Our friend David Nyhan, a Chebeague summer resident and nationally known journalist, died Jan. 23, after shoveling snow at his winter home in Brookline, Massa-chusetts. He was 64. David wrote for the Boston Globe for 32 years before retiring in 2001.
It’s funny how we develop close a personal friendship with one person, while barely acknowledging someone else. My friendship with David Nyhan was rooted in family from the beginning to the end. We shared a belief in family values despite being liberal Democrats, which many folks on the conservative right might think was incongruous. (Dave would have liked that line!) One summer my father, a retired fisherman who was still clamming at 82, met an affable man who had bought a cottage near his favorite clam flats. My father looked forward to having a glass of lemonade on the man’s porch before heading up the road for home. Like my father the man was a storyteller and was intrigued by my father’s tales of the Murmansk Run in World War II, as well as Dad’s stories of fishing and island life. They were both well read and could talk for hours. My father told us that the newcomer was an affable Irishman from Boston and was some kind of writer. One connection led to another and our families became close friends. On many summer afternoons his wife and I solved the problems of our kin and the world over a cup of tea, while my husband and son worked with the man on various projects. His older children loved to sing and play music, so my husband spent many evenings playing the guitar and singing with them.
My son was a small boy when our families became friends. Dave and Tom clicked from day one. It was not unusual for Dave to call Tom and invite him to hop on the bus to Boston. On one trip they saw the Blue Man Group, while on another trip they toured the Big Dig with a group of politicians. Tom was more impressed that Dave knew Anthony of Anthony’s Pier Four Restaurant, where they ate, than he was that he was lunching with senators! (It was also more important to Dave as well.)
Rooted relationships meant everything to David Nyhan. He mentored Tom over the years about aspirations, college choices and grades. Dave did not hold back praise, and could be counted on to give unsolicited advice when necessary. In the eighth grade Tom had to research a famous person and role-play as that person. He chose David Nyhan. In high school Tom wrote an honors history thesis about Watergate and again interviewed his mentor, who had been a reporter in Washington during Watergate. Tom knew he would learn the inside story that could not be found in books. He wasn’t disappointed: reporter Nyhan told him about conversations that took place within former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill’s inner circle, when the impeachment of Nixon was on the horizon. According to Tom Damon’s paper, the Boston Globe broke some Watergate stories before the Washington Post and LA Times because of Nyhan’s connections.
Tom served as Dave’s first mate when his pals came to the island. Many of them came year after year and looked forward to reconnecting with Tom on each visit. Several of them were pallbearers and ushers at David’s funeral, and they sought out Tom, knowing that he shared their loss as only a friend can understand. While many of their names are familiar in the wider world, to Tom they are just friends. David Nyhan taught him to accept people for who they are not as how people think they know them.
David Nyhan loved Chebeague, its people and the island way of life. His wife, Olivia, said that Chebeague was Dave’s favorite place on earth. His easygoing and unpretentious manner endeared him to the people in our community. Many Chebeaguers knew very little about his public life until they read his obituary. A summer resident read about Nyhan’s death at www.Chebeague.org but could not put a face with the articles, until she saw his picture. “I saw him every Sunday when I went to the store to buy the paper. I thought he was a lobsterman.” David Nyhan would have been proud to be mistaken for a real Mainer, and the story would have been told and retold to his pals across the country for he admired the island fishermen who he knew as friends.
Some newcomers do not understand island life, but David Nyhan got it! He appreciated the efforts that year-rounders put into keeping the island a viable community and though few islanders knew, he was always working behind the scenes, networking with his myriad of political and media contacts to support our advocacy efforts for initiatives such as property tax reform and our battle with Nabisco to bring back the Pilot Cracker. The Boston Globe was the second newspaper to print an op-ed piece about the cracker conflict. [The Working Waterfront was the first.] He became part of the community.
Intrigued by Maine’s family-owned boatyards, David Nyhan was in awe of the people who operated them, like as the Brewer family on Chebeague. He and his island friends, mechanic Dave Stevens and sailor Reggie Babcock, were working on a project to sail the coast to film a documentary about Maine’s family owned boatyards. Nyhan, acting as producer, was in the process of finalizing plans for filming during the upcoming summer.
Dave was a good sport. When our daughters were young he spent hours on his lobster boat transporting young sailors to Peaks Island, and then consented to be the committee boat even though it meant numerous collisions with inexperienced sailors! Perhaps his biggest stretch was the year his daughter Kate and our daughter Rachel ran a children’s summer theater. They cast Dave as the announcer/enforcer complete with a glitter-covered wand! He held it high above his six-foot-four-inch frame. It was quite a sight to see!
David Nyhan was never too busy to help out Tom or anyone else for that matter. He spent fall weekends helping my husband bring in his winter wood. Both Tom and my husband, Doug, will miss their adventures with him. But Tom’s bond with Dave and what he learned during their time together will stay with him. I just wish Dave was going to be here to see him go off to college. Dave roasted Tom at his surprise 18th birthday party, which was held at the Village Café in Portland in November. It meant the world to Tom that David and his wife took the time to drive up to Portland to the party. But that was David.
I will miss sitting on his porch hashing over politics or waiting for Dave’s booming voice to join in the chorus, while his children Nick, Veronica, and Kate sing along with my children, as my husband strums “Charlie on the MTA.” The voice may have been silenced, but his good works and kind words will live on in the hearts of everyone who knew him.
Sen. Edward Kennedy, who eulogized David Nyhan, shared a piece of advice that Robert Frost gave to Jack Kennedy just before he was sworn into office. “Be more Irish than Harvard,” the poet said “and you’ll be all right.” Everyone in the church nodded in agreement. Despite his degree, David never forgot his roots. The lessons he learned as a child about hard work, integrity and the importance of family stayed with him.
His son, Nick, gave a heart wrenching tribute to his father, which resulted in a standing ovation. Nick quoted from a note that he found in David’s papers. “When your pickup truck starts on the first crank after wintering stoically through its latest Maine hibernation, that’s a gift from the gods. What are my odds of ever starting up again after holding my breath all winter? I mean, is that not worth celebrating?”
David Nyhan loved his pickup truck and he loved island life. It is fitting that the family will hold a memorial service on Chebeague in the spring.