Ilan Chaim, the one-time chief copy editor of The Jerusalem Post and the architect of The Jerusalem Post style book, which guides us until today, passed away this week at age 76 after a long illness.
At his funeral in Jerusalem, family members and friends described him variously as a shooting star, a charismatic focus of attention in any room he entered, a Zionist, the coolest dad in the world, and a passionate lover of words.
Born Allan Smallover in Pittsburgh, Ilan was a true child of the ’60s, with all that entailed. He arrived in Israel with a motorcycle before the Yom Kippur War, an adventure-loving hippie who fell in love with Israel… and with his future wife, Janice Beiss, who described him this week as the “love of my life.”
For much of the last 35 years, he was a mainstay at the Post, making sure the stories that got published made sense and contained the fewest errors possible. He trained editors and reporters alike in the intricacies and pitfalls of the English language.
“I love to crunch words,” he explained to me once in the early 1990s, when he mentored me, like so many other Post staffers past and present, in the art of stating things clearly. He was a word processor before Microsoft thought of it.
One former colleague gave tribute by writing, “Ilan was opinionated. He gave “under way” and “underway” each their own meaning, as he did “every day” and “everyday.” I can’t see those words any otherway” (error intended).
An Adonis, with unbounding curiosity
Handsome like an Adonis with tight blondish curls, an unbounded curiosity, and an encyclopedic fount of knowledge on just about any subject, Ilan could hold court on just about any subject, from world history and Judaism to motorcycle engines and his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers. And unlike many people who see themselves as experts on those and other subjects, he really was. And if he wasn’t, he would school himself until he was.
He loved to impart wisdom. One evening, on the night desk in the middle of a busy shift, Ilan used the copy editors and the layout staff as human planets to explain how the solar system interacts.
In later years, he wrote a loosely autobiographical novel called The Flying Blue Meanies: Surviving the bipolar ’60s in America and Israel, and he would kvell over the accomplishments of his four children, proudly announcing whenever a new grandchild came along.
Back in the ’90s, when the Post was still located at its old Yirmiyahu Street cavernous structure, Ilan and I worked countless night shifts together. After the intensity of the evening, we would topple out into the empty parking lot at midnight and play a game of long-range Frisbee – sometimes for an hour.
Two adults running around like kids, without a care in the world. I will always be grateful to Ilan for granting me that memory. He indeed was a comet that burned bright and long.
My only regret is that he’s still not around to line-edit this tribute. He undoubtedly would have made it better.