George Church, 1931-2001

By Howard Chua-Eoan

On Friday, as deadline neared, we received word that George J. Church had died of kidney failure on New York's Long Island. In his 25 years here, George was one of the solid rocks on which TIME was built. A master of journalistic compression and clarity, he wrote 126 cover stories, still the record. His ability to command volumes of fact and reams of endlessly incoming reporting was legendary. As deadlines loomed, he deftly recast stories with fresh information, whittling them to fit the constraints of the printed page with nary a loss of substance and ever increasing levels of precision. The final product always appeared effortlessly expert, unassailably reasoned, as burnished as literature. One of the most colorful characters to walk our halls, George paced the corridors in stocking feet, opining loudly (and not always politely) on the ingredients of his stories even as he engineered the facts into narrative. The halls still echo too with his wickedly rewritten lyrics parodying political and journalistic betes noires, a skill he easily transposed to hilarious songs celebrating his many friends on staff. His talents humbled us.

--By Howard Chua-Eoan