Writer Andy Flynn: What bravery looks like

T-U weighs in on sparse details from authorities in Washington County shooting

By Ken Tingley

There is an authenticity to Andy Flynn you see right away.

Maybe it is presumptuous of me to make that judgment after only one meeting and a few emails, but that’s what I saw.

Andy is the editor of the Lake Placid News and was interested in interviewing me about my new book awhile back so I sent him a digital copy to take a look. We met in person for the first time a couple weeks ago at the New York Press Association meeting in Albany.

My “How are you doing?” turned into a discussion about Andy’s anxiety at being on the road for the first time since bariatric surgery - essentially reducing the size of your stomach so you don’t eat as much - and he was worried whether he could get through the lunches and dinners at the event.

He mentioned his column, “The Lake Placid Diet,” and how it was honored with a first- place award at the banquet. It was a short conversation, but it stayed with me.

The next week I asked him if I could interview him about the column and the surgery.

Andy is a big man.

Too big.

Andy Flynn, editor of the Lake Placid News, finds eating more of a chore these days than an enjoyable pastime.

He says he was 499 pounds a year or so ago. It was a curious number to mention. It was as if being 500 pounds was the demarcation line he could not step over.

Andy has been writing the column on his weight problem since 2013. He has been dealing with his weight a lot longer than that.

“I was trying to do a number of things to reinvent the newspaper, more personal different types of features,” Andy said about his new job in 2013. “The idea was that it would be like a reality show for the newspaper.”

At first, the column was following Andy’s goal of walking a half-marathon. I was not surprising that many found the subject compelling. Losing weight and getting in shape are relentless challenges for many.

“Some people might think it was embarrassing,” Andy said, “but I was just trying to tell the story.”

Andy completed the half-marathon, then did it again the next year. But that was not the end of the story. Like so many who struggle with their weight, Andy gained it all back and then some. In many ways it was the beginning of the story.

When Andy Flynn reached his goal and completed the Lake Placid Half-Marathon, it wasn’t the end of the story. In many ways, it was the beginning.

Things that most of us take for granted - tying our shoes, putting on socks, fitting into a compact car - were a struggle for Andy. He needed a cane to walk short distances.

His weight was up to 470 pounds when he almost died from a pulmonary embolism in 2017. He was just 47.

But even that wasn’t what drove him to the surgery.

In May 2020, he bared his soul in a column during the pandemic about his inner demons.

When people asked him how he was doing, Andy replied “I’m fine, I’m good, I’m well. How are you?”

But that wasn’t true.

“Truth is, I’m not fine, I’m not good and I’m not well,” Andy wrote.

He had gained 26 pounds in 12 weeks and was having a deep personal crisis he chose to share with the world.

Not manny of us would do that.

“I wasn’t considering suicide, but I felt as though there was no hope I would ever be healthy again,” Andy wrote in the column. “I was in a lot of pain. This depression went far beyond my weight gain and the problems it was causing me; it was an existential crisis. I’ve been afraid of death for most of my life, but at 10:52 p.m. Friday Jan. 15, 2021, I was ready to let go.”

He wrote this dark note on his phone:

“I give up. I have nothing to live for. I wish there was a purpose to this life. But I have not found it yet. I hope I find it soon. I am going downhill fast, physically, mentally and spiritually. I feel as though my days are running out on this earth. Goodbye. I love you. Peace be with you, now and always.”

Andy would not tell that part of the story for another two years as he prepared for surgery he hoped would change his life. Or maybe save his life.

An emergency appendectomy led him to a doctor who suggested the bariatric surgery. Andy had considered it before, but after doing research concluded he didn’t want to “mutilate” his body. It was major surgery. You can die, he pointed out.

But Andy was also honest with himself, and his readers.

“Forget the bucket list of things to do before I die. I just want to be able to tie my sneakers again, put on my socks without help from a machine, fit into my car again, stop using the cane and walk from point A to point B without stopping so often or sitting down,” Andy wrote. “I want bathroom functions to be easier and I want less pain. Above all, I want to survive my 50s… and beyond.”

Finally, his mother told him, “You’re a ticking time bomb. It’s a matter of life and death at this point.”

It was tough love.

Andy walked readers through the surgical procedure - a vertical sleeve gastrectomy - where the surgeon removes about 80 percent of his football-sized stomach and reduces it to a banana-sized sleeve. He explained how he would have to monitor is eating habits in dramatic detail going forward.

Andy made it though the surgery and kept on writing the column.

He had new struggles.

Food was no longer a pastime, but a mandatory event needed to survive. It no longer gave him great pleasure.

In October, he wrote “I hate food. Hate it, Hate it. What began as a love affair with food has morphed into a bitter separation.”

It has been almost a year since Andy Flynn had his bariatric surgery. He has lost 100 pounds and can do things he could not do before.

By this spring - almost a year after the surgery - there was still anxiety about the diet, but he was losing weight and felt better.

“I’m doing things I couldn’t do before,” Andy said “When I covered the (World University) Games in Lake Placid, there was no way I could have walked around without a cane. I’ve got clothes that fit me again. I can bend down and tie my sneakers, put my sock on by myself. And I can drive again.”

And also a first place award for column writing in the state contest. It was confirmation that Andy can tell a pretty good story with candor few of us could ever do.

It’s not unusual for newspaper people to have a deep personal connection with their communities. What is special is when they can share their own personal struggles for public consumption, not for the sake of their ego, but for the greater good of helping someone else. That’s something special.

That’s something unique and you don’t see it very often.

The award was an affirmation that Andy’s work makes a difference. But I suspect the people in Andy’s community already knew that.

Here is the Ump Cam viewpoint from an earlier game this season.

Ump-Cam

I’m sure it’s been probably done before, but Apple TV’s coverage of the Yankee game on Friday night included a mini-camera attached to the home plate umpire’s helmet.

I don’t think I would want to watch an entire game this way, but it certainly gave me an idea of the pitch velocity the batters were seeing.

Speaking of baseball, the new pitch clock has made baseball watchable again. The game moves along at a steady pace and is usually completed in under three hours. Without the fielding shift, there are more hits and the bigger bases have led to more action on the basepaths.

Baseball is back.

O’Reilly weighs in

Bill O’Reilly was one of the first star commentators at Fox News before a series of sexual harassment lawsuits derailed his career in 2017.

He’s still weighing in on the issues on his own website, but you might be surprised at what he said about Fox News this week:

“This is what happens when money becomes more important than honest information,” O’Reilly wrote on his website. “Since I left FNC, the template changed from ‘Fair and Balanced’ to ‘tell the audience what it wants to hear.’ And millions of Trump voters, to this day, want to believe the 2020 election was rigged.”

You might want to share that with Fox viewers.

T-U coverage

Casey Seiler, the editor of the Times Union, published a column this weekend that pulled back the curtain on its reporting on the tragic shooting death in Washington County:

“The story developed from Lauren Stanforth’s initial web report on Sunday based on details that were so bare-bones that it didn’t even make it into Monday’s print edition; on Monday, Steve Hughes followed up on a tip from our Saratoga County correspondent Wendy Liberatore — who was off this week — and was the first to report that Gillis had been shot after the car she was riding in went down the wrong driveway. On Tuesday, Steve, Lauren and Brendan Lyons filled in more details, including the fact that the homeowner charged with the killing, Kevin Monahan, had fired a shotgun slug several times more damaging than the average round fired by a handgun.”

Also all the details about the shooting came from dogged reporting from reporters around the region and not from official sources.

What stood out for me immediately after the shooting was the lack of details from the Washington County Sheriff’s Office. As Seiler reported, there were just “bare bones” details.

What concerns me about the future is that law enforcement will take more and more liberties in reporting details about crimes. Newspaper reporters and editors hold them accountable but there are fewer and fewer journalists. Washington County should be held to that standard on why it has taken so long for them to confirm standard details of a murder, like the murder weapon.