Tribute to a friend

I learned early this morning that my friend and co-journalist Peter Freyne passed away just after midnight. That's tough news to hear, although not unexpected. Peter has been fighting cancer and other health complications in recent years, and while we've all been pulling for him, his overall health had been deteriorating.

This loss hits close to home for me.

I've worked with Peter since becoming a journalist in Vermont in in the '80s, and would like to think I've learned a great deal from watching him dig like a terrier for tips, follow up on leads with a tenacity I could only admire, and hold every public official's feet to a ferocious fire. During my years in state government, I even found myself at the painful end of his pen as he skewered me in a column or two.

But we stayed friends through it all. Even more than liking him, I admired him.

As a columnist, he had more leeway than most journalists to pursue his own personal opinions -- which he held deeply and with Irish conviction -- in print. And heaven help the governor or other public figure who tried to lie or hide his or her way out of a bad spot; Peter Freyne could be mercilous. As all good political columnists do, he will leave behind an enemy or two, or more.

But what he did well, better than I, certainly, was probe and poke and interview and question and push until he got to the bottom of every story. He wouldn't take "no comment" for an answer. He didn't back off the influential or powerful. He had an antenna for something amiss, and most of the time was dead on.

Peter Freyne smiled most of the time. He had a biting wit. He was twice as smart as he thought he was, and about half as cynical as he pretended to be.

He was an awful enemy and a faithful friend.

I will miss him.

Sue Allen
Editor

Comments

[Ken Picard]

Nice tribute, Sue. Though Peter never quite warmed to the idea of another male reporter in the pages Seven Days — and could be quite a bastard at times — he was an old-school, Chicago-style journalist through and through, and will be missed.