Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images(ANNAPOLIS, Md.) — Veteran journalist Rob Hiaasen, one of five employees gunned down at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Maryland on Thursday, will be remembered at a “Celebration of Life” memorial Monday night.
The event in Owings Mills, Maryland, is “summer casual” because “Rob would never want you to put on a suit for him,” according to the Evite.
Hiaasen joined the Capital Gazette in Annapolis as an assistant editor in 2010. He was previously a features writer at The Baltimore Sun.
Hiaasen, a father of three, was married for 33 years. His wife’s birthday was the day of the shooting, according to the Sun Sentinel.
“There was no finer human being,” his wife told the Sentinel. “And certainly no finer father. And he was a damn fine journalist, too.”
Rob Hiaasen was also the brother of famous author Carl Hiaasen.
“I am devastated and heartsick to confirm the loss of my wonderful brother Rob,” Carl Hiaasen wrote on Facebook. “Rob was an editor and columnist at the paper, and one of the most gentle and funny people I’ve ever known.”
Rob Hiaasen “could talk for hours about how much he loved each of his children, what made them unique, his dreams for them, and his utter delight in the adults they were becoming,” Baltimore Sun reporter Erin Cox tweeted.
Cox said he would “send me random, off-the-wall emails just to make me smile — years after I stopped working for him.”
“If you told him a moving story, he’d cry with you,” she continued. “You’d know your story pitch landed if his eyes sparkled.”
“I was blessed to call Rob a friend,” Capital Gazette editor Jimmy DeButts said in a Facebook post. “I can’t think of a more kind man who genuinely sought to help others and brighten their day. I never left a conversation with him without a smile. Rob Hiaasen made me a better editor but more importantly, he made me a better person.”
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