Joseph Patrick Heaney

MONT VERNON, N.H. - Award-winning newspaper reporter and master horseman Joseph Patrick Heaney died peacefully Nov. 9, 2012 at Community Hospice House in Merrimack after a brief struggle with pancreatic cancer. He was 82. Mr. Heaney was born May 28, 1930 in Cambridge, Mass. He was the son of Boston- area bricklayer, Patrick J. Heaney, and Nancy G. (Driscoll) Heaney, who worked as a nanny in the Boston area after emigrating from Ireland, Joe grew up in Lexington, Mass. and Arlington, Mass. and graduated from Arlington High School in 1947. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University in 1953. Heaney’s newspaper career spanned nearly a half century. He worked briefly at newspapers in Lafayette, La. and the Valley News in Lebanon. He then joined the Burlington Free Press in Burlington, Vt. He worked there 13 years, winning many AP awards for his evocative stories on rural life, local news and high-profile criminal cases. In 1968, Joe traveled to Vietnam to cover the war for the Burlington Free Press. Mr. Heaney moved his family to Purgatory Falls Farm in Mont Vernon in 1969 when he took a job at the former Sanders Associates in Nashua, where he primarily worked as a speechwriter for Royden C. Sanders Jr. Returning to journalism in the early 1970s, Joe joined the then Boston Herald American, the forerunner to the Boston Herald. He covered Boston City Hall during the era of the late Mayor Kevin White, profiled Boston political and social luminaries, reported on notorious mobsters and reported on war-torn Ireland in 1979. He won many AP and UPI and other awards for his work, including a spot news award for his coverage of the Atlanta, Ga. Child murders in 1981 and then U.S. Rep. Wilbur Mills’ infamous affair with Boston Combat Zone stripper Fanne Foxe in 1975. Joe retired from the Herald Dec. 31, 1999. Inspired by native American horsemanship, Joe’s life-long love affair with horses began at age 7. He was a wrangler and stable hand at local sales barns in Lexington, Mass. later worked as a groom at the former Roosevelt Raceway in Westbury, NY in 1947, rode rodeo in Kissimmee, Fla., and kept an ever-changing herd of horses at Purgatory Falls Farm in Mont Vernon. He leaves his wife, Kathryn Marchocki, of Mont Vernon; two sons, Sean A. Heaney of Newport, Vt. and Jeb A. Heaney of Mont Vernon; two daughters, Joellen T. Heaney of Martinez, Calif. and Jocelyn M. Heaney of Los Angeles, Calif.; sisters Mary T. Donahue of Lexington, Mass. and Eileen P. Halloran of Durham, N.H.; his former wife, Elaine V. (Proctor) Heaney in Peterborough; many nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by three children, Julianne M. Heaney in 1973; Joseph P. Heaney Jr. in 1990 and Janet E. Heaney in 1997; and his sister, Grace H. Kenney in 1985. There are no calling hours. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 10:30 a.m., Nov. 13, at St. Patrick Catholic Church, 34 Amherst Street, Milford, N.H. Burial will follow in Green Lawn Cemetery, Mont Vernon. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Community Hospice House, 210 Naticook Road, Merrimack, NH 03054.