June 26, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 108 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E845]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





              HONORING ROB HIAASEN OF THE CAPITAL GAZETTE

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JOHN P. SARBANES

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 26, 2019

  Mr. SARBANES. Madam Speaker, I include in the Record an obituary of 
Rob Hiaasen, an editor of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis Maryland.

                        [From the Baltimore Sun]

 Capital Gazette Victim Rob Hiaasen Remembered as a Writer With a Deft 
                            and Gentle Touch

                           (By Jacques Kelly)

        Rob Hiaasen, a feature writer and editor recalled for the 
     deft and understanding touch he applied to his off-center 
     stories, will be remembered Monday at a private memorial 
     service. He was one of the five staff members killed Thursday 
     at the Annapolis Capital Gazette.
       The Timonium man was 59.
       ``Rob was a terrific reporter because he had an innate 
     curiosity,'' said the former Baltimore Sun columnist Kevin 
     Cowherd, a close friend. ``He was a master of asking 
     questions of the people he wrote about. It was one of his 
     strengths. He was also drawn to quirky characters. In all his 
     writing he tried to bring out the humanity.''
       Mr. Hiaasen was born in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Kermit 
     Odel Hiaasen, an attorney, and Patricia Moran, a homemaker. 
     He graduated from Plantation High School and earned a 
     bachelor's degree in communications at the University of 
     Florida.
       He initially worked as an AM radio reporter and landed a 
     job in Raleigh, N.C. There he met a competitor, Maria Mills.
       ``It was a small town and small radio market and everybody 
     knew each other,'' she said. ``We got married and moved 
     around and landed in San Antonio.
       ``We both hated our jobs there.''
       Mr. Hiaasen reconsidered his radio work and decided instead 
     to pursue newspaper writing and reporting. He got a reporting 
     job at an afternoon paper, the Petersburg, Va., Progress 
     Index. But first, he had to pass the paper's oral spelling 
     test.
       ``He remembered to put the P in raspberry,'' Maria Hiaasen 
     said. ``He was always a good speller.''
       Within 18 months, he and his wife moved on to the Palm 
     Beach Post. He worked in its downtown newsroom; she covered 
     police in Palm Beach, County.
       Tom O'Hara, the retired managing editor of the Palm Beach 
     Post, recognized the last name on Mr. Hiaasen's job 
     application. He knew Mr. Hiaasen's brother, the novelist and 
     longtime Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen.
       ``Rob was just charming,'' Mr. O'Hara said. ``It was a like 
     a no-brainer to hire him. He was a Florida boy and that was a 
     great attraction to me.''
       Mr. O'Hara assigned Mr. Hiaasen to cover county government, 
     a beat overseen by a meticulous editor. Mr. Hiaasen often 
     began his stories with colorful anecdotes, while his editor 
     required numbers.
       ``For Rob, it was a baptism by fire,'' Mr. O'Hara said. 
     ``His editor would lop off the first three paragraphs. It was 
     clear Rob belonged in features.
       ``He thrived there and was a delight. He was enthusiastic 
     about his stories. Everybody loved him. I liked sitting by 
     him and listening to his little asides.''
       In 1991, Mr. Hiaasen wrote a feature about five people who 
     contracted AIDS from a Palm Beach dentist. ``Dr. Acer's 
     Deadly Secret: How AIDS joined the lives of a dentist and his 
     patients,'' won a national journalism writing award, and Mr. 
     Hiaasen was hired by The Baltimore Sun as a features writer.
       Colleagues recalled his daily routine. He took long walks, 
     and became enamored of Baltimore's neighborhoods and their 
     characters. He ambled through Bolton Hill, Mount Vernon and 
     Fells Point in search of offbeat tales to tell.
       Friends said Mr. Hiassen steered clear of newsroom factions 
     and social circles. One described him affectionately as ``a 
     tall, brooding Norwegian.''
       ``Only two words in that phrase are true,'' Mr. Cowherd 
     said. ``Rob was never brooding. He needed to laugh the way he 
     needed oxygen. He was the best colleague you could ever have. 
     In a roomful of towering egos, he was the first guy to come 
     up and say, `You did a great job.' ''
       Mr. Hiaasen wrote about Mel Sherr, a veteran of D-Day 
     familiar to Baltimoreans as a strolling violin player.
       ``Mr. Sherr knows what your favorite song is,'' Mr. Hiassen 
     wrote. ``While he's asking guests where they're from, he'll 
     be guessing their age and era. He'll then pluck a song from 
     his play list and play. Guests nod their heads and smile. 
     Some blush. They now remember what they had forgotten. . . . 
     Mr. Sherr will not be stumped by requests.''
       He also wrote about Kirk Bloodsworth, the ex-Marine and 
     Eastern Shore waterman who was the first person to be 
     sentenced to death and then exonerated by DNA evidence.
       Mr. Hiaasen spent a year from 2003 to 2004 as a John Knight 
     Fellow in Journalism at Stanford University. While there, he 
     acted in a play and studied singing.
       Mr. Hiaasen accepted a newsroom buyout offer in 2008 and 
     left The Sun. By 2010 he joined the Annapolis Capital. He 
     mentored reporters as an editor and wrote a Sunday column.
       ``He did an amazing pivot to become an editor,'' Mr. 
     Cowherd said. ``He became everything you want of a good 
     editor--gently pushing them to do their best work and to not 
     accept mediocrity.''
       He also taught a news writing class at the University of 
     Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
       And he kept telling his stories in his gentle tone.
       ``When there's no hiding from news, it's time for a 
     haircut,'' he advised in a column late last year. ``Getting a 
     haircut--once a horrific, spirit-crushing event during the 
     teenage years--is a safe haven for the news beleaguered. 
     There, in the wrapped confines of your barber's or stylist's 
     chair, you can slink away to a news-free zone. There, on your 
     temporary throne, you are clipped and pampered by intimate 
     hands.'' In addition to his wife of 33 years, an English 
     teacher at Dulaney High School, he leaves a son, Ben Hiaasen, 
     a Towson attorney; two daughters, Samantha Hiaasen, an 
     assistant manager of the Pratt Street Barnes & Noble store in 
     Baltimore, and Hannah Hiaasen, a craft associate at Apparatus 
     in New York who lives in Brooklyn, NY; his brother, Carl, in 
     Vero Beach, Fla.; two sisters, Judy Hiaasen of Plantation, 
     Fla., and Barb Hiaasen of Davie, Fla.; and many nieces and 
     nephews

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