Allow a few tears. It’s to say goodbye to Roger Wood, 87, Rupert Murdoch’s early New York Post editor. Unknown to many of you, he was special to many of us.
At the time he left in November, his family couldn’t arrive from Europe. Thus, like all pro journalists who have to make do with a later edition, his proper tagline got delayed until yesterday’s memorial service.
It was 11 a.m. Saint Thomas Church, 53rd and Fifth. Although it’s a house of worship at which not wildly religious Roger would occasionally worship, 100 who worshipped Roger RSVP’d. Lunch followed two blocks away at Circo.
The service was in New York. The attendees mostly New Yorkers. The man’s life was New York. His home, New York. His work, New York. What he loved was New York. Yet each eulogist was an Anglophile. Not one spoke New York.
I loved Roger. Forget movies and plays about old-time crusty reporters with pads, pencils and stubs in those porkpie hats barking, “Get me rewrite.”
Roger was genteel, refined. His accent? More British than the Queen’s. Manner? Courtly. He addressed me as “Lovely One.” I preened when he called me “Lovely One.” Never a time he didn’t refer to me as “Lovely One.” Came the day a senior reporter with a half-eaten bagel-and-schmear fossilizing on top of his desk drawled to me: “Take it easy, kid, that’s what he calls every female.”
And what he called every male was “Dear boy.”
And what he wore daily was a blue knit tie.
And what he ordered for lunch was poured from a bottle.
And what he missed in the city room was nothing.
Roger Wood brought me onto the New York Post. So long ago that I think I reported firsthand the day those Indians took a few dollars from the Dutch and sold off Manhattan. My story:
December 2, 1979. The Shah of Iran’s dying in New York Hospital. My husband Joey Adams’ syndicated joke column had already begun appearing in the paper. A night we were dining with Executive Editor Roger came a call from the Shah’s twin sister. Said HRH Princess Ashraf: “His Imperial Majesty wants to receive you.”
See, I knew the Shah. Joey had played the Palace. Not the one on Broadway. The one in Iran. I’d done stories on him. Over the years we visited his palace in Teheran, and he received us when he was in New York.
Understand, this hospital was ringed with news crews. Hungry for any snippet — even one off some part-time bedpan carrier three floors away. And here I am, at this point, writing for TV Guide. For 200 bucks a shot. Really heavy stuff like, “Where does Lawrence Welk go from here?”
And I’m being summoned to his bedside by the Shahin Shah himself. It was like O.J. inviting me to ride along in the Bronco.
I called Roger to say, “No dinner. I’m going to the hospital to see my friend the Shah.”
There’s a thud at the other end of the line. This editor is suddenly treating me like someone he’s talking off the ledge. He says quietly: “Lovely One, might you spare a moment to ring me when you get back?”
I’m with the king-of-kings two hours in the hospital. Just we two alone. He’s in white rumpled silk pajamas, sitting on the bed’s edge, legs dangling, slippers slipping off his feet.
The man’s dying. He’s just lost his kingdom. And across one whole wall of this suite is a poster of a gorilla in full flight. In heat. With fangs. Saliva dripping. And underneath, the caption: “Cheer up. Things could get worse.”
The next morning my story was front-page. With the word “exclusive.” With my picture. With the cover line: “By The Post’s own Cindy Adams.” I wasn’t The Post’s own. I didn’t even work for them. Being The Post they never even paid me. Being Roger Wood, he sent flowers. Small bunch. A front-page headlined world exclusive, and my payment was soup greens.
Minutes later Roger handed me the column.
Born in Belgium, Roger’s family settled in Britain when he was 7. He graduated Oxford, served in the RAF, held assorted newspaper and magazine titles and was youngest editor ever of London’s Daily Express. In ’75, he arrived in and lived his life in what became his beloved New York.
I loved Roger, as well as his magazine editor wife of 42 years Pat Miller.
I’m forever thankful he and I embraced one another in his autumn so he’d sense how much I loved him. As happens in this town, we’d taken our separate paths in the intervening time. Deadlines, obligations, problems, phone calls, funerals. He went his way working for Rupert’s News America, I went mine. He’d drop a line or phone occasionally. Me, too.
Came his illness. He lost weight. I wrote him. I phoned Pat. They weren’t into visitors. I phoned Roger. I sent flowers. I sent biweekly food packages with tempting tasties. Then Pat allowed me into their East Side apartment. Then I took them to dinner at Le Bernardin with our friend Marty Singerman, who’d been The Post’s publisher.
Since Roger’s wine quantity drowned what anyone could charge off to The Post as a “business expense, I then figured the doctors had to be wrong.”
And then . . . it was over.