An Ode to Neil King, Jr. Writer, Friend, Rambler

Neil was a brilliant, world-class writer and reporter at the Wall Street Journal. He mentored me professionally when I joined the Journal and took over the trade beat he once had in Brussels in 2006. For years, I knew him as an authority figure, a powerful deputy chief in the Washington bureau. As his Washington Post obituary made clear, Neil had a big life in a big town. He was “one of a kind,” wrote David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s campaign manager. “A brilliant writer & journalist of boundless curiosity & intellect. A loving husband & father. A great friend. As he fought a long, brave battle against cancer, he taught me a lesson in how to live & value every day.”

It was after we both left the Journal at the end of 2016 that we became friends. Shortly after he left the paper, he received the diagnosis of a nasty esophageal cancer with a very low survival rate. The crisis launched him on a journey of trying to understand himself, his God, America, and the nature of life itself, in the time he had left.

In 2021, he walked from Washington to New York City, and wrote a book about it, American Ramble. It was a hit. CBS Sunday Morning did a feature. Documentary film superstar Ken Burns called it a “nearly perfect book”. In its obit, the Post wrote that Neil “roamed the world for adventures and stories before one day stepping out his front door for a pilgrimage of discovery on a walk from Capitol Hill to Manhattan.”

At the same time as Neil was bravely fighting cancer and suffering through endless treatments, I was going through a professional crisis accompanied by a painful breakdown. Unlike Neil, my crisis was not life-threatening, but it was an invitation to go on a journey, and, as many of his many, many friends did, I found myself leaning on Neil as a mentor. I sent him drafts of stories, blog posts, and pitches. He helped me craft and sell a book of my own. He was one of the first people to see the Moundsville documentary.

“Loved it,” he wrote to me. “Certainly an optimistic piece all in all. Very straightforward and nonjudgmental in its presentation. Man is there a lot of funky stuff for a town that size. Paranormal collector? Say what? That Marx toy museum dude is definitely a serial killer in waiting. And I certainly didn’t see the Hare Krishna bit coming. Would love to have known more about that. Seemed like a fairly open-minded place, for WV. The vice mayor was interesting–assume the place is like 95% white? Certainly seemed that way. There was one mention of drugs and opioids. Was that much of a factor there? Will you be doing a screening in the city itself? I assume there are lots of folks eager to see it. Well done, compadre.”

The Journal is an ambitious, competitive place, and Neil was one of the only people who’d worked there who always made me feel comfortable sharing ideas with.

After reporting on CEOs and presidents for a global audience, we were both trying to take a step back and examine life in miniature, without any promise of the work turning into publication or prestige. “It’s been a long time since I’ve fallen so in love with a journalism project as I have with this story about a forgotten field in Maryland and our national fight over statues,” Neil wrote on Facebook in 2021 about the reported essay he wrote about Frederick Douglass for the tiny Talbot Spy. He founded a lively, charming online magazine, Gotham Canoe, and published pieces about adventure and the outdoors that other publications wouldn’t.

“Ideas are the currency of this world,” he wrote to me once about writing and journalism. He was always buzzing with new ones, even as his death became even more certain. I got used to getting texts like this one I received earlier this year.

I’ll remember Neil as a joyous friend, as a pro, real police, as a brave mystic facing the death he knew was coming. It is a comfort that I know he loved his journey and his friends and family so much, and that we loved him back so dearly. Rest in peace, Neil.

John W. Miller