When I walked into the Delaware County Daily Times newsroom here in beautiful downtown Primos for the first time back in 1982, one of the first people I met was John Roman.
He stuck out his hand and offered a hearty welcome to the new guy who was shaking in his boots as he braced himself for the challenge of being the dayside city editor at the Daily Times.
John did what all reporters do - he started asking questions. He seemed genuinely interested in my background, where I was from and my family. When I told him that I had grown up in Chester County, he immediately wanted to know where, and he regaled me with stories of how much he loved riding his touring bicycle through the Chester County countryside.
Then he did something else that he would do literally hundreds of times in the years that followed: He told me something about Delaware County that I hadn't known before.
My first day at the Daily Times was Flag Day 1982. June 14. John wasn't satisfied with telling me that. He wondered if I knew Delaware County's famous connection to Flag Day? I did not. John did, and was only too happy to let me in on it. Flag Day was the idea of William Kerr, who just happened to be from Yeadon.
In the years that followed, I would learn a lot of things from John Roman.
Basically, he would be the model for a newsman.
When he found out I delivered Evening Bulletins as a kid, he couldn't wait to tell me how he got his start in the newspaper racket there.
There wasn't any kind of story John could not handle, and there was no situation that could make him panic.
In a word, he was the consummate newsman. A throwback. A print guy.
He was one of the first reporters to arrive at John E. du Pont's Foxcatcher estate after the eccentric millionaire shot and killed Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz. He stayed there on the scene for the duration, despite a miserable cold rain that pelted the gathering media horde that arrived to witness the event.
It was only one of hundreds of history-making events John would chronicle.
What made John special was not necessarily the stories when he was brushing shoulders with national media. Instead it was the consummate care for his craft that he exhibited on every story. At that moment, to John, that story was the most important story in the world.
And it showed.
It showed in his dogged work to show how DNA could get a notorious convicted killer off death row. It showed when he was detailing the heart-wrenching death of an intellectually disabled woman in Darby Borough.
For years John would revisit unsolved murders in Delaware County, hoping that he might somehow uncover some nugget of information that could offer closure to the families still mourning the loss of their loved ones.
In short, John M. Roman was a newspaperman.
We lost John last week at the all-too-young age of 73.
The Daily Times family has lost one of our best.
In a way, so has Delaware County. They don't make them like John anymore.
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