I was saddened to learn today of the death of yet another journalist friend — David Bird, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. He had been missing since Jan. 11, 2014, when, according to police reports, he left his home in Long Hill, N.J., for a brief walk through nearby wooded trails. David was a liver transplant recipient and in need of regular medication, and his disappearance led to an extensive search and the creation of a website — finddavidbird.info — devoted to his safe return. Dow Jones and Company, the Journal’s parent, even offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to his whereabouts.
Police announced at a news conference that a body pulled from the Passaic River this week was positively identified through dental records as David’s. (This disclosure comes a little more than a month after my friend David Carr of The New York Times died suddenly at work.)
I guess you can say that I learned to do journalism with David. He and I both attended Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J., and were in many classes together. We also both wrote for the school’s newspaper, the Rider News.
David was a standout at school — funny, smart and probably the best student in my classes. I always thought he was destined for great things and never dreamed he’d someday be the subject of a national news story himself.
David loved journalism and yearned to make it big in the industry. He once wrote about the other David Bird, a staff reporter for the Metropolitan section of The Times whose byline occasionally made it to the newspaper’s front page. (The other David Bird, incidentally, got his start working for The Trenton Evening Times, not too far from Rider, while in college; he died in March 1987 of cancer at the age of 61.)
After graduating from college, David and I went our separate ways professionally — he to the Dow Jones new service, and I to The Associated Press. We reconnected in the early ’90s through a mutual friend. David had “won” a party at a Midtown bar, and I was invited. We stayed in contact for a year or two, but then lost touch again. I heard little about him until last winter when I read about his disappearance in the news.
It’s not known exactly how David died or whether foul play was suspected. Either way, it’s a tragic way for a life to end. My only hope, really, is that his family can find at least a modicum of closure.
I recently became a contributor to a writer friend’s new venture: Midcentury/Modern, a magazine-style collection of stories written by and about baby boomers on Medium.com.
