Remembering Art Gallagher
A few weeks ago, we received an email from Jean Wilkins, saying that her father, Art Gallagher, was having a problem reading The Chronicle on his computer – it appeared to be a technical issue with the web browser he was using, which made it impossible to read the center column on his screen.
I hadn’t seen Art in more than two years, so when I got Jean’s email, I thought it was a great excuse to go out to his Glacier Hills home for a visit, and see what I could do to solve the computer issue while I was there. I also wanted to ask him what he thought about the state of journalism these days, and about our publication, and so many other things. But I’m ashamed to say I never acted on this intent. There always seemed to be other things crowding my schedule and clamoring for attention. I thought it could wait – I thought I had time. What I have now is simply deep regret.
Art Gallagher died on Monday. He was 99.
I told Art once that I wished I’d had the opportunity to work for him. He was the editor of The Ann Arbor News longer than any other in the newspaper’s 174-year history – 22 years. But he retired in 1976, a full two decades before I was hired there. I got to know him several years after that, when I became opinion editor of The News in 2006. [Full Story]