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 Travel Writers' Resources | January 2007 
Nash Set Standard as Travel Writer
 Kelly Arthur Garrett - The Herald Mexico
The death of Joe Nash over the weekend marked the end of a remarkable journalistic career that spanned three quarters of a century and set the standard for English-language travel writing in Mexico.
It also deprived the nation of one of its biggest Anglophone boosters, and the U.S. community here of its most energetic friend.
"He dedicated himself to Mexico as too many Mexicans have never done," said Mario Ramos, one of three unofficially adopted sons who were taken under his wing as children, raised and put through school.
Nash died Saturday at the age of 93 in Mexico City´s ABC Medical Center in Mexico City, where he had been hospitalized since New Years Eve. He was suffering from heart, lung and kidney problems, with severe lower-body swelling from blocked arteries.
"The cause of death was essentially old age," said Barbara Franco, executive director of the American Benevolent Society, the long-standing "Americans-helping-Americans" organization that was vigorously supported by the U.S.-born journalist. "He finally ran out of steam."
Those close to him in his final hours attest that the famous Joe Nash energy was evident to the end.
"He was making phone calls, accepting visitors and talking to people," said Shari Rettig, a former managing editor at The News, the now-defunct Mexico City English-language daily where Nash edited the weekly travel supplement. "I was there exchanging Christmas gifts with him a few hours before he died, and he was very up in spirit."
An ABC hospital spokesperson was equally impressed. "He was coming in for physical therapy and we were concerned about how he would get here," said ABC Medical Center public relations director Nancy Stich. "He said not to worry, that he´d get here on his own. He was amazingly independent."
His energy and independence fueled a prolific 75-year journalism career, more than a half-century of which was based in Mexico.
Like Don Quixote, he made three sallies out of his homeland, the first taking him as far as Monterrey, Nuevo León as an 18-year-old on a free-lance travel-piece assignment.
The second he made on bicycle, an endeavor considered daring today but nothing short of outrageous in 1938. He reached Mexico City, and despite being short of funds managed to talk his way into a room at the elegant Hotel Regis, later destroyed in the 1985 quake.
Back in the United States, Nash worked in theaters and restaurants as well as in journalism. After serving in World War II, he came to Mexico City to stay, enrolling at the Mexico City College (later University of the Americas) and earning an anthropology degree.
STARTING AT THE NEWS
When Nash hooked up with The News in 1952 he was nearly 40, but nowhere near the halfway point of his career.
He immediately started the weekly travel supplement "Vistas," for which he also contributed a column called Crossroads. He continued both without hiatus for 38 years until he left the paper in 1990.
Travel editor and columnist are inadequate job descriptions for what Nash contributed to the cause of Mexican tourism. Nash´s early work took place in an era of uncertain air travel, risky roads, fear of Mexico on the U.S. side and a still-prevalent suspicion of foreigners on the Mexican side. There was no resort in Cancún or Huatulco and no modern highway through the Baja Peninsula.
Writing for foreign as well as domestic consumption, Nash became one of Mexico´s windows to the outside world. He went everywhere in the republic, and wrote about it.
"He knew Mexico like nobody I have ever come in contact with," said Rettig. "He knew all the hotel people, he knew all the restaurant people. He knew where to go and what to eat when you got there."
The tourism industry and its government bureaucracy were of a cozier scale for most of Nash´s career, and he became close to the major players. In addition to hotel magnates and restaurant owners, he became friends with tourism secretaries and even presidents. He outlived most of them.
Nash wrote about travel and tourism in Mexico, but he also actively promoted it. With his contacts inside and outside the country, he was able to organize international conferences in Mexico on a grand scale, with the full blessing of the government. In his home in the Guerrero area of Mexico City he left behind walls full of awards, both for travel writing and tourism promotion.
Nash also wrote about destinations worldwide, developing a cosmopolitan profile. By all accounts, Joe Nash was a charmer and raconteur who attracted the famous.
"He had wit and that twinkle in his eye," the American Benevolent Society´s Franco said. "He enjoyed people."
According to Rettig, he could count among his friends and acquaintances the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Josephine Baker, Don Ameche, Adlai Stevenson and Lady Bird Johnson.
Those, of course, were in addition to the important Mexicans he knew, which were countless.
"With all the people he knew, I was always trying to get him to write his memoirs," Rettig said. "But he kept saying he had another 20 years left to do it."
ROOTS IN USA
As taken as he was by Mexico, and as active as he was in promoting his adopted land, Nash never played down his U.S. roots.
He returned regularly to the states to vote in major elections in his hometown of Rockford, Illinois, where he was born on February 26, 1913.
He co-founded the Mexico chapter of Democrats Abroad, and stayed active in it through his final months.
He was also a supporter of Mexico City´s American Legion post, where he loved to play bingo in his later years. Every other month, he would host a comida for the female bingo players, whom he called "my little old bingo ladies" though few came close to him in accumulated years.
"He would be the one who called the bingo game, and then invite us all over to eat," said Cecilia Gayou, one of the bingo ladies. "He was a wonderful cook."
Nash never married. Ramos, along with Arturo Orozco, a second unofficially adopted son raised by Nash, is sorting out his extensive papers. "Our father was more than just good to us," he said. "He was an upstanding person."
All who knew him agree that Nash had a prickly side. "If he liked you, he´d go to the end of the earth for you," Rettig said. "If he didn´t like you, you may as well have not existed."
Rettig characterized Nash as the kind of man who would seek to put things right rather than just complain about them. He would seek out restaurant owners, for example, to advise them on what the staff was doing wrong.
"I´m not sure his input was always appreciated," Rettig said.
A love of people and a sense of purpose, blended with a jigger of irascibility, is a desirable character note for a successful journalist. It served Joe Nash well for 75 years.
"Joe Nash was no angel," Rettig said. "But he was a very good human being."
A wake and the cremation of his remains took place on Sunday. On a day this week to be determined, his ashes will be placed at the American Cemetery in Mexico City. For more information call the American Benevolent Society at 5540-5123. |
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