'He died with his notebook in his hand:' Journalists mourn reporter who died on assignment (2024)

Massachusetts journalists are mourning the death of 67-year-old Patriot Ledger reporter Fred Hanson — a Braintree native who dedicated his life to covering the South Shore for more than 42 years.

Hanson was expecting to cover potential budget cuts and teacher layoffs at a Braintree School Committee meeting Monday evening when he collapsed outside Braintree Town Hall, according to longtime Patriot Ledger photographer Greg Derr, who was also at the town hall for the meeting.

“He died with his notebook in his hand,” former Patriot Ledger Features Editor Dana Barbuto said, noting that if a reporter had died this way in a movie, it would feel contrived. " ... But he died with his notebook in his hand going up the same stairs he went up so many times for so many years.”

A well-known and respected reporter in southeastern Massachusetts, Hanson was “the face of the Ledger,” former Patriot Ledger Managing Editor Ken Johnson told MassLive Wednesday.

Many local reporters took to social media Monday and Tuesday to honor Hanson, as did state Sen. Walter Timilty, D-Norfolk/Plymouth/Bristol.

“Fred was an institution of knowledge and a very fair news reporter. He was always a gentleman. I, along with so many others, will miss him,” Timilty wrote.

Fred Hanson’s journalism career

Hanson was born Jan. 26, 1957 and grew up in Braintree along with his 12 siblings. He was proud to have earned a degree from UMass Boston in 1978, Johnson said.

After graduating from the university, Hanson worked for the now-defunct Cohasset Mirror and Marshfield’s WATD radio station before joining the Patriot Ledger in 1981 as a town reporter, according to his biography on the Patriot Ledger’s website.

As a journalist, Hanson was “a government junkie” who never tired of covering the latest crime story, Johnson said. The former editor described Hanson’s day-in, day-out coverage as both accurate and diligent.

“He was the rare reporter that cops would trust,” Johnson said. “He treated everyone fairly, and they reciprocated.”

Hanson’s early career was spent covering the town of Randolph, but he eventually became the newspaper’s Braintree reporter, Johnson said. In his later years, he worked as a general assignment reporter, but still took special care to cover his hometown.

“I believe he felt that everything that happened in that community was of interest to other members of the community, and he wanted to keep them informed,” Derr said of Hanson. “He kept his finger on the pulse of Braintree for a long time, and every major event that occurred in that town, he was there to witness it.”

Barbuto described Hanson as a reporter who “found a family” in the newsroom and was ready and willing to cover any and all stories. He advocated for coverage of issues that were impactful and that he felt the community needed to know — even when they didn’t seem like they would make the newspaper fly off the stand.

“Nobody else wanted to go to sit in on planning board or school committee or town council or any of that kind of stuff,” she said. “But Fred did and Fred would because he knew that it all starts on the local level. If you’re not informed on a local level, then how can you be informed on a national level?”

Hanson’s most important stories

When asked what Hanson’s most memorable stories were, Johnson brought up the fact that Hanson had medically died once before and written about the experience for Patriot Ledger.

The article was entitled “Reports of my death weren’t greatly exaggerated,” humorously borrowing from a famous Mark Twain quote.

“By the way, if you ever want to shock your doctor, tell him you died the day after your last visit, as I did to my endocrinologist,” he wrote, showcasing his sense of humor.

In the article, Hanson tells the story of how he died of a heart attack while working out at a Quincy fitness center in 2013. He details how it affected him and his family — given his family’s history of heart disease — and how he eventually recovered.

Hanson ended the article by thanking all the first responders and medical professionals he never met because he was unconscious, but who were nonetheless the reason he survived.

“I am not the hero of this piece. All I did was wake up, something I’ve done at least once every day all my life,” he wrote. “The heroes in this story are strangers, people whose names I do not know.”

Hanson was also proud of his coverage of Paulie’s Push — a Massachusetts charity that honors the flight crews involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Barbuto said.

The organization took to Facebook Tuesday to credit Hanson for his work covering the non-profit over the years, linking to five stories Hanson had written about the organization in the span of a single year.

“In the very early days of the Push, one of the first reporters to take an interest in this story was Fred Hanson from The Patriot Ledger. It quickly became clear that Fred wasn’t just on assignment - he was genuinely interested in this story,” Paulie’s Push wrote. “That became clearer over the years, as he didn’t just write a story and move on - he followed up often, writing multiple stories about each Push.”

Despite working at the Patriot Ledger for decades, Johnson said Hanson never wanted to be an editor — he just wanted to keep reporting. One of his final stories at the Patriot Ledger, which was published just days ago, was about Braintree Mayor Erin Joyce’s opposition to a proposition to close an elementary school.

Hanson outside the newsroom

A large man standing at about 6-foot-5 with a distinct voice, Hanson was “a gentle giant,” Derr said. Hanson never married, but has friends all over the country, his friends and colleagues said.

Despite The Boston Globe’s and Patriot Ledger’s reporting otherwise, Barbuto, Johnson, Derr and Hanson’s obituary all attest to the fact that Hanson was a die-hard Toronto Blue Jays fan. In fact, Johnson said, he was a Canadaphile who visited the country often for Blue Jays games.

Hanson was a fan of TV shows such as “The Wire,” “Matlock” and “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” and his Facebook page was a font of pop culture references, his friends and colleagues said. He also loved Golden Age Hollywood movies.

“He and I shared a passion for ‘The Great Escape,’ which we both considered the greatest movie ever, followed closely by ‘Casablanca,’” Johnson said.

Hanson loved Jimmy Buffett and Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Barbuto said. He was also a voracious reader who often tore through dense texts such as Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” and “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York” by Robert Caro — a biography of more than 1,300 pages.

But more than anything, Hanson’s colleagues and friends remember him as an incredible friend.

He looked after the son of a colleague who died young and was known to make mixtapes for other reporters when they were going to be away from the newsroom for a while, Johnson said.

“It’s the nice things he did for other people without making a big show of it,” he said of Hanson.

When Barbuto’s son was born in 2007 on the same day as Hanson, he wrote her a “beautiful” card that talked about all the wonderful people who had been born on that day, such as hockey legend Wayne Gretzky and Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

He was always there when she needed him, whether it was saving her from a broken elevator when no one else could hear her calling for help, talking on the phone for hours “like teenagers” or letting her into the newsroom when she forgot her keycard.

On Barbuto’s final day last year at the Patriot Ledger, Hanson was the last person she saw because he volunteered to help her pack up her things and carry them out to her car.

“He was a true gentleman. A journalist with a heart of gold. And that’s something to be said in this day and age when journalists have fallen out of favor,” she said. “We’re not really trusted anymore, but he really was.”

A wake will be held for Hanson at Sweeney Brothers Home for Funerals in Quincy from 4 to 7 p.m. on Friday, April 12, according to his obituary. A funeral will follow the next day at Saint Francis of Assisi Church in Braintree at 10 a.m.