Longtime friend and editor John Heckathorn with me at the Maui Film Festival. I'm not sure why I'm holding a candle rather than a glass of wine. But he probably put it in my hands for laughs. RR took this picture, and John took the one of us, below.He was the editor at Honolulu Magazine when I started writing for him. He always said he remembered our first meeting because my daughter Alison, who was nearly two at the time, hugged my leg and looked up at him while we discussed a story. She'll be 18 this summer.
I came to him with a portfolio of published clips from the San Diego Union-Tribune and various sports magazines. But I owe my writing career in Hawaii to John. He mentored me. Red-lined my stories when they fell short. Told me I could do better. Demanded draft after draft. Drove me nuts sometimes. Then when I managed to put it all together, he left it alone and said it would win an award. He was always right.
He served as a reference for almost every job I landed, including staff writer positions at the Honolulu Advertiser, Travel Weekly Magazine, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Civil Beat, and the University of Hawaii Cancer Center. John was a no-BS kind of guy, and everyone knew it. So if he said someone could do the assignments, people listened.
When I wrote an extremely personal article for the New York Times about my husband's illness and collapsing marriage, I trusted John — and only John —with the first read-through before I handed it to the exacting editors, fact checkers, and legal team at the Times. Despite the devastating topic, I knew he would not flatter me. He would just tell me if hacking the story from 3500 to 900 words had worked or not — and why.
When I found myself writing about cuisine and interviewing chefs and the occasional sommelier, he helped me. He was an expert. I often accompanied him on undercover restaurant reviews, and suppressed my embarrassment when he stole the menu. He always stole the menu! But he could detect every ingredient in any dish in a way that few people can.
When he first started writing his column for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, before the papers merged, I graduated to serving as his editor. I read or listened to him recite it aloud every week for a year, pinpointed areas that needed improvement, and praised the particularly astute sections. When I laughed he knew it was good, because I didn’t flatter him either. But it had taken 12 years for the student to become a peer.
I introduced RR to John at the Maui Film Festival in 2009, where John and I were both working for our respective publications and RR was my plus-one. When booking a rental car, I had requested a small economy economy version, but the rental agency ran out and gave me a huge red Hummer instead. So the three of us tooled around Maui together, laughing when the earthy residents scowled at us. I told John that RR was a smart, clever girl. He loved her style on the blog — especially the story of our massive rat (as in size and number) encounter after the decadent chocolate party at the Four Seasons, which I hope RR will find and post again — and gave her a few writing assignments. That's why this seemed as good a place as any for a personal tribute.
Most of all, John became a dear friend. We communicated a lot. Or not at all. We fought. We frustrated each other. We understood each other. We supported and adored one another. His amazing wife, Barb, was lucky to have him. And he was deeply fortunate that a woman as smart and strong and patient as she became his partner. Our personal experiences sparked conversations about how we wanted to die — or rather, how we did not want to die. A slow, agonizing decline when the brain goes long before the body simply wouldn't do, we assured each other. So.
There’s much more, but I’ll end by thanking John for everything. He knows I'm not the only one who misses him.
