Mark Mooney, Beloved NYC Reporter And Editor, Dies At 66 After Chronicling His Cancer Fight

NEW YORK, NY – "If you are reading this, that means that I am no longer here. The prostate cancer finished toying with me on October 6, 2017. I was 66 and glad to be done with the damn disease." With those words, Mark Mooney announced his own death on Friday.

Mooney was a reporter and editor who worked for The New York Post, The New York Daily News, CNN and ABC News. He reported from Iraq, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia — and, of course, from Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island.

"I was a New Yorker," he wrote in his obit on the blog in which he chronicled his fight against prostate cancer. "It was by far my favorite newspaper beat."

Mooney died on the one-year anniversary of having been told that he would have two more years to live. He'd been treated for advanced prostrate cancer for two years.

"He said it without any hesitation, no ahems or 'I'm sorry to tell you....' " he wrote. "The doctor sat on a stool in his office at Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer Center in his long white lab coat and didn't blink.

"There was nothing apologetic in his comments or body language."

Mooney said that, at first, he "wasn't afraid of my death sentence, although that might change in 23 months. And it still seemed a long way off."

What scared him was telling his son and daughter.

"Tears while telling them would give the impression that I was scared or filled with self pity." he wrote. "I would be ashamed of such behavior. Not necessarily the crying, but the pity."

The other concern was "what to do with those two years, how to avoid making them a glum funereal affair for those around me."

"I realized that the most important thing for me would be to make them laugh (leave 'em laughing as they say), especially my wife. She had gotten far too much of my grumpiness and far too little of my humor over the years.

"And now I had two years to make it up to her."

He quickly decided that he would write, not a chronicle of death but one of life.

"I don't want it to be about dying. It needs to be about observing, loving and hopefully be entertaining," he wrote.

Mooney succeeded in that regard, receiving encouragement — many notes from fellow reporters — along the way.

"I had been uncertain whether to publish this blog, fearing it was too public," he wrote. "The encouragement has erased those concerns. Praise from peers is a powerful tonic.

"Perhaps most important to me, however, these notes full of old stories and fresh compliments let my children see what people think of their old man. That part made me proud."

For the next year, Mooney regaled his readers with stories of people met, adversity met, adversity not quite overcome. Most of all, he shared stories of lessons learned.

He wrote that while he's heard of death being thought of as "a big beautiful thing" he had a hard time with that idea.

"I can see it is something to be respected, and is an enormous experience that can't be repeated," he wrote. "I suspect there is a truth in that comment, but haven't seen it yet as all that beautiful. But I do have a sense about the smiling part.

"Knowing my likely time frame has taken away ambition, job angst, competitiveness. That's a lot of daily agita gone right there. It’s nice not caring what the bosses think."

Mooney brings us along as he visits with friends, as his adult children reach milestones and, of course, to doctor appointments.

There is the time that a doctor raises the possibility of a metal rod to support his left leg where the femur is riddled with cancer. There would be weeks of recovery.

"I don't have a lot of months left," he wrote after the visit. "I don't want to spend them like that. The doc was eventually convinced that there was no pain for me at the moment, so surgery was determined to be unnecessary.

"I felt like I dodged a bullet."

The reader is there when he starts chemo and eventually decides to end it.

"Chemo is not the answer," he wrote. "The point of all this treatment is not just to live longer but to live well.

"Living well has become more important to me than just hanging around."

Mooney chronicled his struggles to breathe, his struggles to keep food and water down, Cheetos that went uneaten.

There's the reading organized by his wife of the book he wrote about a trip he had taken years before. His wife and children did the reading as Mooney had lost his voice by that point.

The reader hears that Mooney did have regrets.

"If I were still here I would tell you that I wish I had done more work as a news reporter, written better stories," he wrote. "Made more and better contacts. Skipped some of the easier pieces and done more in-depth stories."

Most important, he brings the reader with him as he talks about his loves.

"I loved being a reporter," he said. "It’s where I met most of my best friends. It’s where I met my wife Barbara, also a reporter.

"Journalism allowed me to circle the globe writing stories and meet amazing people. I love, well loved."

Referencing the old symbol reporters once typed to indicate the end of a story, Mooney titled his blog "Closing In On -30-."

"The origin of the symbol is unknown," he wrote. "You can find many explanations and theories, but not a definitive answer.

"Much like our own stories."

A memorial service for Mooney, who is survived by his wife, Reuters reporter Barbara Goldberg and children Maura and Paul, will be held at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 14, at Prospect Presbyterian Church in Maplewood, NJ.

"In lieu of flowers, donate to a favorite cause," Mooney wrote. "Mine was Doctors Without Borders. Or just buy a round."

You can read Mark's story of his final year on his blog here.

Lead image of Mark Mooney via YouTube