Journalist-author dies at 85
Pete Hamill, 85, the newspaper columnist whose love affair with New York inspired an influential journalistic career and produced several books , died Wednesday.
Hamill died at a Brooklyn hospital from heart and kidney failure.
Hamill was one of the city's last great crusading columnists, an Irish-American who related to the underdog and mingled with the elite. Hamill was at ease quoting poetry and Ernest Hemingway, dating Jacqueline Onassis or enjoying a drink and a cigarette at the Lion's Head tavern in Greenwich Village.
His topics ranged from baseball, politics, murders, boxing and riots to wars in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Lebanon and Ireland. But he would always look back to the New York he grew up in.
A Brooklyn-born high school dropout, Hamill was a columnist for the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Newsday, the Village Voice, New York magazine and Esquire. He wrote screenplays, several novels and a bestselling memoir, "A Drinking Life."
His memoir covers his childhood in Brooklyn to the night he gave up drinking at a New Year's Eve party in 1972.
Hamill had a brief and disheartening turn editing the New York Post. When financier Steven Hoffenberg gained control of the tabloid in bankruptcy proceedings, he hired Hamill as editor in chief in 1993.
But when Hoffenberg was unable to buy the paper, ownership fell to Abe Hirschfeld, who fired Hamill. The paper's staff revolted, and Hirschfeld rehired Hamill.
Rupert Murdoch eventually purchased the paper, leading to Hamill's dismissal. A few years later, Hamill spent a short stint as editor-in-chief of the New York Daily News.
Hamill met the Beatles before they played in the U.S., interviewed John Lennon when he was living in Manhattan, hung out with Frank Sinatra...