The Works of G. Wayne Miller

            Forty years ago today, I started work at The Providence Journal.

I had arrived in town a young man with few material possessions and only three years’ experience at two other newspapers, The Cape Cod Times and before that, The Transcript in North Adams, Mass. (no journalism degree, nor even a course). What I did bring was a lot of excitement to be joining the staff of a place that justifiably had earned a reputation as a writers' paper.

An editor named Joel Rawson was behind that rich writing culture and he had the support of his superiors, all the way up to the late Michael Metcalf, publisher and member of the manufacturing family that had owned The Journal for decades. Founded in 1829, The Journal was then and remains now the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in America.

My first two stories, reprinted at the bottom here, were penned during an initiation week in the newsroom at 75 Fountain St., after which I was assigned to the Greenville bureau. I spent a few months there, worked a few shifts at the State House, and then was moved to the Newport bureau. In late 1983, Joel brought me downtown full-time, with responsibility for the state prison system, state child services, and the state behavioral healthcare and developmental/intellectual disabilities systems.

Within a year, I had written the first of my many series, ``Building New Lives,'' a six-part exploration of deinstitutionalization that ran from Nov. 25 through Nov. 30, 1984. And thus a journalistic passion – behavioral and mental health – was born.

Five years later, publication of "Children of Poverty," about a Black woman and her children, began another journalistic passion that also continues to today: in-depth reporting about social, economic and health disparities and historical injustices.   

 In the ensuing years, I had the honor of working with some of the nation’s finest journalists who later moved to other publications, among them Dan Barry, Michael Corkery, C.J. Chivers, Sheryl Stolberg, Farnaz Fassihi and Helene Cooper, now at The New York Times; Kevin Sullivan and Paul Duggan, with The Washington Post; Mark Johnson, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; Jennifer Levitz, The Wall Street Journal; Mark Arsenault, The Boston Globe; Drake Witham, Dallas Morning News; and Tony Lioce, Tom Mulligan and Irene Wielawski, The Los Angeles Times. Also, Jon Karp, who after leaving The Journal became an editor at Random House and is now the president and CEO of Simon & Schuster. Jon bought and edited my first four non-fiction books, and later, from the S&S corner office, bought a fifth.

Other esteemed colleagues from those years eventually wound up in academia, including Wayne Worcester, Ira Chinoy, Mike Stanton, Berkley Hudson, Bruce Butterfield and Tracy Breton. Others stayed the course, and that long list includes Brian Jones, M. Charles Bakst, Randy Richard, Bill Reynolds and many others now retired. Several, like me, are still on staff: Tom Mooney, Mike Delaney, Peter Donahue, Katie Mulvaney, Jack Perry, Mark Patinkin, Paul Parker, Kathy Gregg, Linda Borg, Kris Craig and Bob Breidenbach.

What a ride it has been for this son of an airplane mechanic and a mother who was the daughter of poor Irish immigrants.

The Journal gave me many of the tools I needed to develop as a reporter – and also as a filmmaker, podcaster and author of 20 published books, non-fiction and fiction. My 21st, "Traces of Mary," will be published by Crossroad Press in 2022.

The Journal allowed me to witness the paper winning the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting and to be part of the team that was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, a recognition of our coverage of The Station nightclub fire that killed 100 and injured hundreds -- and the months of reporting and investigating that followed. Plus more paper and personal honors and prizes too numerous to list here. The Journal also gave me credibility for my community service efforts, notably as chairman (new emeritus) of the board of trustees of a public library.

And The Journal partnered with the Pell Center at Salve Regina University on the Story in the Public Square program, an initiative to celebrate, study and tell stories that matter. I am director of the program and co-host and co-producer, with Salve's Jim Ludes, of the Telly-winning show of the same name broadcast more than 500 times each week on public television stations coast-to-coast and heard five times each weekend on SiriusXM’s P.O.T.U.S. channel.

As I advanced in my career and had something to offer younger journalists -- and you know who you are! -- I mentored several of them (and still provide some guidance, when asked, even though most of these writers have moved to other stages). Yes, paying it forward.

 When I break it all down, it comes to this: how lucky I am to have been able to tell stories about people from all walks of life, hundreds of people from admirable to despicable I never would have met in any other profession. This is a small sampling:

Stephen King, my favorite author since the first book of his that I read, 'Salem's Lot.

Directors Joel Schumacher and Steven Spielberg. U.S. Senators including Ted Kennedy, Jack Reed, Sheldon Whitehouse and Claiborne Pell, subject of one of my books, “An Uncommon Man.” Joe Biden. Many governors, mayors and other politicians. A murderer, an arsonist, and a rapist.

Longtime Zambarano Hospital resident, artist and disability rights champion the late Frank Beazley, one of my favorite people.

Some of the engineers who maintainthe Newport Bridge.

Dr. Hardy Hendren, former Chief of Surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital. 

Plastic surgeon Patrick Sullivan.

Neil Corkery, who lives with Alzheimer's disease. 

Melissa Fundakowski, who lives with schizophrenia.

Dr.C. Walton Lillehei, the father of open-heart surgery.

Roush/Fenway NASCAR king Jack Roush and several of his drivers.

Native Americans Paula Dove Jennings and Tomaquag Museum head Lorén M. Spears, who among other stories narrated the story of the Great Swamp Massacre of 1675, the most violent episode on Rhode Island soil.

Hasbro chairmen and CEOs Alan Hassenfeld and Al Verrecchia, now prominent philanthropists. 

And many, many more, most of whom might be labeled “ordinary people” but who in truth were anything but. Some are listed at my bio here. 

 Let me close this little trip down Memory Lane with a video my then-teenage son shot of The Journal newsroom 13 years ago (CLICK to view) and thanks to editors who traveled with me, offering their time and energy not just to me and my colleagues, but also to an awesome newspaper tradition: among them, Joel Rawson, the late Chuck Hauser and Jim Wyman, Carol Young, Tom Heslin, Sue Areson, Karen Bordeleau, Alan Rosenberg, Mike McDermott and now, David Ng.

The late Jim Wyman, left, with Joel Rawson, Carol Young, Tom Heslin and Karen Bordeleau. I wrote Jim's obit and his widow placed that day's paper in his coffin for burial with him.