This tribute to a Georgetowner staffer will be on the short side, because he didn’t write it.
It’s not that he has a swelled head. Or maybe he does. The head of Gary Tischler is a font of memorable, metaphorical language (it also holds an arsenal of slings and arrows, which hewouldn’t use frivolously).
Let’s just say that Tischler, who has written for The Georgetowner for close to 40 years — more than half the paper’s 64-year existence — has one swell head.
Turn it on, and out comes fluent writing about theater, opera, books, sports, law enforcement and politics. Editorials, too, have flowed from his pen. Word counts be damned!
No one calls him Mr. Tischler. Interns, mayors and stars of stage and screen call him Gary. Someof us know that’s short for Gerhard. German-born, he came to the U.S. as a child, was raised in small-town Ohio, served in the Army and spent a decade writing for San Francisco-area newspapers.
One of his first interviews after The Georgetowner’s Dave Roffman hired him was with Baltimore strip-club proprietor Blaze Starr. The stage, in other words, was his Georgetowner beat from the start. Over the years, in our pages, he has chronicled the Washington theater scene as it went from meager if bold beginnings to become, arguably, the nation’s most vibrant.
At this point, he could relax in the Adams Morgan apartment he shares with his wife, Carole Muller, reading mysteries and watching Turner Classics. He does that, but keeps on cranking out story after story for The Georgetowner newspaper (and, now, its twice-weekly newsletter), often reviewing shows he saw a night or two before.
If he wrote this tribute, it would be longer. But it would also have something it’s missing, a quality one needs a lifetime of experiences to acquire. Gary Tischler has brought that quality — let’s call it soul — to a thousand issues of The Georgetowner, give or take, and counting. Here’slooking at you, Kid!
