TRIBUTE

Gary Tischler, 1941-2020

Sonya Bernhardt, Richard Selden and Robert Devaney celebrating Gary’s birthday at Peacock Cafe.

Gary Tischler, The Georgetowner’s longest-serving and most prolific writer, died on April 8 at the age of 78, succumbing to complications from mesothelioma and heart disease. Well known throughout the arts community, Tischler joined The Georgetowner newspaper in 1980.

In his 40 years with the neighborhood newspaper — “Whose Influence Far Exceeds Its Size” — Tischler acknowledged that he had written a lot of stories, the first of which were about Ted Kennedy running for president and a profile of burlesque dancer Blaze Starr (not in the same story, mind you).

“To say that I’ve written more than 2,000 stories would not be an exaggeration,” Tischler wrote a few years ago. “I’ve met a lot of people, accumulated cherished friends and acquaintances and spent a lot of time talking with people, in person and on the phone. Not to mention bathing in experiences and occasions, openings, plays, concerts, rallies and protests, swearingins, courtroom trials, government meetings, parades and, more and more often, funerals.”

“Gary was our best — loyal, smart and strong — fighting until the end against his illness,” said Georgetowner Publisher Sonya Bernhardt. “We are heartbroken.”

Said Georgetowner Editor in Chief Robert Devaney: “Gary was our heart and soul. What a writer he was. He was loved by many and taught all of us so much — most of all about humanity.”

Tischler was born in Munich, Germany, on Dec. 3, 1941. He moved with his mother and stepfather to Ohio in 1950. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma. During the Vietnam War era, he served in the U.S. Army. Later, he lived in the San Francisco Bay area, working at newspapers from Marin County to Hayward, California.

He is survived by his wife Carole Muller of Washington, D.C., where they lived together on Lanier Place NW. He is also survived by his son, Boyd Irons.

Still, Tischler said (wrote) it best: “As for myself, I have had the good fortune to be a witness to all kinds of history, thanks in no small part to a partner that encourages and abets that good fortune. Writing and reporting, journalism and newspapers are all about people, all kinds of people.”

The Georgetowner plans to hold a celebration of the life of Gary Tischler for its anniversary party at a later date.

From the Publisher

The loss of Gary Tischler will be felt by many, especially me, for many years to come. Gary was always kind to everyone, even in the toughest of circumstances. His creative mind and institutional knowledge of many different things included politics, local and national, arts, performing and visual, literature, people and personalities. Gary treated each assignment like the first, never losing his enthusiasm or passion for the subject and for writing about it. He was a close advisor in every respect. He was always there for me in difficult times, whether business or personal. He wrote my mother’s and my father‘s obituaries and provided comfort through his words. He was at my wedding and at many other happy and joyous occasions. What I’ll miss the most is his soft way and his calmness, which he offered freely.

Gary Tischler. Gary with Linda Roth.

An Appreciation: Gary Was Our Best

BY ARI POST

Gary Tischler was an encyclopedia of all that makes life worth living. Art, theater, movies, literature, music, baseball, opera — there was no end to his knowledge and appreciation of the cultural ether.

As a writer, he taught me how to write with your heart, not your head. He browbeat me for using gratuitously fancy words. (He once asked me point-blank to stop using “bucolic” so much.) He taught me that sometimes you need to stop thinking and write about what you saw. He also taught me how to look coolly down the barrel of a deadline, and that a word limit was merely an editorial suggestion.

As a friend and a mentor, Gary gave me more wispy little granules of heartfelt guidance than I’ll ever be able to recount. But the one that is always with me — though he never said this so much as showed me through seasons of endless conversation — is to just flat-out love what you do. He taught me that it’s a rare few who get to write and think about art for a living, so if you’re going to do it, do it with gratitude, awe and love.

He taught me how to edit. I had the glorious challenge of being Gary’s editor, as managing editor of The Georgetowner from 2010 to 2012. At least once a week, I received a brain-dump from Gary: theater reviews and think pieces consisting of 200-word, singlesentence paragraphs, stuffed with more ideas throughout their labyrinths of inner clauses than most writers have within the body of an entire piece. But I always knew that if I took the time to untangle his words — and he absolutely expected me to untangle them — there were small diamonds overflowing from the debris.

I met Gary when I was fresh out of college with an art degree. I had no right being his editor. He had been a journalist longer than I’d been alive. But he treated me like a comrade. He called me to talk about his articles before submitting, about the show he saw the night before, about the exhibition opening we should meet at (the National Gallery’s were the best: free breakfast and a big fat catalog). He let me feel like I knew what I was doing.

It annoyed him when I inserted disclaimers of my own ignorance into my art pieces (I often sent him my drafts). “It’s your column,” he would say. “It doesn’t matter what you don’t know. You’re the art critic. This is your job.”

To that end, Gary was a rare and dwindling breed of writer. He was an oldschool newspaperman, cut from cloth that they just don’t make like they used’ta. He was a lot like many of the artists of his generation that he admired — John Prine, Kris Kristofferson, Harvey Keitel — a bluecollar, hard-drinking fella who fell into the arts amid the course of a deeply lived and imperfect life. Because of this, he saw a work of art from the inside out. He filtered art through life, not the other way around.

By the time I met Gary, his days of drinking and carousing were behind him, but meeting him for coffee and a blueberry crumble on a Thursday morning at Tryst was as invigorating, hilarious and actionpacked as a few rounds at Nathans.

Gary didn’t talk; he held court. As his editor, I was on the phone with him for hours every day. He spoke like he wrote — endlessly, and about everything.

His style was not a natural fit for the culturati. And that always made him my favorite person in the room. That’s also what made him so damn good at what he did.

Gary never wrote an inauthentic word in his life. It was honest, deeply considered, fresh and real. He didn’t belabor turns of phrase, sentence structure or authorial panache. He just wrote it down as it came to him and rollicked along to his next irrepressible thought.

I envied his easy prose, his casually exacting observations and his colloquial style. He wrote about Bryce Harper the same way he wrote about Puccini.

Most people “of a certain age” have a few stories they tell over and over. I don’t think I ever heard the same thing come out of Gary’s mouth twice — unless I asked him to “tell me again about that time at the Kennedy Center when you interviewed a raging drunk Mickey Rooney an hour before he went onstage.”

The only story I remember him retelling was about a conversation he once had with his son, upon the birth of Gary’s grandson. Gary may not have been the best father while he was growing up, his son told him, but he turned out to be the best friend he ever had.

Gary was the sweetest guy I ever met, and my favorite person to talk movies, books, coffee and art with. He’d read everything, by the way.

He taught me how to laugh at art. He once got scolded at the opening of a Dubuffet exhibition at the National Gallery for laughing — loudly — at a painting of a cow. “But look at it!” Gary protested. “It’s funny!”

“I suppose,” grumbled the well-dressed man. “But it shouldn’t be.” I later found out that the man was the curator.

Gary made me laugh with my whole body. I hear his voice every time I sit down to write.

I’ll miss Gary profoundly, and I’m grateful for every moment we had.

Nurse customizes her face mark. Courtesy MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.

At D.C. Fire Station #1 at 2225 M St. NW: firefighters with Fairmont General Manager Mark Huntley and his dog Georgie, who deliver food to first responders. Photo by Diana Bulger.

Health professionals need stylish bags, too. Courtesy MedStar.

THANK YOU TO OUR FRONT-LINE WORKERS

During this pandemic, however long or harsh its reign, front-line workers are holding down the fort as many of us stay home. They are the essential ones.

In our not-quite-united nation, we debate the extent and severity of COVID-19 and argue about when states may begin to reopen businesses to avoid the double blow of a shattered economy and lost jobs. It seems our partisan fights never really left us.

Still, an attitude of gratitude appears to encircle us, to help us continue.

All the while, doctors, nurses and support staff — whether at MedStar Georgetown University, George Washington University, Sibley Memorial or other nearby hospitals and health care facilities — continue to arrive at work to heal, comfort and flatten the curve.

All the while, the Metropolitan Police Department and DC Fire & EMS continue their routine and extraordinary duties.

Grocery workers from Safeway, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and 7-Eleven continue to stock the aisles and get us through the register. They are stressed, and some have gotten sick.

U.S. Postal workers continue their routes with ever more needed packages, along with fellow UPS and FedEx drivers.

Transportation workers — bus and train and taxi drivers — continue to keep moving, taking us where we need to go.

Sanitation workers, too, continue to arrive at homes and businesses to drag out our trash.

And, lest we forget, we owe farmers our gratitude for continuing to reap the harvest of the good, green earth.

U.S. Postal Service worker James Wilson on O Street NW at Rose Park. Photo by Peggy Sands.

Chef and restaurateur José Andrés stands in front of America Eats Tavern at 3139 M Street, while talking to World Central Kitchen staffers on the phone and being interviewed by “60 Minutes.” Photo by Robert Devaney.

Health professionals grab a special lunch from Jettie’s. Courtesy MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.

Tsige Sebsibe and Girma Hailu, owners of the 7-Eleven at 2617

P St. NW, have fitted their store to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and offer senior citizens a special checkout space. Photo by Robert Devaney.

VOLUNTEERS

ON THE FRONT LINE

BY STEPHANIE GREEN

In early March, Amber Seyler, a freelance filmmaker in Eastern Market, answered a call for volunteers on Facebook. Like many Washingtonians, she wanted to help others during the approaching quarantine, but didn’t know how. It’s hard to lend a helping hand from six feet away.

But Seyler knew she had something to contribute. “I knew I’d be good with details and logistics,” she says.

She immediately began pairing volunteers with people who needed grocery deliveries, using spreadsheets and rapidfire communications. Nearly a month later — having commandeered a group of 3,000 do-gooders, fired up and ready to go — she is hunched over a computer, working 14-hour days.

Every evening, she sends her volunteer army an email with a list of organizations in need of extra hands and ways for people to assist those who are struggling. Some need food, others may need baby products. Many just want a kind word in the desert of isolation.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about how we have this enormous group of amazing volunteers, and many of you seem to have superpowers,” she wrote in her April 14 email. “You are doctors, nurses, therapists, community activists, academics in all sorts of topics ... you’re a bunch of DC-style smarty-pants with compassion and the motivation to help others.”

Seyler is inspiring others and working well into the night — without pay and uncertain of her own livelihood; her unemployment application has been stymied by bureaucracy. But she is one of the many faces of light in our community. We may be quarantined, but our big hearts remain unchained.

The experience has been “rewarding but really frustrating,” Seyler says. “By the time some of our people get what they need, they haven’t eaten in a day. Their kids haven’t eaten in a day.”

The generosity of others brings her back to positivity. “Some have said they want to donate their stimulus checks. They don’t need it.”

Seyler has been working with a church called the Table, a nondenominational congregation whose Director of Care Alli McGill sent the social-media post that got Seyler’s attention. McGill, a mother of four, has put her own safety on the line taking provisions to homes and scouring stores every day looking for in-demand items like Lysol for the volunteer ministry.

“I change my clothes immediately when I get home,” she explains, adding that, as a precaution, she doesn’t take her children inside stores with her. “The DMV gets a bad rap,” McGill says, but the outpouring of support she sees gives her renewed faith in the goodness of area residents.

McGill has struck up a friendship with a woman she calls “Miss Violet,” an elderly resident in Northeast D.C. who needed deliveries and someone to talk to. “We talk by phone a few times a day. My kids love her. We’re hoping she can come for Christmas dinner if we’re able to gather by then.”

Consider a home on Reservoir Road. Not a standout, the house has a modest elegance that fits with those around it. But every Wednesday, there are multiple bags of groceries at the front door, a weekly collection by neighbors for Martha’s Table, a nonprofit working to make “strong children, strong families, and strong communities in D.C.”

A gift of three pizza pies for hospital personnel. Courtesy MedStar.

While the education center at Martha’s Table is closed, the organization is providing those in need with gift cards, weekly stipends and at-home learning technology. As of April 15, Martha’s Table’s COVID-19 campaign has nearly 1,700 supporters.

Also on April 15, Mark Huntley, general manager and regional vice president of Fairmont Washington, D.C., delivered the hotel’s signature paella to first responders at its M Street neighbor, DCFD Engine 1. Hotel mascot Georgie, Huntley’s Labrador, was there to lend some canine love.

Giving blood is another highly effective, and cost-free, way to help. A spokesperson for Children’s National said that blood donation appointments, both on-site and through the hospital’s mobile program, have been booking up, thanks to the growing spirit of giving.

Blood donations don’t directly help COVID-19 patients, but with the cancellation of community blood drives due to social distancing there has been a worrisome downturn in giving blood nationwide.

The hospital has appointments available starting next month. Appointments can be made online at childrensnational.org.

How long does the Table’s Alli McGill think this quarantine, and her efforts, will last? She sounded undaunted, even as the news broke that the lockdown would continue through May 15. Her response: “We will be here as long as we can.”