E-Mail This Article to a Friend TO OLD FRIENDS: A CONDOLENCE John Ferguson: 1951–2004 BY CLIF GARBODEN

This one’s personal — written without apology for people who knew John Ferguson, assistant arts editor at the Boston Globe, who died, at age 52, on September 8. John worked here at the Boston Phoenix for roughly a decade, beginning in 1977, as assistant managing editor, associate managing editor, and finally as arts-section editor. He and I shared an office during that "associate ME" phase; he oversaw and edited copy while I covered the department’s administrative details.

It was a perfect division of labor. John had real editing chops, the kind writers long to encounter. No pointy-headed comma jockey he — for John, the technicalities of writing were second nature, mere grammatical givens, dutifully enforced with much thought and little effort. Where he stood apart was in his abilities to understand a writer’s intent, accept and refine a writer’s voice, and, perhaps most important, complete an edit leaving even temperamental scribes feeling grateful and with their egos intact.

In our minds (and to this day, I suspect), the Phoenix editors, writers, photographers, artists, and designers of the late 1970s and early ’80s were the A-team. Back then, when the alternative press was jealously shunned by the same sloppily edited dailies that eventually hired so many of our number, we fed and relished one another’s arrogance. We shared the unflappable confidence of our youth, put out a damn good newspaper, and had more fun than we let on.

At the Phoenix, John Ferguson was central to all of it. He was the one everyone wanted to please, to make laugh, and the one whose opinion often carried the most weight. His gentlemanly cynicism was the perfect moderating force to balance devotion to duty with the resentments that come with overwork. His wry comments propelled us through many a long night and unpleasant task. We worked constantly and hard, sustained by an attitude best described as "can-do with a knowing sneer."

Of course, John filled many roles — husband, father, journalist, Sox fan — and went on from the Phoenix to do consistently brilliant work at the Globe, where his talents and low-key sufferance won him a new horde of devotees. So it would be wildly unfair and misleading to define him as some sort of souvenir of the disco-to-punk era. Still, those years are when I knew him best, and along with the rest of his old Phoenix friends, I can’t help but remember him as a beloved individual and a nexus of a treasured time. More important, he deserves to be remembered and credited for the huge contribution he made to professionalizing the alternative press.

I remember John on his first day at work here, relatively fresh up from the Texas Observer and sporting a bushy mustache and a pony tail that made him look like Wild Bill Hickok with a holster full of blue pencils. And I remember John reading page proofs on the bar at the Eliot Lounge; and John, at 2 a.m., gleefully deciphering several paragraphs of nonsensical copy inexplicably typed into the middle of a George Kimball sports column by Sox pitcher Bill Lee; and John and I laughing uncontrollably like a couple of junior-high nerds through an entire production meeting because we overheard our sales manager in the hall attempt a joke by asking, "Where’s Grant’s tomb?"; and John being chagrined when, on his watch, the Phoenix ran a cover headline reading SUMMMER CELLULOID; and John lapsing into a Texas twang and complaining that he was "hungry enough to eat okra."

Also, I remember that John complimented and thanked co-workers — a rarity in this business — and was the first to recognize (and acknowledge) a person’s strengths and talents. Compliments from John Ferguson meant something — not because they were infrequent (they weren’t especially) but because they were honest and you valued his approval. Armed with humor, seemingly bottomless patience, and a mastery of literature, prose, history, theater, music, baseball, and pop culture, John naturally commanded a kind of respect the rest of us envied but couldn’t necessarily earn.

I wish John were here to edit this — to reel in my conceptual excesses and point out my misconstructions without making me feel like an idiot. It’s just the sort of potentially self-indulgent piece that wants his clear mind and gentle hand. But that’s not to be, so I’ll indulge one closing suggestion to John’s friends. Personal or professional, old or new: hold his memory well and long. John’s shortcoming was his modesty. Surely, we can make up for that.