Occupation Reporter Name Robert Thomas, | Role Journalist Books 52 McGs. | |
Full Name Robert McGill Thomas, Jr. Born May 9, 1939 ( 1939-05-09 ) Shelbyville, Tennessee, U.S. Died 2000, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, United States | ||
Robert McGill Thomas Jr. (May 9, 1939 – January 7, 2000) was an American journalist who worked for many years at The New York Times, and who was notable for the obituaries he wrote for that newspaper.
Contents
Biography
Thomas was born in Shelbyville, Tennessee on May 9, 1939.
He wrote under the name Robert McG. Thomas; more than thirty of his obituaries were included in the 1997 anthology, The Last Word. Since his death, a larger collection of Thomas' obituaries was published as 52 McGs.: The Best Obituaries from Legendary New York Times Reporter Robert McG. Thomas. The author of a starred Kirkus Reviews wrote, "For the last half of the 1990s, readers of the New York Times could be excused if they searched out Thomas’s work before they bothered with the front-page lead. Known as “McGs.”—after the veteran reporter’s middle name—these little beauties celebrated the unsung, the queer, the unpretentious, the low-rent."
Death
Thomas died on January 7, 2000, at his summer home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, from abdominal cancer.
Legacy
Michael T. Kaufman, who undertook the daunting task of writing the obituary in The New York Times for the Times' celebrated obituary writer, described Thomas as the person "who extended the possibilities of the conventional obituary form, shaking the dust from one of the most neglected areas of daily journalism".