E-Mail This Article to a Friend HEART AND SOUL Remembering Don Orciuch BY PETER KADZIS, EDITOR IN CHIEF

Printers and the craftsmen and -women with whom they work hand in glove are the unrecognized heroes of the newspaper trade, the essential intermediaries who make the words and images — whether stories or advertisements — real for readers.

For more than a quarter of a century, Donald Wesley Orciuch led the team that printed the Boston Phoenix and its sister publications, the Phoenix newspapers of Providence and Portland and Stuff@night magazine, with verve and vigor. Don died last week, the victim of a heart attack. He was 56.

As the chief of Mass Web Printing, based in Auburn (just outside Worcester), Donnie’s network of associates and acquaintances blanketed New England. His customers included newspapers, magazines, retailers, and sundry other businesses.

But the word "customer," or even the more-intimate "colleague," doesn’t do justice to any of Donnie’s relationships. So many of those he knew and worked with became his friends. And all his friends became family.

His daughters, Emily and Brianna, knew the depth and breadth of his love in a way no one else could. Those who knew, worked, and played with Don — and Don could play as hard as he worked — could only marvel at the strength of his feeling for his two girls. Inside the occasionally gruff exterior of that burly ex-Marine, there was a man of distinguished sensitivity. If he were still alive, he would scoff at that notion. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

To say he was a sports fan does not do justice to the intensity of his passion. Fanatic might come close. But barely. No Super Bowl could go unattended. No playoff was too distant. No ticket was unobtainable. More than a few will remember the moment a few years ago when his intent-but-confident face popped up on the television screen as he waved a TICKET NEEDED sign behind the network announcers in a pre-Bowl warm-up show.

Less well-known was his knowledge of wine. He was a collector and a connoisseur. At the time of his death, his cellar — lovingly built with his own hands — held over 2400 bottles, many of remarkable vintage. Wine, like life and love for Donnie, was not to be rationed. He selected with care, but he dispensed with generosity. Friends and visitors alike had the run of his vault. His grace in this regard was aristocratic.

While not exactly fleet of foot, Don managed at around age 48 to become a marathoner. A power walker, he competed vigorously. He once completed the Alaskan Marathon (a charity event to benefit the victims of leukemia) and the more local Jimmy Fund walk, which follows the course of the Boston Marathon.

Donnie’s heart was so big in all its emotional and philosophical dimensions that it seems a particularly cruel judgment of fate that its failure should have caused his death. His spirit, however, never failed. And his memory endures, nourishing the lives of all who knew him.