A recent post on the Big Fat Marketing Blog from Multichannel Merchant senior writer Jim Tierney honors MCM contributing writer Dan Walsh, who died suddenly in January.
REMEMBERING DAN WALSH
I NEVER MET DAN WALSH, BUT I ALWAYS FELT LIKE I KNEW HIM.
And that’s because he was so painstakingly accommodating when I and others at Multichannel Merchant contacted him.
Walsh, who was the vice president of catalog/publication papers at distributor Bradner Smith & Co., suffered a heart attack and died on Jan. 20 at the far too young age of 52. Gary Evjen, senior vice president of sales at Wade Paper Corp. — where Walsh used to work — passed along the unfortunate news to us here at MCM.
To say Dan will be missed would be an understatement. In this day and age of emails, texts, Twitter, Facebook, etc., face-to-face communication seems foreign. I worked with Dan for the past three years, and he was my best and most reliable source for paper-related stories. He also wrote several articles for MCM. (His last story appears on page 15.)
Dan always got back to me quickly whenever I asked him to comment on an issue or had questions for him related to the paper industry. Although we never met face-to-face, from talking to Dan and emailing him, I attained a keen sense of his integrity and honesty.
We wound up talking about our families quite often, which only strengthened our relationship. When my wife and I became parents for the first time in October 2008, Dan couldn’t have been happier or more supportive of our daughter’s birth had he been part of our family.
I worked in the newspaper business for nearly 20 years at two different daily newspapers in Connecticut — first as a sportswriter, then as a news reporter — before I came to MCM in 2006. I’ve had several great sources over the years, but never one as good as Dan Walsh. And he always was nice enough to compliment me on articles I’d written.
Between countless emails and phone conversations during the past three years, it felt like we had known each other for much longer. I’ll miss Dan’s expertise in the paper industry, and his kind and encouraging words as a friend.
All of us at Multichannel Merchant send our deepest condolences to his wife and four children. We will all miss Dan Walsh.