Finally Fennelly

I felt as though I had been struck by a crisp, clean breeze of fresh air when the first topic on the pecking order with Tampa Tribune sports columnist Martin Fennelly was not "What makes a good column?" but was, instead, death.

We finally had a real-life topic with a real guy--not some super-professional who's, at times, way too guarded or some over-zealous caricature of a human being, but a happy medium.

We finally had Fennelly.

He looked like a sports coach--maybe football or basketball--complete with a zip-up jersey sweater and press pass dangling around his neck which, whether due to my imagination or not, I mistook for a whistle at first glance.

While I don't really find joy in following sports, more often than not I would rather be playing than simply talking about them, I found common ground with Fennelly in his interest in people.

He spoke of the many times he covered the deaths of people, some of which he had been covering in life up until some tragic event. He was adamant that these stories aren't "obits," but "salutes" instead, where he strives to tell "a morsel about a person that lets readers connect with someone else" and just "bring it home for everyone." For Fennelly, details are everything.

Fennelly asked us to consider how many times any one person would be written about in a newspaper and revealed that he just tries "to get it right" when he's faced with the task.

Aside from what he actually said to our class, the fact that he was constantly trying to engage every person in the room at one point or another was a tribute to how vital Fennelly finds the human aspect to not only his work, but life in general.

At one point he even craned his neck as he leaned back in his seat just to be able to peek around a computer and make eye contact with those on my side of the room.

One of the best parts about Fennelly is that he isn't bound to these nostalgic "salutes" but is also a quick-witted, genuinely funny guy to listen to. After posing the question of how his own "salute" might be written, his reply was "a sports journalist also died in the crash," as a side bar or over-liner to the death of some famous athlete who found himself on the same plane.

Fennelly also finds humor in "taking people to task" when he feels they deserve it.

"If I wanna call someone an idiot, I don't just say he's an idiot--I'd rather make someone look like an idiot."

But what is most appealing about Fennelly, to me at least, is how you know he cares so deeply about what he does and the people he covers.

At one point, while speaking about a young athlete's death, whose story and family he had come to know quite well from covering her, his voice cracked as he strained to hide the tears that were welling up in his eyes, until he finally came right out and said how much her story affected him.

You could truly feel his compassion.

And then, as quickly as he had come undone, Fennelly recovered and moved on.

It was as if he was going through the stages of grief right before our eyes, moving swiftly from denial to acceptance, like a dance he's known the steps to for years...