GroundTruth

Rose Devine was the eyes and ears and the heart and soul of The Boston Globe. As the operator at the switchboard in the newsroom for more than 20 years, Rose knew GroundTruth and she loved it.

She loved everything about reporting –  the crackling sound of police radios and the breathless calls from reporters out hustling a big story somewhere in the city back in the day long before cell phones and texting. She listened to those who would call in to drop a dime on a corrupt politician, to complain about a story or to sing the praises of something they’d read. She knew names and kept phone numbers and always had an idea about how to pursue a story.

In my case, I was usually calling in to the switchboard from the Middle East. Rose would pick up the line when I was  calling in on a satphone from Iraq or Gaza with all hell breaking loose in the background and the connection going in and out. She would dispatch someone to go pull the editors out of a meeting or find them in the cafeteria. And she’d stay with me on the line, catching me up on all that was going on in the newsroom and she’d ask about what was going where I was and then like punctuation at the end of a sentence she’d ask me the same question every time:  “Hey, have you called your wife?”

She was always reminding those of us in the field about what’s important.

“When’s the last time you read a story to your kids?” she’d ask with an accent sharpened in her native South Boston.

Rose was the daughter of a an Irish cleaning woman, or “scrubby,” as they were known who mopped the floors of the Globe. Her father was a Longshoreman. Her parents were both immigrants from Ireland and Rose was fiercely proud of her ancestry and just as proud of her hometown of “Southie.” She loved to sing the old Irish songs and she knew every word to every one of them. She and her sister Barbara, who was also an operator at the Globe, were inseparable. She was  a loving mother and a doting grandmother. And she was the kind of friend who always had time to listen and offer a quick bit of advice whether you wanted it or not. Before I went overseas for the Globe, we’d share laughs and cigarettes in the small, windowless office of  columnist Mike Barnicle. They were good days when newspapers still had confidence and swagger and great characters and a great value for GroundTruth.

Here’s how Barnicle described Rose in the Globe obituary:

“She was absolutely the heart and soul of The Boston Globe. Rose knew everyone she looked out at, sitting in the newsroom. She knew something about their lives, she knew things about their families, a child’s illness, a daughter getting into college, a marriage breaking up. She also happened to be one of the finest reporters I’ve ever met. She had a sense of what news was, what stories people wanted to read, and what people would read.’’

Fittingly enough Rose’s wake was held on St. Patrick’s Day. A funeral Mass was held the day after.  And today she was laid to rest.  She was 73.