David Nyhan, at 64; was Globe writer for three decades
Page 3 of 3 -- And while many will remember him for his life on the public stage, Mr. Nyhan's friends recall his extraordinary generosity. A loan, advice, the name of a top-notch medical specialist? He always had time. "He had a great appetite for life, and with his big heart, he was always quick with a five, or these days, a 50-dollar bill," said one of his three siblings, Christopher D. of South Portland, Maine.
Mr. Nyhan and his wife spent as much time as possible at their second home on Chebeague Island in Casco Bay, just north of Portland. Mr. Nyhan's idea of a great afternoon was talking to the lobstermen at the local boat yard, where he had a 25-foot sailboat and a speedy Grady White pleasure craft.
He was born Charles David Nyhan Jr. in Boston and grew up in Brookline's Whiskey Point section. His father was a construction inspector for the Metropolitan District Commission. His mother, Margaret (McCormick), was a homemaker.
Mr. Nyhan graduated from Brookline High School in 1958. He majored in English at Harvard College and played on the varsity lacrosse and football teams. In the 1961 Harvard-Yale game, Mr. Nyhan scored a touchdown with a fumble recovery in the Yale end zone.
He wrote about the triumph in a 1985 Globe column, but in his self-effacing way, most of the column was about the ignominy of his own errant snap to the punter earlier in the season, which cost Harvard the game against Lehigh.
Before joining the Globe as State House bureau chief in 1969, Mr. Nyhan served in the Air Force, then worked as a reporter for The Salem Evening News and in the Springfield and Boston bureaus of the Associated Press.
Mr. Nyhan rose quickly at the Globe. He covered the 1972 presidential campaign, served briefly as labor editor, and joined the paper's Washington bureau in 1974. He became the bureau's news editor in 1975. He later served as White House correspondent, assistant managing editor for local news, and national correspondent. He began writing his op-ed column in 1985 and was named a Globe associate editor in 1987.
The author of a 1988 biography of Michael Dukakis, "The Duke," Mr. Nyhan was a Reuters Foundation fellow at Oxford University in 1995 and a fellow in 2001 at Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy.
In his last column as a member of the Globe staff, Mr. Nyhan wrote in June 2001: "The thing I'll miss most is the chance to shine a little flashlight on a dark corner, where a wrong was done to a powerless peon, where a scarred politician maybe deserved a better fate, where the process went awry, or the mob needed to be calmed down and herded in another direction."
In addition to his wife and brother, Mr. Nyhan leaves two daughters, Veronica Jones of Washington and Kate of Brookline; a son, Nicholas of New York City; a sister, Margaret R. Lockwood of Brookline; another brother, F. John of Chappaqua, N.Y.; and two grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements by Bell-O'Dea Funeral Home in Brookline were incomplete last night. 
