A tribute to Pete Hamill, legendary New York writer

Pete Hamill was one of the last journalists who walked the walk and tawked the Noo Yawk tawk.

Hamill, who died Aug 5 at age 85, was a preeminent tabloid columnist and editor who at different times ran the New York Daily News and the New York Post. In one wacky stretch in 1993, amid a hectic ownership transition, he famously edited the latter newspaper from a downtown diner after the staff had revolted over his temporary firing.

Hamill also was a prolific author of books who once dated Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and roamed New York on late-night drinking escapades with Frank Sinatra, of whom Hamill once wrote had a voice that was formed by the concrete canyons of Manhattan.

A friend of Robert F. Kennedy, Hamill helped persuade the then-US senator from New York to run for the White House. Hamill was one of four men who disarmed assassin Sirhan Sirhan in the frenzied aftermath of RFK's assassination in Los Angeles in 1968.

Hamill also wrote of his bouts of drinking, which he detailed in his memoir A Drinking Life. He acknowledged that his writing became much more lucid after he gave up booze.

Another memoir, Downtown: My Manhattanincludes his reporting for the New York Daily News on the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept 11, 2001.

Hamill, along with his contemporary Jimmy Breslin, who died in 2017 at age 88, were larger-than-life, hard-nosed Irish American tabloid journalists who were marquee names in a bygone era of newspapering. Breslin once ran for New York City Council with his "running mate", the famed author Norman Mailer, who sought the mayoralty. They didn't win.

What set Hamill apart was his gift for storytelling and his unapologetic love for New York City, which was amplified by his rich Brooklyn baritone. He always recommended that to get a feel for New York, you have to walk its streets.

Despite his love of New York, Hamill also lived all over the world  at various times: Barcelona, Dublin, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Rome, Saigon and Tokyo, to name a few.

"Pete was a giant of journalism, a quintessential New Yorker and a personal friend to my father and myself," Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a statement. "I learned much from him and he inspired me. Pete's death is going to leave a hole in the heart of New Yorkers."

Robert D. McFadden, a contemporary of Hamill's who is famous in his own right as a rewrite man at The New York Times, wrote this of Hamill in the Aug 5 obituary in the Times:

"In a tuxedo at a gallery opening or in shirt sleeves at the city desk, he looked like a fighter: a muscular, grizzled, chain-smoking raconteur who told stories in a whiskey baritone of growing up in a big Irish family in Brooklyn, of newsmen he had known, stories he had covered and characters he had met around the world — grist for the novels he churned out, sometimes holing up for weeks and working around the clock."

If you were flipping through the TV remote and happened upon an interview with Hamill, you would not change the channel.

I have several of his books, and one, North River(as the Hudson River was once called), recreated 1930s New York in brilliant detail.

Perhaps one of the most New York things Hamill did occurred on his last day. He died in Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn, where his mother, who arrived in New York the day the stock market crashed in 1929, once worked as a midwife.

In a city that is constantly changing, the persona of Hamill will live on, not unlike the protagonist in his captivating novel Forever, who was granted immortality if he never left Manhattan Island.

In 2020 in particular, New York could use a dose of such nostalgia to raise its spirits.

Contact the writer at williamhennelly@chinadailyusa.com