It is with great sadness that one of Vermont's finest journalist, Peter Freyne, passed away this morning after a long battle with cancer. He was 59 years old.
Freyne was one of "Vermont's finest," if not most famous, political beat writers around. Freyne spent most of his years in print media journalism starting with the former Burlington alternative weekly, "The Vanguard" and moving on to "Seven Days Press" where he wrote his famous column "Inside Track." Freyne was also a regular pundit on Vermont Public Television's "VPT This Week," a political round table show analyzing the week's events in politics.
A "Boston Globe" article from March 2008 said the following:
"Freyne was the son of an Irish Republican Army member, he studied to be a foreign missionary and was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. Never trained in journalism, he worked for five years as a cab driver before moving to Vermont in 1979, getting work as a radio news reporter for WDEV and later as a columnist for the Vanguard Press, where he started the "Inside Track" column."
There's so much more to write about Freyne. The thing I liked about him was he was one who first called Governor Jim Douglas, "Governor Scissorhands."
R.I.P. Peter. You'll be missed.
For more coverage go to Seven Days "The Blurt."