Former BJ reporter Dennis McEaneney passed away Sunday, June 21.

Dennis handled Portage County coverage for several years and then took over the Summit County Courthouse beat.

He was a 1963 graduate of Youngstown Cardinal Mooney High School and that summer joined the Army and served in Vietnam a few years after high school.

He wrote a chilling review of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apopalypse Now” movie for the BJ that included this sentence, based on Dennis’ personal experience in Vietnam:

“Once you’ve seen your first 6-year-old boy or 60-year-old woman throw a grenade you don’t give much slack to the next boy or old woman who makes a sudden move.”

And he also wrote: “Vietnam was what Coppola said it was in ‘Apocalapse’:  The horror, the horror.”

War does that to people. And it never leaves them. No matter how long they live. Even after they are discharged they are battling their demons.

He also provided a veteran's view of "Platoon," another war movie.

Former Metro Editor Tim Smith had a great story about Dennis:

·         “Dennis was one of the reporters I sent out the night the sewers blew up in Akron. I forget how many I dispatched, but there were at least half a dozen.

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·         “I don’t remember the year, but it was before we had radios, let alone cellphones. Communication with the office was by pay phone and there were precious few to be found in residential neighborhoods. But Denny called in regularly with updates on people he had interviewed, who were also hard to find since police had evacuated much of the area, fearing more blasts.

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·         “A few days after the dust settled, I was talking to some of the reporters who covered the story. I praised Denny for being so good at calling in and asked him he managed it.

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·         “A lot of the houses were empty,” he explained with a straight face, “so I just went in and used the phone.”

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·         "Man was a force of nature."

After Vietnam, dodging exploding sewers was a piece of cake.

When reporter Russ Mussara was working on an article about the incredible Country Maid ice cream store on U.S. 303 I told him about a chow dog that we had who started barking after her trip to her eye doctor in Richfield at the bottom of the hill BEFORE she could even see the Country Maid building up the hill because she knew she would get to finish off my ice cream cone.

Her name was Ti-Ti. When Dennis saw the article he came up to me and said, “Did you serve in Vietnam?” because Ti-Ti was a common name used in that country.

Not hardly. I was 4-F. But I came came up with the name as a short version of petite, which our chow was before we fattened her up over the years.
 
Chasm, aka Chuck Montague, gave this on-point assessment of Dennis:

·      “I worked with a lot of reporters in 42 years, almost 40 BJ. Never saw any like Denny whose eyes could bore into a person opposite him like Denny’s. Once saw a scary tough guy just crumple when D gave him The Stare.

AAlso, like the late great Bill Canterbury, never heard Denny raise his voice. He told me: These a—hole big-mouth crooks and politicians just hate it when you won’t shout with them. RIP, Denny.”

1984-2001 BJ reporter and editor and University of Akron faculty instructor Jim Quinn, who lives in North Carolina, has this take on Dennis:

“Before joining the ABJ, Dennis was an editor at the weekly Holmes County Farmer Hub. The BJ hired him to be a part-time education reporter; I replaced Dennis as Hub editor.

“One of his early stories was a look at the punk rock scene in Akron; it ran in Beacon Magazine, and played a role in the decision to hire Dennis as a full-time staffer.”

In 1999 Dennis was approved to serve on a jury judging a prostitution ring because attorneys on both sides trusted him to do the right thing.

When I was questioned at a different time and they found out I was the editor who oversaw the articles written by BJ articles about the case I was dismissed in a heartbeat.

Dennis also covered the 1998 murder trial of Akron Police Captain Douglas Prade, convicted of murdering his wife, Margo Prade.

After his 1967 discharge Dennis enrolled at Youngstown State University and got his degree in 1974 in English.

By the time Dennis showed up at the BJ in 1976 he had been a print shop press operator, worked for the Sierra Club in San Francisco, joined the Merchant Marine and owned a truck stop.

When Dennis married Mollie Baker-McEaneney in 1979 he had a daughter, Mary McEaneney, 6 years old at the time, and she had a daughter, Denise Tillman Bakerf, who was 4 years old at the time.

Later, a son, Cullen McEaneney, was born to Dennis and Mollie. According to Cullen’s Facebook page he is a bartender/server at Johnny J’s Pub in Springfield Township. He is single and lives in Akron.

After his BJ retirement Dennis was hired in 2005 as the leg man for AkronWatch.org, retired steel fabricator Larry L. Parker’s websidte, which described itself as bird-dogging the City of Akron’s spending habits. Parker claimed the city “squandered millions of taxpayer dollars on so-called economic development projects over the last 25 years.”

He hired McEnaney to prowl city hall and check public records. The site targeted city debt which exceeded $500 million for work on Canal Park, the expressway, the Inventors Hall of Fame and the John S. Knight Center.

Then-Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic called Parker a liar who was wasting his money rehashing old issues.

The Vietnam War finally is over for Dennis McEaneney. RIP, soldier.

As usually happened during my BJ days this was a team effort. I got help from former co-workers, most of all Roger Mezger, and Tim Smith, Jim Quinn, Mizell Stewart, Chuck Montague and Jim Carney. And Dennis' former wife, Mollie. And Google.