The Loss of a Long-Ago Friend
By Jeffrey Page
I never believed that the old wisdom of not letting friends fade from view could have any meaning for me, and of course as the years progress, I find that I should have called this one, should have called that one. If only I had had the time.
Wait. That business about time is a cop-out. It should read: “If only I had the urgency, the common sense, the fondness, and if only I understood that people don’t live forever.”
In the mail last week came the annual Christmastime note from my friend Cathy Portman. Long ago, Cathy and I were reporters at The Jersey Journal, the Newhouse paper in Jersey City.
In her Christmas notes Cathy reports the ups and downs of another year. For example, she bemoans the many friends who are moving to avoid New York taxes. And then, in a section addressed to me, was what someone with a guilty conscience (such as me) would fairly interpret as an accusatory finger. But knowing Cathy, I’m sure it was not.
“Did you know we lost Lois Fegan this past year?” she asked.
Lois Fegan. Even now, so many years later, she reminds me of Katharine Hepburn. Each one – stylish, smart, and striking – had a smile as wide as a piano keyboard and each gave you the impression that she was not to be trifled with. Theirs was a flair not often duplicated
Lois had been a dancer. She had been a reporter. In fact, during the Forties Lois Fegan became the first woman to cover a professional hockey team full time – the Hershey (Pa.) Bears. But then the war ended, the male reporters came home, and Lois found herself, even into the 1960s, reporting what was shamelessly called “women’s news.” Recipes, fashion, volunteerism, etc.
After an adventuresome courtship that would have made a great movie, Lois married Gene Farrell and followed him to Jersey City when he became editor of the Journal. She was named women’s editor – imagine that – and spent the next 35 years heading that department.
I recall several years ago when Cathy mentioned that she used to drive down to see Lois at a nursing home in southern Pennsylvania once a year, and I immediately made plans to do the same. Trouble was I never found the time (or, clearly, the urgency or the common sense or an understanding of mortality). Instead of going, I dropped Lois a note and got a warm response.
My desk in the Journal’s newsroom was a row apart from her desk and we used to talk about reporting and about the stories she and her staff covered. Several times, when she was short a reporter, she asked if I would write a story for her. Only then would she go to my editor, with whom it was always all right; Lois, after all, was married to the aforementioned Gene Farrell.
One such assignment was to interview Judith Anne Ford, who had become Miss Boone County, then Miss Illinois, then Miss America of 1969. I was at a loss. “What do we talk about?” I asked Lois, who had noted in Miss America’s press kit that Ford was coming to Jersey City to promote Pepsi Cola.
“Ask her what’s wrong with Coke,” she said. I did, and the story wound up on Page 1. Pretty heady placement for someone with reporting experience of a year or so.
There were similar incidents of being called on to help out with a “woman’s feature.” Once, soon after I got married, Lois heard me talking to a friend about how I made lox and eggs, and asked if I would write a story about it for her pages. Why not? With my year in the news business, I didn’t draw many political stories or other topical assignments. Mostly I wrote lots of obits, police news, and features such as the last voyage of the ferry boat Elmira out of Hoboken.
Lois died last June. I had missed the chance to reestablish a friendship with her, the chance to say thanks for those assignments, the chance to talk about her life as a woman covering professional hockey.
Next time there’s wine on the table, I’ll raise a glass to Lois. She was 97.
Tags: Jeffrey Page, Jersey Journal, Lois Fegan
December 5th, 2013 at 9:54 pm
Good piece, Jeff. We’re at the age – at least you and I are – when the things we might have done, should have done, suddenly become crystal clear … too late. I suspect it was always this way. for everyone, even the saints among us, but it still strikes home, hard.