especially loved the island's unpretentious golf course, where
the
membership cost $400 and the members weren't required to wear
a collared
shirt. Mr. Nyhan called it "the working man's Pebble Beach."
"The big heart beats no more," his brother said, "but
the big spirit we will
cherish forever."
Nicholas Nyhan said he found among his father's papers a piece
he wrote
about dying.
"When your pickup truck starts on the first crank after
wintering stoically
through its latest Maine hibernation, that's a gift from the
gods," the
newspaperman wrote. "What are my odds of ever starting
up again after
holding my breath all winter? I mean, is that not worth celebrating?"
Once, Nicholas Nyhan said, relatives were out on Casco Bay after
dusk,
making it difficult to navigate to shore, until they saw a light
in the
dark. "They follow it and come to see Dad, holding the
mooring, waving the
flashlight," he said. "He was chest deep in the cold
water. A one-man
lighthouse. The rock you could count on to help you find your
way."
Nicholas Nyhan said the life lessons taught by his father were
curiosity, a
strong work ethic, an interest in leaders, an interest in dreamers,
and to
value family above all else.
"You did right by our family and took care of us,"
Nicholas Nyhan told his
father. "You are the father we wanted. . . . You are now
free. . . . You
made our lives better, and now we want you to be free and proud
of
yourself."