One of the finest editors I’ve ever known has died, and I’m heartbroken.
David Corcoran was my first editor at the New York Times, but over the 12 years that I knew him he also became an advocate and a friend.
David was kind and supportive like a good dad. His tenor let me know that he trusted my judgement, and his confidence spilled over to me as I set out to report a story. His edits were always gentle and affirming. He never failed to leave a story better than it was before, and he always worked in service of the story, not his own ego. I’ve never met an editor with a more adept touch. I can’t ever recall getting an edit back from him that didn’t make me happy. Ask any writer — that’s a very rare thing!
I usually visited David when I was in NYC, and he would inevitably take me around the newsroom, introducing me to people he thought I should know. He was generous and attentive. After hearing me speak about sexual harassment I’d experienced in the workplace, he expressed genuine sorrow that this kind of mistreatment was still happening and asked me to write about it.
David was a wonderful mentor to me, but over the years he also became a friend. We both frequently taught at the Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop, an event that included a night of literary readings from instructors. It was there that I became a fan of David’s poetry. One of the first poems I remember him reading described the room at a poetry workshop in the kind of detail that bestows universal meaning to a mundane event. Poetry became a topic of our conversation.
After David retired from the Times, he briefly did a little freelance copyediting for FiveThirtyEight, where I was the lead science writer. Knowing that he would copyedit a story I was writing about p-values, I threw in some poetry, a sort of wink at him. He appreciated the gesture. David was serious as necessary, but he was also a lot of fun. Once, when I was writing a story for him about someone also named David, I remarked that my life was full of Davids, and he sent me a playful poem someone had written about the abundance of that name.
I was receiving updates on David’s cancer, and I knew that his situation was dire. But he remained relentlessly upbeat to the end, and his sudden downturn came as a shock. He had expected to continue treatment in Denver, and he’d invited me to come visit him there, which I’d planned to do this month. David had been one of the first supporters of our winery, and I’d promised him a bottle of our latest vintage. I still hoped that he would soon be well enough to enjoy it. I’m devastated that our last meeting will never happen.
My mind keeps returning to our final face-to-face conversation, last summer at a journalism conference in Toulouse. The city was in the middle of a terrible heatwave, and we were at a gathering at a restaurant that had a tiny cooling unit up on a wall. The two of us sat below the cool breeze of the air vent and talked for a long time, about wine and poetry and New Mexico — a place we both loved — and the ordinary things that make up life.
I think of our friendship and this final conversation of ours, and I want it to last, like the last lines of David’s poem, “3 P.M.”
3 P.M.
For a moment the Times Square station is still.
The Peruvian flutists pause. The shuttle
to Grand Central is nowhere to be seen. A sparrow
hovers. In a disused trackbed, a worker
in his orange reflector vest steals a smoke.
Down the No. 1 track, a yellow light
bobs distantly and a third rail flashes. I want this
to last, like extra innings or a day of quiet rain.
This is a lively, lovely tribute to David. Thank you for your beautiful, heartfelt words. Our children are grateful.
David was my editor at the New York Times also. He took a chance on me when no one else would. He was always kind, insightful and one of the nicest people I ever knew.
Oh no. I had no idea this was coming. We had an email correspondence, sporadically over the years I’d bounce ideas off him, sometimes for a publication he was working for and sometimes not. He was so encouraging and smart and gentle and clear, and always — always! — had good suggestions. Doing a piece with him was on my bucket list. If I had to say anything bad about him it’s that he set a standard that few other editors met. A good one gone. May his memory be a blessing, and may his life be an inspiration to anyone who ever picks up a blue pencil.
David was such a kind and accessible person. I am so sorry to hear of his passing.
I too am heartsick, David was a friend of 40 years, a poker buddy, a mentor an inspiration and had a wonderful wit. He was the kindest and gentlest soul and I am just so so sorry. Sending love to his family.
I’ve lost a good friend. The world has lost a kind soul.
David was my friend in high school and then later, from our 39th reunion (his idea), until the end. I am in shock at his passing and will miss him forever. Sending love to his family and condolences to his friends and his many fans.
Lovely remembrance. Now makes me think my editing of others has to live up to a higher standard. Leave it more graceful than when you started on it.
Christie, this is a beautiful remembrance. I’m sorry for your loss-and the loss to the field. I never met him, but now I wish I had.
Reading all these beautiful tributes to David is so moving, each one making my eyes sting with fresh tears. I have similar David stories too – from his gleefulness in exchanging bad puns with me to his generosity in offering to read my daughter’s poetry to his affable acuity in being the kind of editor who applies just the right blend of enthusiasm and skepticism.
I think the most meaningful thing to me about David’s remarkable optimism about life is that it was genuine – authentically informed – nothing pasted on or postured. He understood the fullness of life, its sadnesses as much as its happinesses, so you knew the words he wrote or said were words you could trust. He painted life with a rich, exuberant palette – from blue sky to salt of the earth – and the result was a masterpiece of kindness, humor, integrity and joy that we were all lucky enough to experience again and again.
When David was promoted to editorial page editor at The Record, he hired me to the writing position he vacated on the editorial staff. I succeeded him, but had no illusion that I could replace him. I am grateful that I benefited from David’s thoughtfulness, intellect and guidance as an editor, but even more thankful that I enjoyed more than 40 years of his warm and generous friendship.
I was a clerk when David was a copy editor on the national desk, and our paths crossed here and there in the years that followed. Thank you for writing about him. He was a kind and gentle soul, and inspiring in a quiet, humble and graceful way. I am sorry he is gone.
The first to ring the doorbell at a party, the first to celebrate another’s success, the kindest and most adept of editors. David was a modest man who made the rest of us feel appreciated and look better than we were. May he dance with the angels until we all meet our last deadline, and after.
Oh no. Such a wonderful friend and colleague. The world is definitely a lesser place for his absence.
Dave was a help and a comfort to me at NYT. Without him I wouldn’t know there were two NJ towns named Voorhees, and what a tagine is. Plus he figured out that I’d known Mrs. Roosevelt, who lived in 15A, and I told him I walked Fala.
Dave was a fine editor and an even finer human being. All who knew him are poorer for his loss.
David was one of the kindest, most considerate, most generous people I ever worked with at The Times. I’m floored by his passing.
David was kind, funny, generous and clever — all the best qualities of a friend. He was also an awesome podcast host.
So sorry to hear this news! Lovely man, terrific poet, what a loss for the world!
I am immensely saddened to hear this news. My memory of David: For many years, I was editor of a publication called Bulldog Reporter’s Inside Health Media. My readers were PR people, and most of the content consisted of interviews with health journalists. Given my audience, most journalists viewed these interviews as something akin to getting a root canal. But David was always quick to respond when I had a question about the NYT health and science team. And at the 2011 AHCJ conference, he kindly took the time for an interview. That might not sound like a big deal, but after speaking with hundreds of journalists over the years, it was easy to tell who the mensches wete. He definitely scored high on the mensch index.
David had a hearty chortle, which rose from deep in his gut and grew in tensity as it fled his mouth. He expressed it not only as a measure of amusement, but of friendship, and sometimes irony. As a colleague for eight years and a friend for decades longer, I cannot recall the slightest glimmer of anger or meanness emanating from his soul.
David had a hearty chortle, which rose from deep in his gut and grew in intensity as it fled his mouth. He expressed it not only as a measure of amusement, but of friendship, and sometimes irony. As a colleague for eight years and a friend for decades longer, I cannot recall the slightest glimmer of anger or meanness emanating from his soul.
I met David on an editorial writers’ trip to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Late-night talks in Leningrad, Yerevan and Baku were the beginning of a long (and for me edifying) friendship. David was a graceful writer, an incisive editor and a witty conversationalist, but I was most impressed by his decency and moral imagination.
Really sorry to hear this. What a gem of a guy. Thanks for the lovely tribute, Christy.
I mean Christie, of course, not Christy.
The warm, personal tributes being paid to David say it all: he was special on so many levels. I hope there will be an occasion where we can all come together and share the genuine joy that he brought to life.
I was a lowly stringer at the Bergen Record when David was an editor there. Decades later, when I ran into him, he greeted me warmly, like an old friend, and gave me an opportunity to write for the NYT. He was so kind. I am sorry to hear of his passing. My condolences to his friends and loved ones.
David was my boss and colleague for years at The Times. He was a good soul and a good, kind and talented editor. His passing is a great loss.
In 1965, when I was a junior in Nyack High School, two black kids, another white kid and I decided we should have a civil rights march. We didn’t know why or for what; we just knew we should have one.
The athletes, black and white, thought we were nerdy commies. The less academic kids, whom everybody including themselves thought were dumb, didn’t respond at all. Our own classmates told us we were only showing off. “Getting publicity,” they accused, as if that weren’t the point.
So it was down to the smart seniors to open the trickle of participant legitimacy every movement, even one so puny as ours, needs to become a crashing tide.
Excepting one woman, the smart seniors tied themselves in knots rationalizing their indecision. At one point in their impressively elaborate discourse, complete with oral footnotes, David said simply, “I’ll go.” His peers caved, joined, embarrassedly marched, and we ended up with sixty kids marching to the local black church, singing civil rights dings, hearing our first Baptist sermon, and going home as proud of ourselves as if we’d actually dine something.
David quietly said afterwards, “I hope this means we’ll really do something someday that makes a real difference.”
He’d already done something that made a real difference, and I always wondered if he knew.
Thank you for your remembrance. I hadn’t seen David in 30-odd years when we began corresponding shortly before his death. That long interval seemed like a pause, so clearly could I hear his warm and witty voice and experience so quickly the kindness and decency he had shown me and so many others in college decades ago. He was a gifted and incisive and entertaining writer but more than that he was a reminder of the best a man can be, and all of those remembering him here are a reminder of what love is. Even only recently having gotten to know him again, I will still miss him.
Over a year ago David and his fiancee visited my mom, then 100. Our families were neighbors for decades. They thoroghly enjoyed their conversation which continued until my mother tired. A week before she died, David called again to ask if he could visit. She was not well enough to receive him, but she felt a lot better after his call!
David was my friend starting in junior high school. Over the past decades, we’ve emailed in flurries and visited together on one coast or another when we could. I thought there would be all the time in the world before our next exchange started up. Now, never again.
David is very recognizable to me from all that people are posting here, but let me add that he was a funny guy. In high school he loved S. J. Perelman, James Thurber, Robert Benchley, and H. Allen Smith. He relished words and decided “wombat” was the most ridiculous word of all. He was so persuasive about this that a bunch of us who hung out together happily adopted it as a special word in our group lingo.
Also in high school, he had a part-time job at the Rockland County Journal News, working on the box scores that appeared in tiny print in the back pages of the JN. One day, he inserted a made-up box for two made-up teams with ludicrous names and improbable line scores. No one at the JN noticed, so before long his fictional box scores became a regular feature. (Benchley: “It does not pay to take newspaper items too much to heart. The next day you may find that you either misread the details or that the reporter was fooling.”)
David stayed up late back in those days and listened at night to WNCN, where Bill Watson made up his programming as he went along. It was always Baroque and Classical music but otherwise unpredictable. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier twice in one night? Sure, why not? David’s kind of show, David’s kind of guy.
Each show began with the second movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, as Watson spoke Shakespeare: “Here will we sit and let the sounds of music creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet harmony.” Sometimes I would stay up until midnight just to hear that, and when I did, I would think of my friend David, listening too. It is hard now not to think he is there, in the night, just down the hill.
I wrote this blog post in a fit of grief, because it was all I could do. But reading all these beautiful remembrances of David has been incredibly moving and surprisingly comforting. My love goes out to all who knew and loved him.
My husband, Bruce Locklin, and I had the joy of working with David at The Record. Talk about that paper’s best and brightest! We long hoped he’d be named EIC, instead, he moved on to the Times. They were lucky to have him – the very definition of a mensch. A brilliant writer and editor, talents that were trumped only by his sensitivity, generosity and compassion. My love to his family. His memory will be cherished by everyone who was lucky enough to have known him.
I also have known David since high school, and like all those who are writing, feel terrible sadness at his dying so young. Seeing him in New York while he was still at the Times, and later at our 50th high school reunion, made clear that David never changed in essential ways. One of my brothers said it best about someone, and it applies to David: like an apple that is pure apple, David was pure David all the way down. One of the people in a lifetime you are gifted with knowing. Now I am grateful to share missing him with so many people who loved him as well.