The world of journalism lost a giant yesterday. And I lost a hero.
It was just last week that Anthony Lewis made what would be his last public remarks on the 50th anniversary of the Gideon decision, the case which today guarantees the right of poor defendants to counsel. It was a case Lewis helped bring to the world outside the legal community with his brilliant book “Gideon’s Trumpet,” a work that for nearly five decades has never gone out of print.
And it was Tony Lewis who did for the practice of journalism and of legal reporting what Gideon did for criminal law — he changed it forever.
When his wife, Margaret Marshall, was sworn in as chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court she called her “beloved Tony,” then still a columnist with The New York Times, a “national treasure.” She was not overstating the case.
It was then that our paths crossed and Lewis became a faithful Herald reader — because you never know when issues related to the courts would pop up on these pages — and he became my sometime correspondent. I came to look forward to those smart little ecru envelopes that would show up on my desk with The New York Times, Boston Bureau return address.
The notes would often acknowledge some political thought with which he agreed or a turn of phrase he enjoyed. And, yes, sometimes there were the gentle — always gentle — rebukes for some editorial he deemed not well argued, which was his code for oh-how-could-you!
When I’d tell him to remember that this was not the Times, but a feisty tabloid, he in turn would remind me that he had started his career at a similar feisty tabloid in D.C., The Washington Daily News. It was only later that I would learn that’s where he won his first Pulitzer at age 28. It would have been so unlike him to share that piece of information.
The publication of his last book, “Freedom for the Thought That We Hate,” (subtitled “A Biography of the First Amendment”) allowed us to cross paths again. And to hear him talk about that juncture of free speech and free press and the courts that are their guardian was a rare treat indeed.
The book remains on my desk today — full of bookmarks for those passages I liked to share with my students or with visiting foreign journalists about our somewhat inglorious journalistic past and the ongoing fight to maintain our freedoms.
“The meaning of the First Amendment has been, and will be, shaped by each American generation: by judges, political leaders, citizens,” Lewis wrote in the introduction to that book. “There will always be authorities who try to make their own lives more comfortable by suppressing critical comment ... But I am convinced that the fundamental American commitment to free speech, disturbing speech, is no longer in doubt.”
By being a superb chronicler of that fight, Anthony Lewis made his own indelible mark on it.
His passing leaves a dreadful void. But through his legacy of words he will always remain “a national treasure.”
Rachelle Cohen is editor of the editorial pages.
It was just last week that Anthony Lewis made what would be his last public remarks on the 50th anniversary of the Gideon decision, the case which today guarantees the right of poor defendants to counsel. It was a case Lewis helped bring to the world outside the legal community with his brilliant book “Gideon’s Trumpet,” a work that for nearly five decades has never gone out of print.
And it was Tony Lewis who did for the practice of journalism and of legal reporting what Gideon did for criminal law — he changed it forever.
When his wife, Margaret Marshall, was sworn in as chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court she called her “beloved Tony,” then still a columnist with The New York Times, a “national treasure.” She was not overstating the case.
It was then that our paths crossed and Lewis became a faithful Herald reader — because you never know when issues related to the courts would pop up on these pages — and he became my sometime correspondent. I came to look forward to those smart little ecru envelopes that would show up on my desk with The New York Times, Boston Bureau return address.
The notes would often acknowledge some political thought with which he agreed or a turn of phrase he enjoyed. And, yes, sometimes there were the gentle — always gentle — rebukes for some editorial he deemed not well argued, which was his code for oh-how-could-you!
When I’d tell him to remember that this was not the Times, but a feisty tabloid, he in turn would remind me that he had started his career at a similar feisty tabloid in D.C., The Washington Daily News. It was only later that I would learn that’s where he won his first Pulitzer at age 28. It would have been so unlike him to share that piece of information.
The publication of his last book, “Freedom for the Thought That We Hate,” (subtitled “A Biography of the First Amendment”) allowed us to cross paths again. And to hear him talk about that juncture of free speech and free press and the courts that are their guardian was a rare treat indeed.
The book remains on my desk today — full of bookmarks for those passages I liked to share with my students or with visiting foreign journalists about our somewhat inglorious journalistic past and the ongoing fight to maintain our freedoms.
“The meaning of the First Amendment has been, and will be, shaped by each American generation: by judges, political leaders, citizens,” Lewis wrote in the introduction to that book. “There will always be authorities who try to make their own lives more comfortable by suppressing critical comment ... But I am convinced that the fundamental American commitment to free speech, disturbing speech, is no longer in doubt.”
By being a superb chronicler of that fight, Anthony Lewis made his own indelible mark on it.
His passing leaves a dreadful void. But through his legacy of words he will always remain “a national treasure.”
Rachelle Cohen is editor of the editorial pages.