The winner of more awards than any editorial writer in the Albany Times Union’s history, Jim McGrath was both an Albany institution and a keen observer of the world beyond his beloved adopted city. When he died in 2013 at the age of fifty-six, the newspaper lost a writer who combined a passionate advocacy for society’s most vulnerable people with a scathing disregard for the elite whose actions created an underclass in the United States.
His editorials and commentaries charted many critical issues in New York and the country: the death penalty, civil liberties, gay rights, historic presidential campaigns, the economy, terrorism, and more.
A new book of Jim McGrath’s work is out, entitled: I’ll Be Home.
The book is edited by Jim’s widow, Darryl McGrath, is an Albany journalist and the author of "Flight Paths: A Field Journal of Hope, Heartbreak, and Miracles with New York’s Bird People," and Howard Healy, a copy-editor and proofreader for the New York State Bar Association; he retired as editorial page editor of the Times Union in 2008.