Retired Reds beat writer John Fay's life story is a love story

Ask anyone about John Fay and they’ll tell you he loved the Cincinnati Reds and loved covering them for more than three decades for The Enquirer.

They’ll also tell you his greatest love had nothing to do with baseball or newspapers.

By the time he first set foot in the Reds’ press box in the 1980s, John already had found the kind of heart-thumping, all-consuming, I-don’t-want-to-be-with-anyone-else kind of love that changes a person’s life forever.

Her name was Laura and she lived across the street from him on Cincinnati’s West Side, where they both grew up.

“She was his life,” said John’s nephew, Dan Heimbrock.

John lost Laura to cancer in January. And on Thursday, John’s many friends, colleagues and family lost him, too.

The cause of death is believed to have been a heart attack. He was 66.

Those who knew John well – and, really, those who knew him at all – knew his life revolved around Laura. It’s impossible, friends say, to tell John’s story without telling the story of John and Laura.

“You never said, ‘Hey, where’s John?’” Heimbrock said. “You said, ‘Where’s John and Laura?’”

John fell hard for Laura as soon as he was old enough to notice her around the neighborhood. He was a quiet, skinny kid at Elder High School. She was a vivacious tennis and volleyball star at Seton High School.

Heimbrock, who was just a few years younger than John, said John felt like he’d won the lottery when he asked her out and she said yes. For most of the next 50 years, John and Laura were inseparable.

They married and moved into a big house in Westwood that soon became a gathering place for both of their large families. Though they never had children, John and Laura hosted countless cornhole games, euchre tournaments and birthday parties for nieces and nephews. And on Christmas, they cooked an epic Italian feast that Buddy LaRosa would have envied.

The kids all liked John, Heimbrock said. He was kind and funny and he listened to all their stories and jokes. He always was willing to give them his time, no matter what else was going on.

Grown-ups liked him, too. He had a way about him, friends say, a calm demeanor and reassuring presence that made a person feel like everything would be OK, no matter how chaotic the situation.

“I don’t know that I ever saw him get upset about anything,” said Marty Brennaman, the retired Reds broadcaster who worked alongside John for decades. “He had an innate ability to take everything in stride.

“There was no negative about John Fay.”

A generous friend and mentor

That’s not easy to pull off, Brennaman said, while spending months on the road covering a major league baseball team. It may look glamorous from the outside looking in, but the work is hard and the road is a grind that keeps those who do it away from families for weeks at a time.

John embraced the work and was grateful for the opportunity to cover his hometown team, Heimbrock said. It was his dream job.

And he was good at it. He wasn’t one for melodrama or flowery language, but he also didn’t just rewrite the box score. He told readers a story that made them feel like they were there, and he did it 162 times a season.

“John had a no-nonsense and direct approach to reporting,” said Reds owner Bob Castellini. “He was a thoughtful writer.”

The sports business and the news business have been known, from time to time, to attract people with high opinions of themselves, but those who worked with John say he wasn’t among them. That was John's personality, low key and no drama, but Laura helped keep him grounded, too. He called her after every game.

“John had no ego,” said C. Trent Rosecrans, a reporter for The Athletic who worked with John for years at The Enquirer.

He said John was a generous mentor who didn’t hesitate to suggest story ideas to him – and not just stories John didn’t want to write himself. They were good stories, Rosecrans said. The kind of stories that helped young reporters build their careers.

Rosecrans said John would sometimes run an idea by him and it was so good he assumed John already was working on it. And then he’d say, “That’s a good story for you.”

John took the work seriously, Rosecrans said, but he never put it ahead of his family. He never put it ahead of Laura.

He talked about her all the time, friends say. About trips they were planning, places they were going, people they wanted to see. Always, they did those things together. Even when he was on the road and they were apart, it was never just John.

It was John and Laura.

“They were a model of what love was, what a partnership was, what a true friendship was,” Rosecrans said. “They complemented each other so perfectly.”

Laura was the life of the party, the one who pulled John out of his shell and looked out for everyone around her. John was the gentle, steady guy who looked out for Laura.

Prior to the Reds game in Pittsburgh Friday night, manager David Bell had this to say: “I’ve known John since I was in high school. From being around Cincinnati. He’s just someone I have a ton of respect for and become, I consider, really good friends with John.”

“I stayed in touch with him when he was in a few times,” he said, “and thought he was doing well. It’s just shocking.

“My heart goes out to John’s family,” Bell added, “and he’ll be missed a lot by so many people around the Reds organization and people that have known him for a long time and become really close with him and good friends with John.”

Losing her 'took far too much'

When Laura got sick more than seven years ago, diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer, John made her care the centerpiece of his life. He took her to every doctor’s appointment, held her arm when she was too weak to walk on her own and sat by her bedside when walking was no longer possible.

His daily calendar filled not with work commitments but with hospital visits and prescription pickups and reminders of when to give Laura her medication.

Heimbrock, John’s nephew, said he found a journal when he was going through John’s things Thursday. It was filled with observations about Laura and her care. What did the doctors say about her prognosis? How was she responding to treatment? He kept track of all of it, making sure they asked the right questions and made the right decisions about her treatment.

There were more personal entries, too, about what she was saying and how she was feeling.

“This is a good day,” he wrote in one entry.

Heimbrock said John’s dedication to Laura never wavered, even when he got sick himself with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. His prognosis was better than hers, but he required chemotherapy and struggled at times with his own physical condition.

Still, he made sure he was at her side. After retiring from the Reds’ beat in 2020, he had more time and gave it all to Laura.

“It was just an extraordinary honor to be witness to such an extraordinary love story,” said Jeanette Altenau, the chairwoman of Real Men Wear Pink, a breast cancer charity. “That’s quite a gift they gave to all of us.”

She said John volunteered to help raise money for cancer care and research through the charity in 2016, before Laura had been diagnosed. A year later, he told her and the other volunteers he was now doing it for her.

That continued after Laura’s death in January, Altenau said. John was a prolific fundraiser – he’d already raised almost $10,000 this year, before the formal campaign even began – and he was planning to write a book about Laura with all proceeds going to the charity.

She still was the center of his life, Altenau said, even after her death. But he never quite recovered.

“Losing her just took far too much from him,” she said.

In the months after Laura’s death, John posted often about her on Facebook. In June, he wrote that he was establishing a scholarship at Seton High School in Laura’s name. The only requirement, he said, was that the recipient be a good kid.

“Someone like Laura,” he wrote.

After learning of John’s death, friends and relatives say, John’s love for Laura was a source of comfort on an otherwise awful day. They will miss him, terribly, Rosecrans said, but they also know John believed he’d one day be with Laura again.

“And that’s exactly where he wanted to be.”

Visitation will be Aug. 18 at the Dalbert, Woodruff and Isenogle Funeral Home, 2880 Boudinot Ave., Cincinnati, 45238, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Funeral Mass will be Aug. 18 at 5:30 p.m. at St. William Church, 4108 West Eighth St., Cincinnati, 45205.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Obituary: Reds beat writer John Fay dies at 66