Jim Ricci's Terry Oblander remembrance

Former BJ reporter Jim Ricci, who later worked for the Detroit Free Press and the Los Angeles Times, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and was portrayed by Matthew Modine in the “Redeemer,” a 2002 USA Network cable movie "inspired by" stories Jim wrote in Detroit to free Ahmad Rahman, a Black Panther imprisoned 20 years for a murder he didn’t commit. Rahman became assistant professor of history at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Jim wrote the screenplay for "Redeemer."

In 2008 Jim took a buyout from the L.A. Times. He has two daughters by his first wife, Kathy, and a daughter and son by his current partner, Carrie.

Hello, John.

I was deeply saddened to learn by e-mail from Bill Hershey today that Terry Oblander had died.

Terry was a terrific guy, whom I admired and enjoyed. I'll never forget the way, when telling one of his inimitable tales of human foible gleaned from a township trustees or school board meeting, he'd dissolve into uncontrollable laughter soon punctuated by that uncontrollable cigarette-cough of his.

In 1980 -- it was March 30th, to be precise -- he and Bill O'Connor and I entered into a last-man-standing pact by which we vowed to quit smoking as of midnight that night, and that any one of us who ever in his life took a drag of cigarette smoke again was honor-bound to pay each of the others $100, no matter where we were.

We lasted a long time. It was nearly a decade later, as I recall, when I was writing for the Detroit Free Press, that Terry contacted me and said he was going to be in metro Detroit for a Scrabble tournament. We arranged to get together at a bar in Farmington, Michigan. I was sitting at the bar when Terry showed up, sat down beside me, lighted a cigarette, and handed me a check for $100.

After a long night of laughter and remembering, I made him pick up the bar tab, but tore up his $100 check, and tossed it into his ashtray.

I stayed "clean" for 30 years, until I took up smoking the occasional cigar a year or two ago.

I'll be sending my check for $100 to Project: LEARN of Medina County, as requested in his obit.

It's very melancholy to think that Obs is gone.

Jim Ricci


Click on the headline, go to the "Terry Oblander dies" headline and click on the yellow "Comments" at the bottom of the article to see additional tributes to Terry, a former BJ and PD reporter who died Nov. 13.