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Five years ago, our newsroom gathered at a brew pub to raise a toast to Alan Small, who — thanks to the remarkable altruism of his colleague Jill Wilson — was about to have a kidney transplant.
That evening featured the sweet organ music of laughter and love. It was a great success, much like the transplant surgery that followed, giving Al a second chance at life.
Yesterday evening, our newsroom gathered again at a brew pub, this time to raise a toast to the memory of Al, whose sudden death on May 3 has hit our newsroom hard.
Al was the kind of guy who was impossible not to like. He was as smart as he was sharp, comfortable in his own skin, eclectic and yes, a tad eccentric.
He was also the kind of guy we will be hard-pressed to replace in our newsroom because of the skill set he brought when he joined the Free Press.
Al Small with colleague Jill Wilson, who donated a kidney for Al in 2019. (Mike Deal / Free Press files)
A boy from small-town Alberta, Al had worked his way up from smaller publications, which meant he learned to do everything and anything in a newsroom. He had the experience that laying out a front-page demands. He had the sage advice needed to mentor younger reporters.
He had an endless ability to lean into any subject area, so there was literally nothing he couldn’t cover and cover well. Sports for sure, but also the symphony. Politics absolutely, but still room for Picasso. Hard-hitting editorials in the morning, but still enough left in the tank for a hard-rock concert review at night.
You get the picture, and hopefully, that means you have some sense of what we have lost.
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Most days, our newsroom is required to report on deaths of those whose lives are lost in tragedy, whether it be a shooting, stabbing, drowning, highway collision.
Tonight, I’m reporting on the loss of someone from our newsroom, someone whose byline you might have noticed, someone whose behind-the-scenes commitment made the Free Press better.
This weekend, we will share more about Al in a feature that will be the cover story for our Passages section.
In the meantime, please take a moment to read this feature about the big heart and spare kidney that speaks to the special connection Al had to our newsroom.
I can’t think of a better way of honoring Al than sharing a story that has the potential to save lives through the gift of organ donation.
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