MacLeese Unleashed

It turns out that the life of Alan MacLeese is even more compelling than his much-loved columns in The Flint Journal. Roger Van Noord, the former managing editor at the Journal, has captured MacLeese's peripatetic journey in a new book entitled Unleashed: A Storyteller's Odyssey:

An unforgettable storyteller, Al MacLeese delighted in recounting his escapades in the Navy and during journalism’s hard-drinking era, when bosses fired him with astonishing regularity. He counted 47 newsroom jobs in a 15-year stretch, drifting from Miami to San Francisco to Boston. In one forced migration after falling asleep drunk at a Golden Gate Bridge tollgate, he was jailed when he instigated confrontations on a bus and a fracas in the bus station. While being questioned by police, he blurted a confession to a triple ax murder. “Unleashed: A storyteller’s odyssey” tells the history of a man under the influence. MacLeese was awash in indiscretions until his fourth wife, Connie, stabilized his life. He became an award-winning columnist, merging funny with fearless, in writing about the good, the bad and the ugly of his life and the world around him. He introduced -- and jousted with -- a gadfly named Michael Moore, years before Moore reached stardom as a moviemaker. With Connie and his column, he experienced as many “driblets of happiness” as he felt he deserved before his career foundered after an editorial dust-up, nationally publicized by Moore. When his wife died, he found a new home and a new family of friends in Hallowell, Maine, while still captivating audiences with his stories, battling his demons and continuing to seek fulfillment, as a man and as a writer. In “Unleashed,” MacLeese’s distinctive writing voice tells much of his history through excerpts from his often earthy correspondence and his “MacLeese Unleashed” columns. An extension of a columnist’s career cut too short, his correspondence provides a window into his quirky persona and his life on the edge. In his emails from Hallowell, MacLeese combined the frankness of a letter to a friend with the quality of a column -- with his own flair, his self-deprecating humor and such delightful detail as his understated description of a meeting with the “Second Christ” and his frustration in waiting for a 106-year-old great aunt to die so he can collect an inheritance.

Peter C. Cavanugh, Flint's own rock 'n roll impresario, gives the book his seal of approval: "“Unleashed” offers an extraordinary reading experience and abundant opportunity for comforting introspective reflection as one ponders the amazingly inspiring words of Alan MacLeese – gone from us now — but never to be forgotten."

Alan MacLeese, R.I.P.

Al MacLeese, a Flint journalist in an era when jobs and good times were plentiful, died recently in Maine. Known for his storytelling and his "MacLeese Unleashed" column, MacLeese received an eloquent sendoff from Roger Van Noord on MLive:

"After serving four years in the Navy during the Korean War, he began his newspaper career at the Miami Herald, followed by work at more than two-dozen other newspapers across the country, from San Francisco to Boston, some of them more than once as he was hired and fired -- or never showed up for work.

"As MacLeese once put it: Some of the papers 'I cannot recollect offhand, and who doubtless cannot recollect me, given the brevity of my loyal service.'

"He began work at The Journal in 1968 and stayed far longer than he had at any other paper. He told about being hired at the Journal earlier in the 1960s, then not ever showing up in the newsroom because he was off on a drinking spree. Despite that disappearance, the Journal hired him again, perhaps a testament to his abilities as a copy editor.

"He served as the Journal’s copy desk chief and also as columnist, 'MacLeese Unleashed.' He told stories, and wrote frankly about his experiences and his demons, with wit and a highly personal style."

Go here to read the rest. It's worth it.