By Robert G. Kaiser
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 6, 2006

R.W. "Johnny" Apple Jr. of the New York Times planned his own memorial service, but died without knowing its venue. Yesterday the event he wished for unfolded with appropriate grandeur at the Kennedy Center, whose Eisenhower Theater barely held the crowd of celebrating mourners, and whose North Terrace accommodated a post-service buffet to remember. Apple would have savored the spread laid on by 21 of the Washington area's best restaurants, and lubricated by the wines of 20 American vineyards. Apple apparently knew the proprietors of all 41 -- and of course had sampled their production, in all likelihood prodigiously. Had he been able to partake, Apple would have particularly liked the huge fresh oysters flavored with generous dollops of real Russian caviar provided by Patrick O'Connell of the Inn at Little Washington.

It wasn't a state funeral, exactly: no pomp, no men in uniform. Perhaps you could call it an estate funeral -- fourth estate. This isn't a known category, it couldn't be -- to the best of your correspondent's knowledge, there has never been an analogous event, and there will never be another. Like Raymond Walter Apple Jr., the memorial service was sui generis. How many great political writers were also great food writers? How many reporters became famous, really famous, for the immensity of their expense accounts?

Luckily for the 750 or so in the crowd, everyone knew Apple, so they could laugh at Apple stories told by 13 eulogists while images of the vast man himself danced in their imaginations. Viewers who watch the event on C-SPAN in the days ahead may be more puzzled, because Apple was one of those originals who elude attempts to describe him in mere words -- even by some pretty good writers who gave it a shot yesterday.

What exactly is charisma? We know it when we see it, but it does not lend itself to dissection. C-SPAN viewers will see a slide show of Apple's life, shown midway through the eulogies, in which he grows from an adorable little boy with a huge head to an enormous old man with a huge everything. But mere photographs don't capture charisma either.

Apple's came from a combination of intelligence, extensive learning on many subjects, a great love of people (especially his pals), wonderful journalistic skills, an unnatural energy and a literally insatiable appetite for life. Those qualities were all mentioned in the eulogies, but no speaker managed to put the package together and make it whole.

Apple's protege Todd Purdum, until recently a political writer for the Times, got things off on the right foot with what he called "The Apple Box Score":

· 43 years at the New York Times.

· 73 front-page bylines--in his first year.

· Coverage from 109 countries, 10 presidential elections, 20 nominating conventions, two big wars, a revolution and a smattering of smaller conflicts in between.

· 81 career appearances on "Meet the Press."

· 29 on "Charlie Rose."

· 185 pounds.

· 285 pounds.

The last were the results Apple got from stepping on a scale, the first in about 1975, the second a year ago, before he was diagnosed with thoracic cancer. He died two months ago, at age 71.

Among his peers, a large number of whom were in the Eisenhower Theater yesterday morning, Apple's appeal had a simple origin: He was a great newspaperman. Joseph Lelyveld, executive editor of the Times from 1994 to 2001, addressed this matter eloquently:

"He was in every inch and pound of his considerable being a great competitive journalist. Innate talent had something to do with it. . . . But beyond talent Johnny had a seriousness about our lonely calling, about its civic purpose. . . . He got up earlier than most of his peers, considered his beat to be pretty much the whole world, and cultivated a sense of history that extended back further than the considerable history he had witnessed. He also had huge energy. In his prime it was fair to say he was the best political reporter around."

Ward Just, the novelist and former Washington Post reporter whose eulogy was read by Purdum yesterday, put his finger on the essence of Apple's professional personality: "Johnny Apple was primarily interested in the demystification of things: the Iowa caucuses, Finnish architecture, the proper way to poach some wretched fish . . ." Figuring a thing out and explaining it is the true reporter's joy -- as, for example, Apple figured out early in 1976 that Jimmy Carter was actually connecting with voters, could win the Iowa caucuses and had a real shot at the White House. Carter was one of four presidents (also Clinton, Bush and Bush) whose letters eulogizing Apple were read at yesterday's service.

But admiring Apple and liking him were not the same, and as Purdum said yesterday, "there was nothing easy about him, as he would be the first to acknowledge." Apple's vanity was as prodigious as his appetite; he could find talking about himself endlessly fascinating. But when Apple wanted you to like him, he was nearly irresistible. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) talked about the charming Apple yesterday, describing the young Saigon correspondent who was flown to the deck of the USS Forrestal, the carrier off which McCain was flying bombing missions over North Vietnam. They met, liked each other, became fast friends. Years later, after McCain's six years in a North Vietnamese prison, they resumed a friendship in Washington.

Some reporters thought it was impossible to both write about and be friends with a politician, but Apple disagreed. And his friendships did not color his copy, McCain said: Apple skewered him more than once in the Times, in pieces McCain recognized as "accurate and educational . . . in hindsight only."

Alice Waters, chef of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., and a founder of the "new American cooking" of the last generation, was a representative of the class that found Apple easiest to like -- the food professionals whose work he loved to eat, and to praise. "He was our favorite kind of person to have in the dining room," Waters said. "He ate with gusto."

Waters also credited Apple with "elevating our national conversation on food" with "important stories about eating" that reflected Apple's understanding that "food . . . is the purest expression of human culture." Calvin Trillin of the New Yorker, who wrote a memorable profile of Apple a few years back, made an early contribution to posthumous Apple-ology. Apple stories are already a subgenre of journalistic war stories, Trillin accurately reported, but there will be more of them in the future, and they will always contain common elements: "Apple sweeps in. Apple holds forth. He is always in 'full Apple.' "

And Trillin summed up the situation for the culture at large now that Apple is gone: "We have an acute shortage of legendary reporters," he said.