Colleagues recall Tony Snow as generous and 'solid as a rock'

From staff and wire reports

WASHINGTON

Tony Snow, the conservative columnist and television commentator who relished sparring with reporters during a 17-month stint as President Bush's press secretary, died Saturday. He was 53.

Snow's death was announced by the White House. When a recurrence of cancer interrupted his tenure there, he chose to talk about it openly and said he wanted to offer hope to other patients. His message to them, he said, was: "Don't think about dying. Think about living."

Snow worked for The Virginian-Pilot as an editorial writer in 1981 and 1982, and then became editorial page editor for the Daily Press in Newport News until 1984.

With his tall, lanky frame; his head of thick gray hair (it thinned, but never disappeared, during chemotherapy); and his showman's style, Snow helped reinvigorate a press operation that many Republicans believed had been lacking. He had joined the White House in April 2006 and loved serving there. He once called it "the most exciting, intellectually aerobic job I'm ever going to have."

Bush learned of the death at Camp David, where he is spending the weekend.

"It was a joy to watch Tony at the podium each day," Bush said in a statement. "He brought wit, grace and a great love of country to his work. "

Before becoming the chief spokesman for the president, Snow was a syndicated newspaper columnist and later a commentator for Fox News. He was also host of the network's Sunday public affairs program "Fox News Sunday."

At the White House, he turned the daily press briefing into something of a one-man show, challenging reporters' questions and delivering hard-hitting answers, even when he was occasionally short on the facts. More than once, Snow was forced to apologize, as he did shortly after taking the job, when he erroneously said Bush viewed embryonic stem-cell research as murder.

"He's velvet glove and iron fist," Jim Axelrod, the CBS White House correspondent, once said in describing Snow.

Coming into the job, Snow had credibility with the news media because, as a commentator, he had often been critical of Bush. But the transition from pundit to mouthpiece proved complicated for him, as he struggled to rein himself in.

"Tony Snow broke the mold - he was a completely different kind of press secretary," said Ann Compton of ABC News, who has covered six presidents. "For one thing, he would give you his own opinion and you'd have to say, 'Tony, wait, I asked what the president thought.' "

His snappy sound bites made Snow an instant hit among Republicans.

"It's like Mick Jagger at a rock concert," Karl Rove, the president's former political strategist, once said in describing him.

During the 2006 congressional midterm campaign, Snow raised eyebrows by using his celebrity to raise money for Republican candidates - something that by Snow's own admission other press secretaries had declined to do for fear of seeming too partisan.

He also had a musical flair; he taught himself the acoustic guitar and played in an amateur rock 'n' roll band, Beats Workin'.

Compton, who had been in touch with Snow in recent months, said his condition took a turn for the worse after the White House correspondents' dinner in April. H e e-mailed her to say he had been suffering intestinal problems and that he was having a harder time recovering. On June 13, Compton received another unexpected message from Snow, who by then was quite sick, she said.

He had heard that Helen Thomas, the 87-year-old veteran White House correspondent with whom he had had some of his most pointed exchanges, was ill. "If in touch, would you please pass on my love," Snow wrote.

Snow died at 2 a.m. Saturday at Georgetown University Hospital, according to Fox News Channel.

"If God needs a press secretary, he's got a good one," Roger Ailes, president of the channel, said a few hours later on "Fox & Friends."

Robert Anthony Snow was born in Berea, Ky., on June 1, 1955, and grew up in Cincinnati. He graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina in 1977.

He then shuffled from job to job, first as a caseworker for the mentally ill in North Carolina, then as a teacher in Cincinnati and Kenya before doing graduate work in economics and philosophy at the University of Chicago.

In 1979, he discovered journalism. He started as an editorial writer for editor Terry Eastland at the Greensboro (N.C.) Record, then followed Eastland to The Virginian-Pilot in 1981.

He made an immediate impression on Beth Williams, the assistant to the editorial writers, with an unexpected gesture for her 40th birthday: He baked her a cake. They exchanged birthday greetings for years after, she said.

"There really is no meanness in him," said Glenn Allen Scott, then the associate editor of The Pilot's editorial page. Although the two often disagreed on issues, "it was always very civil."

Snow went on to become editorial page editor at the Daily Press in Newport News.

"Tony was, right off the bat, an intellectual with a great sense of humor," said Ernie Gates, who succeeded Snow as editorial page editor of the Daily Press in 1984 and is now the paper's editor.

Snow was an unabashed conservative, but as editorial page editor in Newport News, he wanted an opinion page that reflected a spectrum of views, Gates said. Among his hires was Gordon Morse, an outspoken liberal who had been Virginia director of Common Cause, a public interest group. Morse went on to serve as a speechwriter for Gov. Gerald L. Baliles, a Democrat, and now works as a freelance writer and contributing editor at the Daily Press.

Snow believed strongly in one of the core goals of the Reagan revolution: bringing power closer to the people, Morse said.

He liked to sprinkle his editorials with flamboyant language - "verbs and modifiers that sent people racing to their dictionary," Morse recalled.

He also had backbone. When anyone challenged the paper's position, Morse said, "he was as solid as a rock."

While many writers are content to hide behind a typewriter, Snow's move to the podium and the TV screen was a natural transition, Morse said.

"Tony liked the stage - he thrived on it," he said.

In 1984, Snow became deputy editorial editor at the Detroit News, where he met and married the editor's secretary, Jill Ellen Walker. In 1987, he became editorial page editor at the Washington Times.

In 1991, he left newspapers to join the first Bush administration as a speechwriter. During the Clinton administration, he went back into journalism, and he was the first host of "Fox News Sunday," from 1996 to 2003. He was the host of a Fox News radio show when he was hired by the current administration.

Snow often said that he felt stalked all his adult life by the threat of colon cancer; his mother died of the disease when he was 17. By the time he joined the White House, he had already been treated for it.

When he joined, he said he believed that he had beaten his cancer.

The cancer recurred in March 2007, less than a year after Snow took the White House job. He underwent surgery again, took five weeks off, and returned. But he announced in September that he was resigning his $168,000-a-year job - not because of the cancer, he said, but because he wanted to make more money to support his family.

He is survived by his wife and their three children, Kendall, Robbie and Kristi, who live in Northern Virginia.

This article was compiled from reports by staff writer Dale Eisman, The New York Times and The Washington Post.