Jeré Longman joins Obituaries desk at The New York Times

Jeré Longman

I’m very pleased to report that Jeré Longman, a longtime reporter for The Times and a gifted writer, has joined the Obits desk. Jeré had expressed an interest in moving to Obits in recent years but other assignments got in the way. Now it’s happened, to the desk’s good fortune.

He’s no stranger to obituaries, of course; Jeré has contributed many to The Times over the years, beginning in 1994, with his sendoff of John Curry, 44, “the elegant 1976 Olympic champion who infused figure skating with the possibilities of dance,” as Jeré wrote. In 2016, his obit about the winning college basketball coach Pat Summitt, “who was at the forefront of a broad ascendance of women’s sports,” landed on the front page. And he’s already written a raft of advance obits, mostly about Olympic heroes — well-crafted pieces that are patiently awaiting their fateful day.

Jeré joined The Times in 1993 as chief Olympics correspondent, a role that he had for much of his career here and one that, as he wrote in a memo, “facilitated my wanderlust,” which he traces to a fourth-grade geography class in Louisiana’s Cajun country, where he grew up. Covering international sports took him to almost 60 countries, 15 Olympics and 15 World Cup tournaments in soccer.

Previously, he worked at newspapers in Philadelphia, Dallas and Jackson, Miss. And he’s  written six books, including “Among the Heroes,” which The Times selected as a notable book in 2002, writing: “Longman, a Times reporter, powerfully reconstructs the final moments of United Flight 93, the hijacked airliner that crashed outside Shanksville, Pa., on Sept. 11, 2001, and argues that the plane’s occupants were not passive victims but defiant combatants.”

When he isn’t writing, Jeré is running, it seems: He has participated in nine marathon races, including one in North Korea. But his marathon days are over, he says, having run his final one in 2024, in New York City, “in a time so slow that it would have been faster and much less painful to fly to Iceland. Which, by the way, has been on my bucket list since fourth grade.”

It’s unlikely the Obits desk will send him to Iceland on assignment, but we hope he finally gets there all the same. Please join me in welcoming him to the Obits team. He’ll be working mainly from his home in Philadelphia.