I need to sit down with a guy named Pat Furguson, but I can’t because he died last week.
Pat spent a couple of decades writing for The Capital, as E.B. Furgurson III, until he reluctantly took the buyout offer from Alden Global Capital in 2020.
He’s most famous for his heroism on June 28, 2018 when five of his colleagues were murdered in their newsroom. He and a very small team of survivors worked out of the bed of his pickup truck to put out the next day’s paper.
What happened that day changed our county's relationship with its local paper forever. We rallied around it, we embraced it, and we pledged to protect it.
I personally had always had a sense of reverence for The Capital as an institution. I’d worked there in the summer after my first year of college selling subscriptions by telephone, and one of my older half-sisters had been a reporter there for a short while.
I grew up in a family that read and respected newspapers. The stepfather of my four older half-siblings was Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee.
From the start of my campaign for County Executive, I was obsessed with how The Capital would cover us. I was disappointed when they endorsed my opponent, but understood that I could never have won had they not covered both of our campaigns fairly and thoroughly.
But the shooting, the vigils, the organization of the Sun/Capital Guild, the acquisitions by Alden Global Capital and then Sinclair Broadcasting’s David Smith, and the decimation of the workforce at The Capital, now called the Capital Gazette, have elevated my reverence.
It’s a now-dispersed family of heroes. Former editor Rick Hutzell is like the father. A stream of young, very underpaid, very talented reporters, who somehow manage to learn what they need to know to produce the essential stories that hold leaders like me accountable, are the brothers and sisters. And then there is Uncle Pat.
I first met Pat when he was interviewing my father about local history many years ago. He was mostly assigned to South County, the rural areas, and he told the stories of the hard working farmers and watermen. He really knew and understood them.
When my father died in 2013, Pat wrote his obituary. He nailed it, and from that moment on I felt connected to him. That happens when reporters do their jobs well.
The last time I saw Pat, he looked directly into my eyes - my soul actually - and told me that my Dad would be proud of me. He saw my eyes welling up, and my lips trembling. And then he wrapped his arms around me for a good hug, just like he’d done for his colleagues so many times after the shooting.
I need to talk to Pat because so much has happened, so many hard and even bad things - and he’s so good. I want to hear his stories about how we got where we are. I want his political insights. I want him to tell me what to do next. I want him to confirm that it’s OK to not have all the answers.
I’ll just have to hope instead that he’s with my Dad, that they’re sharing their wisdom, and that if we listen carefully enough, some of it will drift down and guide us in the right direction.
Until next week…