John McGuire would have known how to write this. Not because, toward the end of his long career at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, he wrote obituaries. But because, in the decades before that, he wrote stories. Real stories, about people who jumped off the page and landed in your arms. McGuire wrote for St. Louis Magazine for a time, after the great Post exodus, and it was a treat just to talk to him. He taught us about "snugs" in Irish pubs and dark secrets in St. Louis' past, and what came through all the whimsy and drama was his own extraordinary humanity.
McGuire had the fabled Irish gift of gab; he also had a deep humility, an imp's irreverence, and more warmth than I've seen in any other reporter. He marveled at the world, and because he did, it stayed fresh for him. Unlike so many of his peers, he never grew jaded; his innocence lasted six decades. He could ask a celebrity a deeply embarrassing question with a twinkle that made it OK; he could write the truth without meanness.
Oh, he knew how to flatter, sure, and he dipped so gleefully into schmaltz, you were never sure if he'd lost his sense of irony along the way. But the core of him was strong and honest and kind, and he could tug you into a world of stories and made you glad you'd left bare fact behind.
Now it's he who's left us behind, and few will be so sorely missed. -- Jeannette Cooperman, Staff Writer
