Nick Thimmesch, RIP

National Review, August 9, 1985

nick thimmesch was the stuff one thinks, in dreamy moments, that journalism is made of. He was an earthy Midwesterner, principled, independent, generous, fair-minded, and not for sale. He was an ace reporter for Time magazine and Washington bureau chief for Newsweek before he launched his own column in 1969.

He refused to move left with the herd, but he was never really a "movement" conservative either. It was his way to delve deeply into any story or issue, mastering all the fine points and reaching sometimes idiosyncratic positions, regardless of the pressures and incentives to get into alignment with prevalent factions. What drove him was a professional sense that the full story is seldom really told. One of his passions was abortion, which outraged him, and he took his stand against it with a forthrightness that probably cost him some of the success he deserved. When he learned that a California abortion mill was keeping the remains of 16,000 infants in its backyard, he went to work and made a national scandal of it, heedless of the papers that would drop his column. He wanted above all to be a good reporter in good causes, and he succeeded, until cancer stopped him at the age of 57. It never occurred to him to describe himself as an idelists; but in the constant and conscientious exercise of his skills he did more good than a hundred utopians.