Terry Leroy Oblander should have been born a Navajo. Storytellers run rampant throughout Navajo history. Terry would have put the ho-ho-ho in Navajo.

On July 19, 1947, God thought the world was too serious, so He sent Terry to lighten things up.

Boy, did he! Terry was one of the great storytellers in my life. He had a wheezy, raucous laughter as he enjoyed the stories he was about to tell.

He had BJ retirees falling out of their chairs with laughter in 2009 at the monthly lunch at Papa Joe’s Restaurant in the Merriman Valley.

He was proud to be a socialist, in the best sense of the word. He thought we should all help each other, particularly those less fortunate.

Terry died Nov. 3, 2011. He was 64.

Never has anyone packed so much laughter, joy and humanitarism into so few years.

He nursed his dying wife Mary O’Neil Oblander in 1992, then raised three boys, including the one born five months before Mary died: Terry (in Medina’s Montville Township), Chris (in Middleburg Heights) and Josh (in Parma Heights). His widow is Linda Monroe Oblander.

He prowled the newsrooms at Ravenna’s Record-Courier (13 months), the Beacon Journal (19 years) and the Plain Dealer (18 years, among 27 PD staffers downsized via a phone call in 2008 as an early Christmas present). 

He was part of the BJ team that won a 1987 Pulitzer for coverage of Sir James Goldsmith’s greenmail takeover attempt of Goodyear that accelerated the rubber shops’ decline in Akron which spawned hundreds of abandoned businesses.

Cleveland native Terry was reared in Oldsted Falls, attended Kent State and was graduated from Cuyahoga Community College.

I wrote this in April of this year, but it still seems like a fitting epitaph for Terry:

Being around Terry was like plunging into a vat of vibrant Irish whiskey. He was proud to call himself a “socialist” because he cared about those discarded to the fringes of society. He was an ardent Guild supporter and negotiator. He seemed to have the DNA of Mother Jones and John L. Lewis in him. All with a splash of humor and a tad of loveable blarney.

Terry, we miss you. That’s not thunder we hear, but you regaling St. Peter with laughter.

Happy birthday, Terry! Your laughter still rings in my mind when I think of you.

Say “Hey!” to Fran, Pat and Harry. What a fabulous quartet you guys must make in Newsroom Heaven!