In Loving Memory

Paul Joseph Haskins, Sr.

November 23, 2003

November 2005

It's been 2 years this month since a the world lost a great man, Paul Joseph Haskins, Sr., my father, friend and mentor. Not a day has gone by that I haven't missed him terribly, nor that I haven't Thanked God that I had him for as long as I did.

My Thoughts:

Daddy was a man of unbelievable strength, In stature but in Character as well. He spent his life seeking truth, not only in the stories he wrote and edited, but also in life. Those he was drawn to were those who also sought truth. Many have said he often thought the story was behind the story most eyes saw, and he always looked for THAT story. And as the years pass, it becomes even more obvious to  me that his story was no different. He was a man from a difficult life, one that most never saw. For him, fatherhood was much like the newspaper business, on the job training, but much tougher than a good, honest story. With a story there is an ending, a conclusion, at least to the reporter who tells it, yet as a father, there is no final dialogue, no conclusion. A Father... that is a lifelong endeavor, for one who's life it is to get the story and move on to the next, this must have been his most difficult assignment.

Where is the period? The by-line? Press-Time? A truly never ending story, and yet a very real, very personal article, five of them even! ever changing, never ending assignments. It was easy, he said, when we were cute little ones, showing off, laughing, having fun, before we were people, before we had minds, opinions, grudges. Those were the good stories, the ones he loved to tell! When did we grow up? Become people, when did the hero become a man? What happened to those little angels from those carefree days? When did they stop needing me? Those are questions he asked me. He was a man with regrets and wishes, regrets for the times the job he loved so much tore him from the children he adored. Wishing those early days had lasted forever, beyond those few short years of toddler hood, regret that he had no idea what to do with emotional hormonal teenagers and grownups. GRANDCHILDREN?? What happened to my baby girl? A question I'd long ago forgotten but that he asked while holding his youngest one day old grandson...

He was a man who wanted great things for his children... "you can do so much more than I ever did!" 

Conversations that I cherish, laughter and love... 

My views of love have changed dramatically in the last 2 years... I guess that is a natural process when the pain of losing someone you have always loved, can't remember ever not loving, becomes such a manifestation of loss and mingled love that it almost becomes a living entity.... even now there are no words to explain...

~~~

You called me sweetheart,

I called you Daddy

You called me your baby girl

And I always called you gladly.

To hear your voice

To see your grin

Oh those eyes would sparkle

Your heart always let me in

~~~

Acceptance is the key to love

by accepting you

my love grew deeper

by accepting me 

I knew your love was true

November 2003

I seem to forget that while feeling the loss of my father, friend and mentor, many of you are also feeling a dreadful loss with his passing as well and I wanted to let each of you know that my sympathy is with each of you.

~~~

Paul J. Haskins, Sr.  formerly of Kansas City and New York City died of pneumonia Sunday, November 23^rd at a hospital near his home in Cancun , Mexico at the age of 62. While carving out a distinguished professional life that influenced many in Newspapers around the country, Paul also left a remarkable personal legacy as well. 

He leaves behind a multitude of friendships that spanned the years and miles, and every life he touched will carry on his legacy. 

Paul loved many things in life, his family being one of the most important to him. Steve Shirk, managing editor for news of The Kansas City Star described Paul in the KC Star:  "His tough exterior, and everything else about him, was genuine. It sometimes masked a truly kind and caring man whose passion for the craft could light up the newsroom." And he was much like this in his family life as well. 

Paul set out to find his place in the world, reaching heights that most of us will never reach. I've recently heard him described as a "self-made man - one of the few people who could lay claim to that title, but one that would never presume to do so."

As Mr. Shirk said, Paul was genuine, and a truly kind and caring man, the toughness that he gained in life and in the land of newsrooms and breaking stories, that same toughness that landed him at the nations top paper, was one of the things I admired most about the man that was Paul J. Haskins, Sr., my father. The person I most want to be like.

He loved Kansas City.... Oh how he loved Kansas City! City's tempo changes with lights is an article he wrote for the KC Times Wednesday, January 5, 1966 edition... one of many he wrote that expressed his fascination with Kansas City, all aspects of the City, he wrote of his desire to see it preserved, the History of his great City. For example he wrote articles about the Wornall Home, the Alexander Majors Home, and Union Cemetery.... all these articles had a common thread, the impact of great men on the building of Kansa City, and the need to remember, memorialize them.... Honor them.

 Did he ever know that his impact on journalism would be worth so much? His impact on those that knew him, admired him, loved him? His impact as a parent, one that will forever be a guide, a benchmark?

 One must wonder.... He told me once, "I did the best I could, I'm just me" so I sincerely doubt he knew exactly how great he was, few humble men do.....

 A self made man, and one who would not presume to claim the title... well he may not have laid claim to that title, but we know... and as he used his talents to remind and memorialize those great Kansas Citians who gave so much of themselves, so I, with the help of many others, will try to remind and memorialize, to Honor the man that was Paul J. Haskins, Sr. the newspaper man, the editor, the friend, and wonderful father.

Theresa A. Leavitt

Former KC newspaper editor Paul J. Haskins dies at 62

25 November 2003 Kansas City Star

Paul J. Haskins, a former Kansas City newspaper editor whose standards of accuracy and intuitive news sense stamped a generation of reporters, died of pneumonia Sunday in Cancun, Mexico.

He was 62.

Paul Haskins began working for The Kansas City Times as a copy boy in 1958 and rose to the position of metropolitan editor before leaving in 1982.

Joining The New York Times that year, Haskins became "city editor for the nation," dispatching the paper's national correspondents throughout the country, colleagues said.

"Paul demanded excellence - from his staff and from himself," said Steve Shirk, managing editor for news of The Kansas City Star. "His tough exterior, and everything else about him, was genuine. It sometimes masked a
truly kind and caring man whose passion for the craft could light up the newsroom."

Charles R.T. Crumpley, a former Kansas City Star writer and now business news editor of The New Orleans Times-Picayune, said Haskins' passing ended a newspaper era. Today, most reporters and editors are college graduates. Haskins, however, was a high school dropout who worked his way to the nation's top newspaper.

"I think of him as the quintessential, hardboiled city editor," Crumpley said. "Reporters were terrified of him because he was an absolute bulldog for accuracy and veracity. If you turned in anything that was wrong or incorrect you would not believe the wrath."

Newspapers were Haskins' life, his daughter said. "My father dedicated his life to work and the newspapers he worked for," said Theresa Leavitt of Elizabethtown, Ky. "He gave them everything."

Haskins was born in Livermore, Calif. He attended school in St. Joseph before dropping out of high school in his sophomore year. He later said he was "rescued" by a newspaper telephone operator, who hired him to run errands for The Kansas City Times' newsroom.

"There is really no better way to begin," Haskins said later. "A copy boy learns all the departments of a newspaper's organization."

Over the next 11 years he moved up the ranks, working as an obituary writer, police reporter, general assignment reporter, copy editor and night metropolitan editor.

In 1969, Haskins was named assistant city editor of The Kansas City Times, and he was appointed city editor six years later. Haskins became metropolitan editor in 1978 under a newsroom reorganization that added suburban coverage to his portfolio.

Haskins, who taught briefly at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas, also directed reporters who contributed to coverage of the Hyatt Regency skywalk collapse. Both The Kansas City Times and The Star won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for general local reporting.

The New York Times offered Haskins an editing job on its national desk in 1982. Dean Baquet, the New York paper's national editor in the mid-1990s, said Haskins distributed the morning news assignments and often made critical decisions on fast-breaking stories, such as the Oklahoma City bombing.

Haskins was a gruff character and perhaps the only employee to regularly wear cowboy boots in The New York Times' newsroom.

"He was a wonderful old curmudgeonly city editor," said Baquet, who now is managing editor of the Los Angeles Times.

In a note to employees announcing Haskins' death, a New York Times editor described him as the heart of the national desk.

Haskins, who suffered from emphysema, retired to Mexico in 2000.

He is survived by five children: Shelly Harrison and her husband, Kevin, of Adrian, Mo.; Maria Balcom and her husband, Joseph, of Clayton, N.Y.; Theresa Leavitt and her husband, Rocky, of Elizabethtown, Ky.; Lisa Moss of Adrian, Mo.; and Paul J. Haskins Jr., and his wife, Lori, of Adrian, Mo.; and 12 grandchildren.

Paul J. Haskins, an editor at The New York Times who earlier directed The Kansas City Times's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of a disastrous hotel walkway collapse in 1981, died on Sunday in Cancún, Mexico. He was 62.

The cause was pneumonia and other complications of emphysema.  Mr. Haskins lived on the part of the Caribbean coast of Mexico known as the Mayan Riviera.

Paul Joseph Haskins was born in Livermore, Calif., on April 18, 1941, and moved to Kansas City in his early teens. He dropped out of high school at 15, and at 17 took a job as a telephone operator at The Kansas City Times, working his way up a succession of editorial jobs.

He was the paper's special assignment editor when two suspended walkways bridging the atrium lobby in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City collapsed, killing 114 people and injuring more than 200. For articles published in the jointly owned Kansas City Times and Kansas City Star (later merged into one paper with the name Star), Mr. Haskins's team of reporters worked with engineers and identified the structural flaws that caused the collapse.

In 1982, Mr. Haskins joined The New York Times as a copy editor on the national desk, and in 1995 he became assistant national editor. He had been on leave because of health problems since 2000.

Mr. Haskins is survived by his children from his first marriage: Shelly Harrison, Lisa Moss and Paul Joseph Jr., all of Adrian, Mo., Theresa Leavitt of Elizabethtown, Ky., and Maria Balcom of Clayton, N.Y.. He is also survived by 12 grandchildren.

~~~~~~~~~~

Paul was preceeded in death by his fatherFrank Alti (Jerry) Haskins, in 1946; his step-father, Joseph Clark Longan in 1983 and his Mother Beverly Glenrose Longan in 1993.

BEVERLY G. LONGAN   

72 of Gainesville, Mo.,
formerly of Kansas City, died Dec. 31, 1993, in Gainesville.  Mrs. Longan was born in St. Joseph, and lived in Kansas City from 1956 until moving to Gainesville in 1971. She worked in the accounting department for the Southwestern Bell Telepone Co. for 25 years, retiring in 1974. Survivors include a son, Paul Haskins Sr., New York City; two stepsons, Joseph Clark Longan III, Poulsbo, Wash., and William John Longan, Canoga Park, Calif.; a stepdaughter, Claire Louise DeJean, Odessa, Fla.; five grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

12/23/03

I too was a pupil of your father's at the Kansas City Times. He was a great mentor and a great friend, and I owe him a lifetime of gratitude for helping me with newspapering.

Rick Serrano.

~~~~

11/25/2003 5:17:32 PM

From DAVID LEE PRESTON: And so, within one week, The Commodore and Paul Haskins, two editors who were larger than life while among us, have accepted jobs at the big newspaper in the sky. Having personally experienced the holy wrath of both men as a young reporter, I can say the heavens now will always get the story, and will get it right.

-- David Lee Preston, Philadelphia (The Kansas City Star, 1975-76; The Philadelphia Inquirer, 1982-2000)

Dear Theresa,

Thank you for sending me a copy of the article. I thought you made some nice comments -- a real tribute to your father. I liked the article in the NY Times, too. I hope you're proud. You have a right to be.

We all learned tremendously from Paul's high standards. We learned to drive hard for the last bit of meaning or nuance, to check our facts one more time, to think again about every word that we had written. We were better because of his insistence on perfection. 

Paul was the first to compliment us when we had done a good job. That meant so much coming from him. You know, I've won four national awards, but I think my most rewarding moments were when Paul pulled me aside or phoned me to pat me on the back for something. God, what a towering guy.

Again, I'm very sorry about your loss. You're high in my thoughts, and I'll be thinking of you this holiday

Charlie 

25 November 2003

Charles R.T. Crumpley Business News Editor

The New Orleans Times-Picayune

~~~~

I just wanted to offer my sincere condolences on the death of your father. I hope that in this time of loss, that your are able to take some comfort from the good memories of your father, at least to lessen your grief somewhat. May his memories live forever in your hearts and minds.

...Dave

~~~~

~~~~
Theresa,
 I'm so sorry to hear about your dad.  It sounds like he was an amazing man.  Let us know if you need anything!  I mean it! Anything! :)
Anyway, Christy and I give you both our love.  Stay safe and I'll see you in a couple of weeks.

-Brian

~~~~

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