(Originally posted to social media Sept. 29, 2026. Bob Kappstatter’s birthday. It’s a birthday card, but the kind of story you usually don’t tell until the subject is no longer around to hear it. Sometimes we don’t tell people what they mean to us until it’s too late. This is not one of those times. So indulge me. This is going to take a few minutes).
Dec. 19, 1995.
The Bronx.
It snowed that day. Hard. Rained, too: bullets in a shoe store on Pelham Parkway.
Five people murdered. The owner. A customer. A mom who took her two boys Christmas shopping. The two boys. They were 12 and 14. Ricardo and Rafael. I would come to know them, too late of course, as Ricky and Ralphie
.By that time in my career I had made some friends in Bronx Homicide, the detective bureau. They were on the scene. One slipped me the names of the victims and their address.
I raced over. I found what was left of the family: one inconsolable teenage girl whose wails filled the apartment of the neighbors who agreed to take her in.
I was roughly three years into my journalism career at the time. I had seen death. I had seen grief. But not like this. It is so much easier when three family members are mourning a fourth, but to discover at the end of one morning during the most wonderful time of the year that your whole family was wiped out by a mentally unstable gunman upset because the store didn’t carry the Nikes he wanted?
They don’t train you for that in school. They don’t train you to weave a story from the pain that comes from someone whose ability to produce tears was no match for her heart’s desire to shed them.
Night fell. Six inches of snow on the ground. I needed to get to the Bronx Bureau of New York’s Hometown Paper to file whatever notes I could to whoever…
Who am I kidding? My notes were filed. The story was written. I needed to get there because it was late and no one else would be there and I could scream as loud as I wanted and no one would hear.
And that’s what I did. And no one heard me.
The Bronx Bureau was a magical place. You could go there after hours and work quietly. Or scream into the void. Or call your pastor and ask him where the fuck was God at 11:50 a.m. on Dec. 19, 1995 when an innocent mom and her two innocent kids went shoe shopping?
And you could hang up after that call, your duty to your job, profession and faith fulfilled, and collapse at your desk in a puddle of heartbreak.
The last thing you expect to hear is the sound of a key opening the door to the stairway downstairs, footsteps, and the opening of the door to our second-floor office. It was after 11 p.m. Maybe after 12. Who remembers?
The door opens, and in walks Bob Kapstatter.
Looks over at this child who calls himself a news reporter and sees a blubbering wreck.
But somehow he knows not to say anything. Not a word. Not “you ok?” Bullshit. He knows I’m not. And he knows why. And he knows there’s not a damn thing he can say to make this anything other than the worst professional day of my fledgling career.
He had seen worse. He knew someday I would, too.
He did not seek to console or excuse or pretend.
Silently, he walked into his office and sat behind his desk, pulled open the drawer on the lower right and removed its contents: a bottle of what I remember as Jack Daniels and two glasses (plastic? I don’t recall).
Poured one for himself and one for me. Came to my desk. Placed the glass in front of me.
And for a while we sat there and sipped.
I never even asked him why he was there!
He finally spoke. I don’t remember his exact words (hello, Jack Daniels). I do remember the gist of the lesson he taught me: we in this field are at the daily risk of losing our humanity. We can’t allow that to happen.
Do the job. But do it through the heart and the concern and the empathy you bring to this news operation as a human being.
Be the tough as nails reporter. But if you want to be a great writer, do not let go of the humanity. That’s what will set you apart.
It was the sappiest message he ever conveyed, and it governed my approach to journalism for the next, holy shit, 31 years.
Earlier this month on my social media page I paid tribute to an editor who I called “one of the most influential people in my life.” I shared that too late for him to hear it; he died years ago. I’m not making that mistake again. People need to hear this things while they’re still around to know the lives they touched.
Bob Kappstatter. Kappy. Chief.
You have been more than an editor. You have been a mentor, teacher, father-figure, friend, sculptor, example, inspiration, brother. You have exhibited extraordinary patience, an inexhaustible supply of good humor, and the kind of professionalism married to humanity that few people could ever manage, especially in our chosen profession.
There is no editor I’d rather have with a gun to my head, no German whose orders I’d rather follow, no mediator I’d rather rely on for counsel when I was making an utter fool of myself and needed grounding in reality.
I am damned lucky to have known you, and damn glad I did not wait until it was too late to let you know.
If that bottle is still where you left it, pull it out. Pour a little into a glass. Raise it.
And goddamnit, thank you for everything you did to make me the reporter, journalist, writer and man I am today.
Happy Birthday, Chief.
