He always said your first line was the most important.
After all, sometimes that’s all people read.
He also said to take great care with a person’s obituary.
Because for some people, that’s the only time their name ever appears in the newspaper.
Frank Roessner’s name didn’t appear in the paper just once. It appeared every day for decades in the Binghamton (N.Y.) Press & Sun-Bulletin, from the era in which newspapers were the way all of us got news, to the days when newspapers were an also-ran to Facebook and TikTok. Frank Roessner was a newspaperman’s newspaperman, and he saw it all, from the typewriter and cigar-filled room days to the e-mail-a-story-from-your-phone days.
But Frank Roessner has written his final column, passing away this past Saturday in Binghamton surrounded by his family. A fitting close to a man who meant so much to his family… and to Binghamton.
Frank Roessner didn’t grow up in Binghamton or in upstate New York. He was a western Pennsylvania boy, home of coal, steel, quarterbacks, and groundhogs. I don’t think anything quite says blue-collar America quite like that particular territory.
In his adult life Mr. Roessner brought that Pennsylvania manner to Binghamton, New York, a place that could sort of fit in western Pennsylvania if only it had a little less city and a little more Norman Rockwell. For many years Mr. Roessner wrote and edited the opinion page of Binghamton’s Press & Sun, penning editorials that dripped with common sense in an era in which that particular attribute was lacking among its representatives. He’s the kind of person either party would have wanted to run for mayor under its banner, like a civilian Eisenhower, respected on both sides of the political aisle.
But Frank Roessner wasn’t looking to be mayor or councilman or congressman or king. I’m pretty sure he had the job he wanted, though in later years I think the job of newspaperman may have changed beneath him, and it was tough to put the TikTok and tabloid genie back in the bottle.
I was fortunate to know Mr. Roessner not just as a writer, but as a neighbor and mentor. He was the father of a childhood friend, and therefore held a place for me as a “neighborhood dad.” Back then any of your friends’ dads could substitute for your own father, no questions asked among members of the tribe. You as a young member of the tribe listened to and respected those who had reached this level of manhood, especially if they were also respected members of your church. Church meant something in those days, being a man meant something in those days, and being an honest and trustworthy citizen meant something in those days too. Again, the comparison to Norman Rockwell is apt.
I also knew Mr. Roessner as a teacher. For many years he taught journalism courses as an adjunct at Binghamton University, one of those instructors the out-of-town students questioned at first because he wasn’t a professor… then realized he actually knew way more than any of the academics at the school because he actually did the course he taught. Like, IRL, as we’d later say. Opinion writing? This was the guy who actually wrote the editorial every day in the local paper, back when newspapers and being a journalist meant something. And to take one of his courses in the fall of 2001? Yeah, we were all pretty news-conscious back then, and nobody was reading about September 11th on their phones.
I was doing a little opinion writing myself in those days as editor of one of our college papers, and was lucky to have Mr. Roessner as a guide.
“Take more risks,” he said, reasoning the college campus was a safe environment in which to do so.
I never did, and I’ve sort of been regretting it ever since. Maybe I could have made a bigger name for myself as a writer if I’d reached a little more, or been a little more pointed in what I could get away with at age 19.
Or maybe I didn’t need the hassle of controversy. Maybe by playing it safe I ended up with a pretty good life anyway. I probably didn’t really want to be mayor or king either.
That plan worked out pretty well for both of us.
Mr. Roessner did save me some potential controversy or embarrassment at least twice in his editorial career. The first was in 2006, when a light-hearted piece of mine was slated to run soon after a friend of mine died unexpectedly. (Mr. Roessner once told our class a pet peeve of his was when an obituary mentioned that someone died suddenly. Everyone dies suddenly. What one means is unexpectedly.) Mr. Roessner put a last-second hold on my original piece (which had been written before said death), offering instead that I compose something later commemorating Joe Sullivan rather than poking fun at his hometown. I did, and both pieces eventually found their way onto the Press op-ed page.
The second time was a bit more scary. In 2020 my mother, a neighbor and friend of Mr. Roessner’s for decades, had begun a strange path of early dementia that, among other things, had her hallucinating and wildly confusing dates and people. One afternoon she–unexpectedly–called Mr. Roessner asking first whether he were interested in winning a Pulitzer Prize. (See above for why Roessner demurred.) She said she had the story that would make his career, naming names as it were and implicating a few locals.
The trouble was none of it was true, though would have caused embarrassment for any number of parties had Roessner run with the story. He was a fact-checker, of course, and called me to confirm. It was at that point I had to admit to one plot point in the story: that my mom was in fact losing her senses. No fault of her own, but not exactly something one goes around advertising. I thanked Mr. Roessner for his due diligence. I should have complimented him further on his journalistic integrity, but I suppose for him it was nothing out of the ordinary.
He was a pro.
Someone asked him in class once about qualifications for being a good editorial writer. It was simple, he explained. I’m paraphrasing, but it was something like be really knowledgeable about a great variety of subjects. Yeah, that’s it. Spend a long time learning a lot every day about everything, talking to everyone and collecting information wherever you go. This will make you a good opinion writer.
Easy, right?
In recent years I saw Mr. Roessner less and less, usually just once a year at the charity poker tournament held to honor Joe Sullivan. Even if it was five minutes it was always one of the more enjoyable five minutes of my year. By the end we had similar lives, actually: teacher, writer, husband, father. Neither of us lived in the place we’d grown up, and we talked about how it can be difficult to find the pulse of a place you didn’t grow up in.
Mr. Roessner found the pulse of Binghamton. In fact, for years he set the pulse of Binghamton. When newspapers were king, even if its writers chose not to be.
Not king, not mayor, no Pulitzer Prize.
But teacher, writer, husband, father?
That’s a pretty good resume.
A pretty good life.
And a pretty good final line to one’s obituary.
Because the last line’s pretty important too.
