Michael Coakley, 41, who as a national correspondent and political reporter for The Chicago Tribune brought energy and sensitivity to coverage of many of the pivotal events of the last two decades, died early Wednesday in Boston of complications associated with AIDS.
At the time of his death, Mr. Coakley was on leave from his assignment as New England correspondent for the paper, a post he had held since 1985. Previously he had served as The Tribune`s White House correspondent during the Carter administration and a correspondent in its Los Angeles and New York City bureaus.
”Mike Coakley was a first-rate reporter whose dedication to his work and courageous battle for life will long be an inspiration to all of us who knew him,” said Tribune Editor James D. Squires.
An indefatigable reporter and eloquent writer, Mr. Coakley earned the respect of his colleagues for his astonishing virtuosity. He covered, with equal skill, national and local politics, courtroom dramas, disasters and the most offbeat of feature stories involving the homespun and obscure.
”Michael Coakley was a complete newsman,” recalled Tribune Managing Editor F. Richard Ciccone. ”He had speed, intellect and grace as a writer. He was a storehouse of knowledge on scores of subjects, and he was as versatile as any reporter I have ever worked with. He covered politics, government, crime, courtrooms, education and White House news conferences with equal insight, and always managed to find the most difficult ingredient of a news story: humor.”
It was this probing, scintillating quality that drew people to Mr. Coakley. ”He was a fine, fine writer and a meticulous reporter,” said Raymond Coffey, managing editor of the Chicago Sun-Times and former chief of The Tribune`s Washington bureau. ”But principally he was fun to have in the office.”
Mr. Coakley broke into journalism in the late 1960s and almost immediately began covering the often violent protests and marches of that era. His first major assignment for Chicago Today was the 1969 Conspiracy Seven trial before federal Judge Julius Hoffman.
A few years later, after joining The Tribune in 1974 upon the demise of Chicago Today, Mr. Coakley was to cover two other emotionally charged court proceedings: the 1975 trial in North Carolina of Joan Little, a black prison inmate accused of murdering a white guard who allegedly tried to rape her, and the 1976 trial of newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst on charges that she had aided her Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapers in a terrorist spree in the San Francisco area.
He also spent three years as Today`s Washington bureau chief (starting when he was 23 years old), two years as Today`s political editor and two years as The Tribune`s assistant political editor.
After the Hearst trial, Mr. Coakley stayed on in California for The Tribune. In 1979 he was reassigned to Washington as White House correspondent during the tumultuous days of the Iran hostage crisis. He had begun to lose his taste for the politics and intrigue of Washington, however, and after the 1980 election he requested and was granted assignment to New York.
In recent years, though plagued by illness, Mr. Coakley kept up a vigorous schedule, traveling widely for a mix of major news stories and subtle features. Indulging his interest in ”forgotten” people in remote areas and his unabashed taste for the road, he embarked on what he saw as a dream assignment: a two-month coast-to-coast bus tour in 1983, filing stories as he went.
Mr. Coakley won many journalism awards. He was honored twice for exceptional writing at The Tribune`s Edward Scott Beck award ceremonies-in 1976 for his coverage of the Hearst trial and in 1983 for coverage of the America`s Cup yacht race. It always amused Mr. Coakley, who detested most athletics, that he should win a prize for covering a sporting event.
A native of Terre Haute, Ind., Mr. Coakley graduated from Indiana University in Bloomington, where he majored in political science and American history. He went to work for the Terre Haute Tribune and was employed briefly in the ill-fated presidential campaign of Sen. Robert Kennedy before joining Chicago`s American, the predecessor of Chicago Today, in September, 1968.
Mr. Coakley was deeply affected by the new social consciousness sweeping American life in response to civil rights struggles and the war in Vietnam, and his reporting was always flavored by a concern for humanity and social justice.
”If there`s any common thread to the work I`ve done,” he once said,
”it`s that I`ve always been interested in stories about people having a tough time of it.” He was among the first to seek out and describe the rural poverty of the 1980s, which he first encountered during a 1981 trip to northern Maine.
For a period after he went on disability leave in July, 1987, Mr. Coakley was a volunteer counselor for the AIDS Action Committee in Boston. He never tried to hide the nature of his illness and insisted it be identified as the cause of his death.
Mr. Coakley is survived by his mother, Evelyn, and a sister, Elizabeth.
Visitation will be held Thursday night in Waterman`s Funeral Home on Kenmore Square, Boston, followed by mass at 10 a.m. Friday in St. Stephen Martyr Church, Hanover Street, in East Boston.
At Mr. Coakley`s request, contributions may be made in his name to Chicago House, a nonprofit organization that provides for homeless AIDS victims, at P.O. Box 14728, Chicago, Ill. 60614.
