Gaeton Fonzi, American Hero, has Passed

[Dawn Meredith]

Just waking up here and the email with the announcement was the first thing I saw. Yes, what a true hero and like the others who have posted I agree that his book is one of the absolute best and must reads. I had the pleasure of sharing some drinks with him and others at the COPA conference in 1998. A most delightful man. I had not even heard he was ill. A great loss.

RIP brave man, who defied the edict given by the HSCA. And sadly for the world he was correct: It was the last investigation.

Dawn

[Peter Lemkin]

Posted: Sun, Sep. 2, 2012, 3:01 AM
A 'relentless' Phila. reporter
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By Walter F. Naedele

Inquirer Staff Writer

Gaeton Fonzi, 76, reporter who wrote of JFK's killing

Gaeton Fonzi, 76, an investigative reporter for Philadelphia Magazine from 1959 to 1972 who later published his own conspiracy theory of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, died Thursday, Aug. 30, of Parkinson's disease at his home in Satellite Beach, Fla.

"He was relentless," D. Herbert Lipson, chairman of Metrocorp, owner of Philadelphia and Boston Magazines, recalled.

That intensity carried on after Mr. Fonzi left Philadelphia.

"His whole obsession was the Kennedy assassination," Marie, his wife of 55 years, said.

"He was in constant contact with everybody about that" for years, she said. "He went and spoke in Dallas almost every year" at gatherings where the assassination there was discussed.

Mr. Fonzi was an investigator for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 1975 to 1977 and for the House Select Committee on Assassinations for two years after that, his wife said.

His book on the matter, The Last Investigation, was published in 1993 by Thunder's Mouth Press.

Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Fonzi graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1957, where he wrote for the campus newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian.

Mr. Fonzi was briefly a reporter at the Delaware County Daily Times before serving stateside as an Army infantry officer.

He joined what was then Greater Philadelphia magazine, a publication for business executives, in 1959 and helped turn it into a trendsetting publication.

"My father was one of the owners," Lipson said. After the elder Lipson left in 1960, he said, "I was a brash, precocious kid who made the changes that really began around '60."

Mr. Fonzi, Lipson said, "was there in the beginning with me."

Working closely with editor Alan Halpern, "he did a lot of great stuff" that wasn't being covered by the region's newspapers.

"In those days, we wanted to cure all the ills of the world," Lipson said, and "it could take him years" to gather enough to finally publish an investigation.

For instance, in the years before The Inquirer was bought by what became the Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers and made into a nationally acclaimed newspaper, Mr. Fonzi discovered that one of its reporters, Harry Karafin, had a questionable sideline.

Mr. Fonzi and fellow magazine reporter Greg Walter "authored a lengthy piece accusing Harry J. Karafin of having extorted money from his subjects in exchange for not publishing stories about their misdeeds," The Inquirer reported in Mr. Walter's 1989 obituary.

"It was a piece that led to Mr. Karafin's indictment and imprisonment."

Gil Spencer, the late top editor at the Philadelphia Daily News, said in that 1989 story that Mr. Walter and Mr. Fonzi "were the first to turn regional magazines into investigative instruments.

"And it certainly hit Philadelphia for a real lick, as far as investigative reporting went at that time."

Bernard McCormick, a fellow reporter at Philadelphia Magazine, wrote in a recent appreciation that Mr. Fonzi's "gentle, slow talking, sometimes inaudible manner belied his aggressive journalistic style.

"He joked that his mumbling, halting interview technique worked to his advantage when subjects couldn't stand his pace and blurted out information."

After Philadelphia, Mr. Fonzi joined McCormick as editor and part-owner of Miami magazine before going on to the congressional committees.

Mr. Fonzi then contributed to Gold Coast magazine, part of the Gulfstream Media Group, where McCormick is publisher.

Mr. Fonzi's wife said Sigma Delta Chi, the Society of Professional Journalists, gave him two local awards and a national award.

He ran three marathons, the last when he was in his 50s, said his wife, also a marathoner, whom he met at Penn.

But apart from his investigative work and his family, she said, "his sailboat was his greatest love," a 37-footer that he moored on Biscayne Bay from 1977 to 2002.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Fonzi is survived by sons Guy and Christopher; daughters Irene Fonzi and Maria Fonzi-Gonzales; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

A Funeral Mass was set for 11 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 4, at Holy Name of Jesus Church, 3050 N. Highway A1a, Indialantic, Fla., with a 1 p.m. luncheon reception at City Tropics Bistro, 249 Fifth Ave., Indialantic.

[Jan Klimkowski]

My emphasis in bold:

Gaeton Fonzi, 76, an investigative reporter for Philadelphia Magazine from 1959 to 1972 who later published his own conspiracy theory of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, died Thursday, Aug. 30, of Parkinson's disease at his home in Satellite Beach, Fla.

Right there.

The power of two little words.

All of Fonzi's JFK work is marginalised and delegitimized.

We routinely have members of DPF, often passing visitors from the Swamp, arguing that the dichotomy in JFK research is between "Lone Nutters" and "Conspiracy Theorists", or LNers and CTers.

Any researcher, any truthseeker, who allows themselves to be defined as a Conspiracy Theorist is a fool playing the enemy's game.

Cass Sunstein laughs heartily at such "researchers".

[Charles Drago]

My emphasis in bold:

Gaeton Fonzi, 76, an investigative reporter for Philadelphia Magazine from 1959 to 1972 who later published his own conspiracy theory of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, died Thursday, Aug. 30, of Parkinson's disease at his home in Satellite Beach, Fla.

Right there.

The power of two little words.

All of Fonzi's JFK work is marginalised and delegitimized.

We routinely have members on DPF, often passing visitors from the Swamp, arguing that the dichotomy in JFK research is between "Lone Nutters" and "Conspiracy Theorists", or LNers and CTers.

Any researcher, any truthseeker, who allows themselves to be defined as a Conspiracy Theorist is a fool playing the enemy's game.

Cass Sunstein laughs heartily at such "researchers".

Precisely.

I've preached this very sermon from scores of bully pulpits for nearly two decades.

And still they call themselves "conspiracy theorists" as they argue for the raising of fingers.

[Dawn Meredith]

My emphasis in bold:

Gaeton Fonzi, 76, an investigative reporter for Philadelphia Magazine from 1959 to 1972 who later published his own conspiracy theory of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, died Thursday, Aug. 30, of Parkinson's disease at his home in Satellite Beach, Fla.

Right there.

The power of two little words.

All of Fonzi's JFK work is marginalised and delegitimized.

We routinely have members on DPF, often passing visitors from the Swamp, arguing that the dichotomy in JFK research is between "Lone Nutters" and "Conspiracy Theorists", or LNers and CTers.

Any researcher, any truthseeker, who allows themselves to be defined as a Conspiracy Theorist is a fool playing the enemy's game.

Cass Sunstein laughs heartily at such "researchers".

That jumped out at me too and pissed me off because he wrote the true story of his work with the HSCA. There were no "theories". I too refuse to use that term to describe myself. It is demeaning.

Dawn

[LR Trotter]

"The Last Investigation" was a very factual account. That is why I favor the book, for that very reason. And, by no means a "theory". I intend to read it again as a refresher, it's worth it. Mr Fonzi deserves tremendous respect as a researcher, and I have felt that way for a number of years since my first reading of TLI.

[Adele Edisen]

I will always remember those words said to me by Gaeton Fonzi when I met him at one of the Dallas November meetings. I told him of the efforts of my attorney who had written letters to Senator Frank Church, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, and to Senator Daniel Inouye, the subsequent Chairman of that same Senate Committee, and to Representatives Richardson Preyer and Louis Stokes of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) over the years of the existence of these committees, offering my testimony to them. None of the committees appeared interested in hearing my testimony, although Senator Inouye did express his interest, but his aide to whom we were referred did not.

In fact, neither Representative even replied to my attorney's letters at all.

I asked Mr. Fonzi why had there been no reply, and he said, "They didn't want to open that door..."

Adele

[Charles Drago]

So let's all sign petitions and ... and ...

[Adele Edisen]

So let's all sign petitions and ... and ...

No Comment.

Adele

[Peter Lemkin]

I asked Mr. Fonzi why had there been no reply, and he said, "They didn't want to open that door..."

But Gaeton DID help to open 'the door' a bit more, for all of us in America and the World - just enough so we could peek in and see they were lying their asses off and covering up the truth! Thank you G. Fonzi!