Longtime NewsGuild leader Jack Hagan saw his share of negotiations, but one bargaining session stood out.
Jack and his Northeast Ohio Newspaper Guild colleagues were huddled in a conference room at The Plain Dealer, poring over management’s latest proposal.
Minutes before management returned to the room, a member of the union’s bargaining team, struggling with the flu, threw up in a wastebasket.
Jack didn’t miss a beat.
“Here’s what we think of your proposal,” he told his startled adversaries.
Jack, whose sharp wit, ferocious talent and unfailing moral compass influenced generations of NewsGuild members, died October 9 after a long battle with Lewy body dementia. He was 76.
“He was one of the greats,” said Rollie Dreussi, former executive secretary of the Northeast Ohio Newspaper Guild. “He was one of the people who inspired my unionism.”
Tributes to Jack poured into social media following his death.
“He helped keep us all pointed in the right direction,” said Dave Davis, a NewsGuild activist and former Plain Dealer reporter. “He had an accurate moral compass and great sense of humor.”
Hagan touched countless lives as an award-winning reporter and writer, a thoughtful and innovative college journalism instructor, a dynamic union leader and, later in life, a damn good drummer.
As a reporter, Jack was fair and accurate but never dispassionate. Covering the murder trial of a teenager accused of killing a 13-year-old girl, his righteous outrage over the girl’s senseless death seeped through his copy, as did his deep well of empathy and keen eye for detail.
“I talked many times to the girl’s mother in the days that followed,” he later reflected. “Her grief was overwhelming. She invited me to her daughter’s gravesite, and I watched as she carefully removed dirt and overgrown weeds from the marker. She didn’t seem to care that her white cotton gloves had gotten muddy and wet in the process.”
But Jack wasn’t especially impressed with his formidable talents, preferring to focus on the things that really mattered in his life: his wife Noreen, his daughters Marnee, Bridget, Katie and Margaret, his growing brood of grandchildren and, of course, his 13 siblings and their families. He was most happy when he was with them: taking a walk near his Lakewood, Ohio, home, hanging out at the family’s cottage on the shores of Lake Erie or vacationing at Bay Point, a skinny peninsula wedged between Sandusky Bay and the lake.
In a time of polarization and fragmentation, the thing I member most about Jack was his ability to bring people together. Young or old, male or female, Black or white or brown, gay or straight, union or management, Jack Hagan was the one thing we could agree on. Not liking Jack was perverse, like not enjoying a warm summer breeze or a soft moonlit night.
He was, as former Plain Dealer Unit Chairman Harlan Spector put it, a big brother to us all.
As if he didn’t have enough siblings.
(Scott Stephens is a former member of the International Executive Council and a former Unit Chairman at The Plain Dealer)