Remembering Murray Kempton

A SINGLE death routinely overwhelms the household, while at the other end of the scale the whole world is seemingly overwhelmed as when, one year after the turn of the century, Victoria caused the Victorian age to die along with her. In between are the deaths of local, regional, and national divinities. San Francisco stood still the day Herb Caen died, and then Chicago spent the day mourning Mike Royko. In New York, on May 5, Murray Kempton died. That was of extra-parochial concern. The New York Times observed his death on its front page with a photograph of the recognizable figure with his indispensable pipe. Inside, it gave its readers a brilliant and moving page-length obituary, by Richard Severo (“Murray Kempton never sought a job at the Times. For him, the Times took itself too seriously”). Newsday, the daily for which Kempton had written until he fell ill, devoted the whole of the cover to his photograph (“Murray Kempton, 1917-1997. A HALF-CENTURY OF ELEGANCE AND TRUTH”) and ran five stories. The Daily News’s Jim Dwyer remarked the death of “the greatest newspaperman of the twentieth century,” and the Post, with which Kempton was for so many years associated, ran several features.

Murray Kempton was 79 and had been ailing. In January, pancreatic cancer was diagnosed. After surgery he spent weeks in a hospital in Princeton, going then to a nursing home on the West Side for continuing treatment under the auspices of Sloan Kettering. There, very early Monday morning, his heart stopped beating.

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

A SINGLE death routinely overwhelms the household, while at the other end of the scale the whole world is seemingly overwhelmed as when, one year after the turn of the century, Victoria caused the Victorian age to die along with her. In between are the deaths of local, regional, and national divinities. San Francisco stood still the day Herb Caen died, and then Chicago spent the day mourning Mike Royko. In New York, on May 5, Murray Kempton died. That was of extra-parochial concern. The New York Times observed his death on its front page with a photograph of the recognizable figure with his indispensable pipe. Inside, it gave its readers a brilliant and moving page-length obituary, by Richard Severo (“Murray Kempton never sought a job at the Times. For him, the Times took itself too seriously”). Newsday, the daily for which Kempton had written until he fell ill, devoted the whole of the cover to his photograph (“Murray Kempton, 1917-1997. A HALF-CENTURY OF ELEGANCE AND TRUTH”) and ran five stories. The Daily News’s Jim Dwyer remarked the death of “the greatest newspaperman of the twentieth century,” and the Post, with which Kempton was for so many years associated, ran several features.

Murray Kempton was 79 and had been ailing. In January, pancreatic cancer was diagnosed. After surgery he spent weeks in a hospital in Princeton, going then to a nursing home on the West Side for continuing treatment under the auspices of Sloan Kettering. There, very early Monday morning, his heart stopped beating.