Yesterday afternoon I saw a tweet from former Rocky Mountain News columnist Mike Littwin. He was offering condolences for John Ennslin. That’s how I learned that John Ennslin was dead.
John was the only reason I ever worked in journalism. I had a lot of help from a lot of people but none of it would have ever occurred without his patience, knowledge and benevolence.
In the early aughts I’d finished college at Metro and was trying to find a job in local media, which meant either the Rocky or the Post. Against all odds–back then, everyone told you that you needed to leave town and write a cop beat in rural Kansas for five years before any honest editor would even glance at your resume, and I wasn’t gonna do any of that–I hooked on with the Post as a trial affair, then they officially offered me a gig. Not much, just a foot in the door, all I wanted. Then I failed the drug test. Oopsie doodle. Classic Alex!
So I continued as I’d been, scrambling between working nights at Fado and days putting Go-Go on the streets for homeless folks to read at bus shelters. Somehow, and I’m realizing now, painfully, that I don’t recall how, where, or even exactly when, someone put me in touch with John.
He was then the President of the Denver Press Club. He had an idea that someone should write short bios of all of all of the Club’s famous caricatures, all these titans of Denver journalism, locally famous cranks, old PR hands, the judges and cops they drank with. I agreed to do it. I was about the 1,546th most qualified person to take that assignment, but somehow, he gave it to me. There was also a seat on the Club’s board, I think meant to go to a student? I ended up in that seat. Somehow. Show of hands election and everything. I don’t recall if the seat and the bios were supposed to go together, one dependent on the other. It didn’t matter in the end. I never wrote the bios and spent most of my time on the board diligently, quietly taking minutes. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
The Club was in a real state back then. Lots of hangers-on that didn’t pay their tabs. A kitchen that didn’t make any food. John wanted to fix it. He wanted to restore it to its glory of decades previous–a centerpiece of the local media scene, a place for visiting luminaries to speak, a hub of intellect and hustle.
He met plenty of resistance. The hangers-on, the everyday afternoon crew, liked the “subsidized wine glass,” as he put it. He didn’t care. He–along with Mike McPhee, the rest of the board and a few picked members–set about changing the place inside and out. Furniture, painting, cleaning. I spent hours in there on weekends, staining the roof beams, hauling things around, rolling in a century’s worth of news-muck. We had to move the downstairs pool table at one point and it almost killed us.
John did it. The Club, always a dicey proposition financially, survived and thrived. I lost my re-election to the Board when Mike McPhee wanted one of the members to run, which, you know. Politics. It was fine. I left the Club alongside any hope of ever working at a newspaper. Back to the bar, for me. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Most times, really.
And then, about a year later, John called me. The Rocky had an Editorial Assistant position opening up. It wasn’t a reporter gig, but it was something. A foot in the door. All I wanted.
John didn’t know it, probably never knew it, but John changed my life. I didn’t see him at the Rocky reunion–maybe we missed each other, but I think he was still in New Jersey?Now I’ll never be able to tell him.
I should have told him.
Nice words, Alex. Get back to writing!
Oh. Hey. Look at that.
God, damn it.
I agree with Penney.