So long to an old friend

Those of us who manage to stay alive longer than we probably should, become witnesses to the deaths of many who have passed through our years. Among the more colorful who ventured through mine was Thomas G. Flynn, one of the most affable and mercurial men I have ever met.

Flynn died of heart failure a few days ago at age 67 or 69, depending on whose obituary you read, leaving a wife and five children, all of whose first names begin with the letter K: Kelly, Ken, Kimberly, Kathleen and Karen. Divorced from a Dixie, his second wife was Kristy. Whether he married her because she was a K-name remains, by his death, a mystery.

Flynn’s career began at the Oakland Tribune and continued on into politics and public relations, for which he was aptly suited. He called himself the Ultimate Irishman and attempted to prove it by adopting Erin’s cultural heritage of hard drinking, good eating and fine stories. His charm was legendary and so were his sudden rages, which, when fueled by gin, could become intimidating. A woman friend called him “a teddy bear with a temper.”

Flynn and I were friends during our Tribune years. We enjoyed each other’s company in many areas of conviviality, such as drinking and generally raising hell. Part of our bond was that I had served in the Marines and fought in a war. He considered himself a Marine by osmosis, and while he might have served in the reserves, that’s about as close as he ever came to being a jarhead.

He was a storyteller the way my mother was a storyteller, one whose tales bordered on gross exaggeration. After a time on rewrite, I became the Tribune’s military writer, and when I went on from there, Flynn succeeded me. As such, he was sent to Vietnam for, as memory serves, a very short time, where he was mugged, heard gunfire, wrote a couple of stories and came home with flamboyant tales of blood and war.

He brought me a small, ornate metal bowl, which, he claimed, had been shot out of his hand as he was eating from it near a combat area. Indeed, there seemed to be a hole in the bowl, which could have been made by a bullet, except that the bowl was rusty, which would indicate that it might have been lying around for awhile. I just couldn’t see Flynn eating from a rusty bowl, and I have suspected his story ever since.

While he regarded his heritage with pride, he was not among the luckiest of Irishman. In his first venture as military writer, he went on maneuvers with a Marine battalion, and the helicopter he was riding in crashed. And then: He left the Tribune to work with the San Francisco Examiner on the day it went on strike; worked for a local congressman who lost the next election; became press secretary to San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto, who lost a bid for governor; then joined the city’s Public Utilities Commission, during a time when it was rocked by dissension.

That he survived all of these might be regarded as the luck of the Irish, I suppose. He emerged from the helicopter crash without a scratch and managed to hop from job to job with an equanimity of spirit that was both admirable and amazing.

The obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle mentions his love of food, a romance that, friends tell me, added to an already ample girth and may have contributed to the heart condition that killed him. That love was apparent during our period of friendship, which is partially why I write this as the year ticks toward its end.

For several New Year’s Eves, we prepared elaborate dinners for our wives and whoever else was invited, drinking and cooking all day from recipes we found in various cookbooks. How we managed to survive the day and present a reasonably festive dinner still amazes me. Our only failure was a baked Alaska that was more soup than dessert.

Our most ambitious New Year’s Eve dinner turned out to be our last, as Flynn headed off to other ventures.

The food was to be prepared from a French recipe for glazed duck that called for the unfortunate bird to be smothered in order to preserve its congealed blood. We bought a live duck, then argued and laughed until we cried over who should smother the bird, a job neither of us wanted. We finally decided on a standing rib roast, because we didn’t have to smother a cow. The duck was set loose and disappeared into the hills behind my home.

We met once in a while after Flynn left newspapering, but it was never the same. Mellowed by age and the new responsibilities of real jobs, he thought about returning to journalism but finally abandoned the notion. I think I came to represent what he would have liked to have been, and he somehow resented me for it.

I still regret the dissolution of a friendship that was cooled by the growing distance between us. But at least I have the memory of laughter and rage that rang through the house like lunatics raving over who exactly should smother a duck that was never served, but instead flew like an image of the past into the dark morning of a new year.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.