Prayers and Thoughts

Prayers and thoughts are with the family of Dawson B. “Tack” Nail, veteran communications journalist in D.C. and a former B&C reporter. Nail died Friday after a fall. At 82 he had still been covering the business for Communications Daily.We thought we’d lost Tack a few years back when he had cancer, but he pulled through to continue delivering tough questions with a folksy twang.

He was a reporter for B&C in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s and has been a friend and fixture in my professional life since the first event I ever attended outside the news room, where he was kind to a wet-behind-the-ears cub with an arm around the shoulder and a smile that spread across his face like the Grinch after his heart has grown two sizes.

Tack’s heart could have supplied that surplus and still have plenty to spare.

“Let’s all say a prayer today for our great friend, who has mentored many a journalist, protected many a source, and provided us all with plenty of laughs though the years,” said NAB spokesman and former scribe Dennis Wharton.

Ditto.