John Farmer, Sr.

John Farmer always had a story to tell and some of the best ones were about the rascals, scoundrels and denizens of Hudson County who filled his notebooks when he was a young reporter covering the Democratic machine - then a dominant force in New Jersey politics.

"Vote theft, part of the machine's winning formula, was not only a crime; it was an art form," Farmer once wrote, in describing how the party for 30 years always managed to snare the coveted "Row A" position for their candidates on the ballot - a spot where they could be almost guaranteed to garner the most votes.

But that wasn't what made Farmer laugh out loud in retelling the story. It was when he drove by a Jersey City ward leader's club, days before the ballot drawing that would determine which party would be on top, and noticed the sign "Vote Democratic - Row A All the Way." After he pointed out that the ballot drawing was still a week away, the ward leader was flustered, but up to the challenge, insisting the sign was just an expression of faith. "You gotta believe," he told Farmer.

"Who was I to doubt him?" wrote Farmer many years later. "The drawing a week later proved him right."

Farmer, a longtime columnist for The Star-Ledger whose newspaper sojourns included stints at the Newark Evening News and Philadelphia Bulletin - covering the Statehouse in Trenton, the White House, and dozens of national campaigns dating back to the election of President John F. Kennedy in 1960 - died Wednesday. He was 89.

John died of natural causes at his home in Wayne, PA on May 8, 2019.

A soft-spoken journalist who knew state and national politics like a poker player who knows the next card that's coming, Farmer covered the ultimate demise of the Democratic machine in Hudson. He also spent months on the campaign trail with presidential candidates from Kennedy and Nixon to Bush and beyond. He was a national correspondent who wrote about the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the Kent State shootings, the Nixon administration's involvement in the Chilean coup, the secret bombings of Laos and Cambodia, and the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

"He thought of being a newsman as a calling," said Farmer's son, John Farmer Jr., the former attorney general of New Jersey who also served as the dean of Rutgers School of Law-Newark. "To him, every story was important and getting it right mattered above all else."

Despite his long career covering politics, Farmer said he neither identified as a Democrat or a Republican.

"I think it's unwise to give either party a blank check with your vote because over the long haul I don't see either the Democrats or the Republicans consistently representing the interests of the general public," he once said in an interview. "They are too beholden to the specials interests that make up their base."

Born in Jersey City, Farmer was the son of Irish immigrants and the first person in his family to finish high school. A state half-mile champion, he finished third in the national championships while at St. Michael High School in Jersey City, which earned him a scholarship to Seton Hall University, said his son. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1951 and was promptly drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to Korea, where he was assigned to army intelligence.

"His service on the front lines led him to disdain political leaders who avoided service and later sought the power to put others' lives at risk," said John Farmer Jr.

His career began as a police reporter in Harrison and a political reporter in Hudson County, before he was sent to cover the Statehouse for the Newark Evening News. He went to Washington for the Newark News - then the state's leading newspaper - where he served as its White House correspondent. After the paper shut down in 1972, he joined the Philadelphia Bulletin and served as that paper's White House correspondent, later becoming its city editor and then its national editor.

He also served for a year as Gov. Brendan Byrne's press secretary before joining The Star-Ledger as a columnist, and later becoming the paper's editorial page editor.

"For John, politics demonstrated the best and worst of what grownups could get themselves up to. He understood it as a kind of theater, filled with both heroes and scoundrels. And he loved writing about it, because for all its excesses, he valued politics as essential to the way democracy is supposed to work," said retired Star-Ledger editor Jim Willse.

For many in the newsroom, Farmer was a voice of confidence and experience in an arena of often hidden backroom deals and shifting political sands that had impact far beyond the corridors of power he covered.

"He was an inspiration to me and countless others of how to speak truth to power without snark," said retired investigations editor Tom Curran.

Farmer was able to write with a deep perspective, after covering state and national politics for decades, noted former Star-Ledger Washington Bureau reporter Robert Cohen.

"He really knew the inner workings of politics," Cohen said. "He liked to talk and used that to glean information from his sources. He knew how to engage the pols at their level."

At the same time, he observed that Farmer never lost his appetite for journalism or his enthusiasm for a good story. "He was constantly intrigued," Cohen said. "It's so easy to be cynical in this business, but I never detected that from him. I think he loved what he was doing."

At the Democratic National Convention at the Fleet Center in Boston in July 2004, retired Star-Ledger op-ed columnist Fran Wood remembered Farmer never seemed to feel the deadline pressure.

"During the early part of the evening's speeches, John would wander into the convention hall to get a feel for the crowd and talk with journalists he knew. Then he'd return to The Star-Ledger bureau and position himself in front of the TV, his demeanor as relaxed as if he were watching the evening news," Wood recalled.

"With neither pen nor notebook in hand, he'd rifle through a few speech copies that had been distributed and dog-ear a page or two, absorbing what he needed. Sometime during the last speech, deadline looming, he would move to a computer and start tapping out his column," she said.

"Twenty minutes later - thirty tops - he was done," Wood recounted. "Grabbing his sports jacket from the back of his chair, he'd ask, ‘Who's ready for drinks and dinner?'"

Farmer's last column for the paper was in April, when he wrote about the fire that ravaged Notre Dame, and yet failed to destroy the famous cathedral in Paris.

"What makes the French feeling for the great cathedral so unique is that France is perhaps the most secular society in Christendom. Seems contradictory, doesn't it? But it's not," he wrote. "The special place of Notre Dame - for the rest of us, as well as for the French - is rooted in cultural memory and something as déclassé as nostalgia, a part of all history. The gaps left by nostalgia we fill with myth, which is much of the stuff of history."

Farmer wrote that Notre Dame's contribution to myth may lie with the beliefs that among the relics rescued from the fire were a portion of the true cross and the crown of thorns Christ wore at his crucifixion. "Are they true?" he asked. "Hard to know. But it matters little. For myth is part of the belief system to which most of us cherish and adhere. It helps fill the gaps that might otherwise undermine our beliefs and the comfort that comes with having something in which to believe."

John is survived by his beloved wife, Jane M. Farmer (nee Browne), his loving children Janellen Farmer (William E. Vogan), John J. Farmer Jr. (Beth Gates), Nancy F. Apple (W.B. Apple, III, Ph.D), and Susan M. Chase (Raymond L. Chase, Jr.). Dear grandfather of Sarah, Ian, Ryan, Ray, Tyler, Austin, Julia, Olivia, and Will and great-grandfather of Liam and Nora. He was the brother of the late Rosaleen Fallon.

Relatives and friends are invited to his viewing Tuesday, May 14, 2019 7:00-9:00 PM at The Donohue Funeral Home, 366 W. Lancaster Avenue, Wayne, PA (610) 989-9600 and Wednesday, May 15, 2019 9:00-10:00 AM at St. Isaac Jogues Church, 50 W. Walker Road, Wayne, PA. followed by his Funeral Mass 10 AM. Interment Calvary Cemetery.

Visitation

Wednesday, May 15, 2019 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM
St. Isaac Jogues Church
50 W. Walker Road Wayne 19087, United States