MARK MOONEY

MOONEY--Mark X.

My Last Byline. By Mark Mooney. I'm sure you've heard the old saw that you'll never hear a dying man say that he wished he had spent more time at the office. Well, I'm here to tell you...ah, check that. If you are reading this, that means that I am no longer here. The prostate cancer finished toying with me on October 6, 2017. I was 66 and glad to be done with the damn disease. But if I were still here I would tell you that I wish I had done more work as a news reporter. Written better stories. Made more and better contacts. Skipped some of the easier pieces and done more in-depth stories. Spent more time on foreign stories. Been a better editor. I loved being a reporter. (Journalist is kind of a lace curtain word for the job.) It's where I met most of my best friends. It's where I met my wife Barbara, also a reporter. It's where I had my biggest audiences. And take a look at the top of this page, that byline. It looks good, right? Journalism allowed me to circle the globe writing stories and meet amazing people. I love, well loved, to be able to say I worked for the Bronxville Review Press Reporter, New Rochelle Standard Star, Bangkok Business, UPI, New York Post, New York Daily News, ABC News and CNNMoney. I have the coffee mugs to prove it. My last residence was Maplewood, NJ, but I always considered myself a New Yorker. As a former Good Humor man in Brooklyn, Blimpie counterman in Manhattan and bartender in the Bronx and Hell's Kitchen, I was a New Yorker. And it was by far my favorite newspaper beat. As a kid, my family bounced around Washington, Maryland, Delaware and upstate New York several times. I arrived in New York City at the age of 17 to attend Fordham University. (Attend is used loosely here, but I did graduate.) And I stayed in the city until I was about 50 and moved to New Jersey. There was a break from the city which lasted a little more than two years when I circled the globe. I wrote about it in my self-published travel memoir "Three Cents a Mile." It's still available, agents. My wife Barbara Goldberg survives me and l leave greatly in her debt. I got so many more laughs than I gave. And I regret I won't be there to comfort her as she did me in those final foggy hours. My daughter Maura and son Paul are better looking and smarter than me, a fact which they often reminded me. I was still working on a retort at the time of this writing. The three of them were my holy trinity. In lieu of flowers, donate to a favorite cause. Mine was Doctors Without Borders. Or just buy a round. The family will be receiving friends at Prospect Presbyterian Church, 646 Prospect St., Maplewood, NJ on Saturday, October 14th from 12:00-12:30pm followed by a service at 12:30pm For more information or to send condolences please visit: jacobhollefuneralhome.com