Rob Borsellino; journalist wrote of his struggles with ALS
Hyfler/Rosner
Matt Schudel
May 31, 2006 Wednesday
Des Moines Register Writer Rob Borsellino
Rob Borsellino, a sardonic, tough-edged columnist for the
Des Moines Register who wrote of his struggles with
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, died of the disease May 27 at
the Taylor House hospice in Des Moines. He was 56.
Through his columns, testimony on Capitol Hill and
appearances on television, Mr. Borsellino became nationally
known for drawing attention to the degenerative nerve
disorder, also called Lou Gehrig's disease. He continued to
write his newspaper column until three weeks before his
death, typing with one finger.
Even before his disease was diagnosed, Mr. Borsellino was
one of the most popular, and most vilified, people in Iowa.
His personal style -- he was rail-thin, dressed in black,
never wore a tie and spoke in the streetwise accents of his
native Bronx, N.Y. -- made him an exotic character in the
heart of the Corn Belt as well as a local celebrity. His
sharply worded commentary, which often expressed a liberal
perspective on politics and the plight of the dispossessed,
sometimes helped shape statewide elections.
"He had a very special voice and reflected the state and its
people in a way we hadn't seen before," said Mary P. Stier,
president and publisher of the Register. "And we're better
for it."
In February 2005, several months after his ALS diagnosis,
Mr. Borsellino revealed in his column that he had the
incurable disease. He eventually lost the ability to speak
and had to be fed through a tube, but his popularity only
grew. Strangers sent money, anonymously paid for his
family's meals at restaurants and openly prayed for his
recovery. Two weeks ago, he was presented the ALS
Association's Voice of Courage Award.
Last month, Bob Dylan and Merle Haggard headlined a benefit
concert in Des Moines in Mr. Borsellino's honor, raising
nearly $100,000 for ALS. In a statement read by his son, Mr.
Borsellino wryly departed from Gehrig's famous "luckiest man
on the face of the earth" comment, when ALS forced him to
retire from baseball.
"Tonight," Mr. Borsellino wrote, "I consider myself the
unluckiest SOB on the face the earth."
Robert J. Borsellino was born in New York and was 6 when his
father died. He grew up in a public housing project in the
Bronx, and, according to his high school yearbook, his
ambitions were "to be a musician and to meet Bob Dylan."
His first wife, Grammy-winning musician Cindy Cashdollar,
actually did play with Dylan, but not until after she and
Mr. Borsellino were divorced.
He graduated from the State University of New York at New
Paltz and worked in radio before beginning his newspaper
career in 1976 in Woodstock, N.Y. During the early 1980s, he
was editor of the Kingston Daily Freeman in New York, where
he met his future wife, Rekha Basu. He also worked for
Newsday in New York and the Albany Times Union, where he was
the New York state Capitol bureau chief.
In 1993, two years after his wife had joined the Register as
an editorial writer and later a columnist, he went to Des
Moines. When Mr. Borsellino was given a column in 1998, he
brought a sarcastic, big-city style to the job.
"In spite of themselves, people found themselves addicted to
his column," his wife said yesterday. "He developed a
tremendous following."
In 1998, he wrote a critical column about Republican
gubernatorial candidate James Ross Lightfoot, who quickly
lost a substantial lead in the polls. The column was widely
considered a decisive factor in the victory of Iowa's
current governor, Tom Vilsack (D).
In January 2001, Mr. Borsellino and his wife left Iowa for
the Sun-Sentinel newspaper in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Less
than a year later, realizing how much they missed Iowa, they
moved back.
Mr. Borsellino knew how much he had been affected by Iowa's
civil ways, he wrote, when he realized it had been two years
since he'd given anyone what he called the single-digit
"Italian salute."
Whether strolling the halls of the state Capitol or visiting
homeless shelters, he reveled in his public role, and he and
his wife were called "one of Iowa's most elite power
couples" by the Chicago Tribune. A collection of Mr.
Borsellino's columns, "So I'm Talkin' to This Guy . . . ,"
was published last year.
Besides his wife of 20 years, survivors include their two
sons, Raj and Romen Borsellino, all of Des Moines; and his
mother, Josephine Borsellino of the Bronx.
Mr. Borsellino once wrote of how his idol, Dylan, brushed
him off at their then-only meeting and refused to shake his
hand. Last month at the benefit concert, Mr. Borsellino was
taken backstage, where Dylan gave him a harmonica and a copy
of his autobiography -- and shook his hand.
Hyfler/Rosner
Mike Kilen
May 28, 2006 Sunday
Brash and beloved until the end;
The Register columnist's tough but caring outsider's
perspective made him a favorite of Iowans. And he shared his
last battle with all of us.
In the waning months of his life, Rob Borsellino wrote his
newspaper column from his home, typing with one finger.
Lou Gehrig's disease had robbed him of his voice and motor
functions as the illness progressed, but it could not keep
him from writing.
The New York City transplant, who became a beloved figure
and celebrity in Des Moines by writing a tough yet
compassionate Des Moines Register metro column, died
Saturday at 10:15 p.m. at Taylor House Hospice in Des Moines
after a public battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
(ALS). Funeral services are pending.
Borsellino, 56, often wrote that he had to "keep looking,
keep moving." And he did.
To the last he was writing of city scandals and Iowa
oddities, attending social gatherings and dashing off witty
e-mails.
He kept moving through Des Moines for eight years as a
columnist in a distinctive Bronx way, striding down the city
streets wearing a black blazer with his head of wavy black
hair held high.
He dined with bigwigs and chatted up the homeless, hit city
hall meetings and chased ambulances, often in the same day.
Borsellino followed his columnist wife, Rekha Basu, to Des
Moines after she landed a job at the Register in 1991. He
grudgingly left behind his family and friends in New York
City, where he was raised in public housing by his mother,
Jo Borsellino, after his father, Joe, died when Rob was 6.
He would later write that he told East Coast friends that
this new, strange land where "the coffee was weak and
everybody's in bed by 10" was quite a "civil, literate
place."
Because he found graffiti on the bathroom stall: "E=MC2."
An outsider's view
Friends and colleagues say Iowans warmed to his outsider's
view of their state, although he took his share of shots at
Iowa, because of his sense of humor and his fairness.
Borsellino never forgot where he came from. The Joan Didion
quote he always kept near his computer terminal reminded
him:
"I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with
the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive
company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and
surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of
a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who
betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all
too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We
forget the loves and betrayals alike, forget what we
whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were."
Borsellino maintained his New York attitude and
tabloid-style staccato writing and approached his column
like an anthropologist, offering a fresh, winking eye to a
reserved Midwest city.
He relished the role and even enjoyed being interrupted by
fans of his column while he ate lunch downtown.
"In Iowa," he wrote, "a little bit of exotic goes a long
way."
Borsellino wrote that Iowa had civilized him. He realized he
hadn't given anyone the finger in two years, he wrote in a
2000 column. But he let readers know he was the same
Borsellino and, by column's end, had offered what relatives
called the "Italian salute" to an editor - "for old time's
sake."
He rose up from the bottom in the business, starting his
reporting career for $90 a week at a radio station in 1974
after graduating from State University of New York. His
first newspaper job came two years later in Woodstock, N.Y.
In the early 1980s, he became editor of the Kingston (N.Y.)
Daily Freeman and hired Basu, whom he married in 1985. The
couple later had two children, Raj and Romen.
Borsellino joined the Register in 1993 and was named
columnist in 1998.
The last line of his introductory column read: "I feel like
myself: A New Yorker living somewhere else."
Going along for the ride
To read a Borsellino column was to go along for a ride
around the city with a wiseacre who had heart.
His book of columns published in 2005, "So I'm Talking To
This Guy ... " was aptly titled. He wrote conversationally,
"so I was thinking ..." Instead of bursts of anger, he wrote
about "getting in people's faces." Instead of confusion, he
wrote of "wrapping his mind around" a subject.
As a friend said, you never knew where he stood until the
end of the column.
"Rob could be a smart aleck," said Basu. "But he really,
really cared for people and everyone could see that through
his writing. ... His heart and his love and caring showed
through."
et he could be tough. His notebook columns taking after the
government officials, local celebrities and the comfortable
became must reading.
Many readers thought Borsellino's 1998 column about Jim Ross
Lightfoot, when he detailed the gubernatorial candidate's
record, changed the election. He slammed George Bush in 2006
for trying to reinvent himself for every new audience - in
stark contrast to what Borsellino valued most - truth.
Register readers also "got in his face" for his liberal
views. But few disliked him personally.
His column after Ronald Reagan's death in 2005 illustrated
some of the roots of his humane style.
Borsellino recalled an interview with Reagan in the late
1970s when he was ready to "get in his face" about his
politics. But he was disarmed by Reagan when the future
president struck up a personal conversation, asking after
Borsellino's family.
"What stayed with me was the idea that I could sit across
from someone I disagreed with - totally disagreed with - and
find some common ground. And actually have a good time," he
wrote. "It's something I carried with me over the years."
He interviewed world leaders and famous ballplayers, Nobel
prize winners and notorious celebrities.
But he was known as much for his interviews with mothers who
lost their children in tragic shootings, junkies battling
addictions and people whose mobile homes caught fire. The
city's lonely and forgotten had a voice in his column.
"The thing I love about the news business," he wrote in
2004, "is that you just never know how your day is going to
play out."
Often, with bemusement about humanity - or himself.
The above was the lead of a column about crawling through a
giant fake colon at a local hospital exhibit.
Leaving ... and returning
Borsellino's relationship with Iowans was cemented in
December 2000, when he and Basu moved to Florida to become
columnists for the Fort Lauderdale newspaper.
But after a year, the Register missed his voice. Borsellino
missed Iowa and realized why.
"It was about the people," he wrote.
He let people tell their stories instead of writing
table-pounding opinion.
"What I was always amazed about was that he was able to
introduce so many of us to our own town," said Rob Dillard,
managing editor at WOI and a longtime friend. "He introduced
us to so many different characters."
Dillard said he was amazed at his work ethic. On a trip to
Kansas City to watch his beloved Yankees play, Borsellino
worked the telephone all the way down.
"When we got to Kansas City, he was working on a column,"
Dillard said. "It was that frantic pace, the love of the
action that was amazing to me."
He also quietly told the story of his own imperfect life, of
kicking addictions and divorce.
He loved to mix it up with people. A standing family joke,
Basu said, happened often in a restaurant when the family
was out dining. He would stand up and say, "Let's see if
anybody knows me," Basu said. "Then he would go around
talking to people."
So many Iowans were sad when Borsellino was diagnosed with
ALS in late 2004. He received hundreds of e-mails and voice
mails and conducted national media interviews on ALS after
he made it public a couple of months later.
Basu said she heard from little old ladies in small-town
churches who were praying for him although they didn't know
him personally. They felt like they knew him.
Register Editor Carolyn Washburn said Borsellino showed
Iowans how they were both endearing and infuriating.
"He loved us and he challenged us. That's the best kind of
friend to have. We'll terribly miss him," she said. "It's
also important to say how inspiring Rekha and her sons have
been. We can best honor Rob by wrapping our arms around
Rekha and the boys."
In characteristic fashion, Borsellino let everyone off the
sadness hook with a joke that included his beloved New York
Yankees.
"At least it's called Lou Gehrig's disease and not
Steinbrenner syndrome or Dizzy Dean disorder," he wrote.
In the following year, he wrote his column and made numerous
public appearances - speaking on ALS to Congress in
Washington, D.C., sitting for an interview with CNN's Aaron
Brown, telling his story for a statewide radio audience in
Iowa City, and hosting a benefit concert for ALS with his
favorite musician, Bob Dylan, in Des Moines.
Register Publisher Mary Stier said: "I am so thankful that
Rob was in my life, and the life of our newspaper and the
life of this community. He was an inspiring personal friend
and a smart, smart journalist. He will always be part of our
collective soul."
Register Editor Carolyn Washburn said Borsellino showed
Iowans how they were both endearing and infuriating.
"He loved us and he challenged us. That's the best kind of
friend to have. We'll terribly miss him," she said. "It's
also important to say how inspiring Rekha and her sons have
been. We can best honor Rob by wrapping our arms around
Rekha and the boys."
Funeral services are pending.
Look back on Rob's life
See photos of Borsellino from his years in Des Moines, read
some of his best columns and offer your tributes and
memories at DesMoinesRegister.com.
