Background

Timothy Madigan was born on December 16, 1957, in Crookston, Minnesota, United States. He is a son of Myke Madigan and Lois Madigan.

Education

Timothy Madigan wrote his first book in 1968 when he was 11 years old. Every week in the autumn of that year, he scribbled down his account of the latest University of Minnesota football game in a notebook. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Dakota in 1980.

Career

After working on a small North Dakota newspaper, Timothy Madigan covered the police beat at Odessa, Texas, later writing features for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. It was a 1995 assignment for the Star-Telegram that led to Tim's interview with Fred Rogers. His abilities to gather facts and write a compelling story are evidenced not only in his articles for the newspapers but also in books he has published. While his subject matter varies, Madigan's writing, as New York Times book reviewer Adam Nossiter described it, is "skillful, clear-eyed telling."

In 1993, while the United States citizens were riveted to their television sets as the story of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians unfolded, Madigan stood, for three days, witnessing the standoff between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Koresh's group outside the Waco, Texas, compound. A week later, according to Courtenay Thompson in the Columbia Journalism Review, Madigan was 'offered a book contract and he took a month's leave to report and write it." Thompson wrote that throughout the whole Waco tragedy there was a mad rush by television and movie producers, as well as book publishers, to dramatize this story and get it out to the public. Madigan was aware of the publisher's desire to be the first to have a book in the stores. He told Thompson that he had a different motive. His goal as a journalist was, given those ground rules, to write a good book. His focus was to help advance the story rather than sensationalize it.

The circumstances surrounding Madigan's second book, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, are a little different. This story is based on that the city of Tulsa managed to keep a secret from the rest of the world for almost eight decades. Not until the Tulsa Race Riot Commission (1998-2000) was formed did people living outside of the city know that on May 31, 1921, mobs formed in the streets of Tulsa, demanding the lynching of Dick Rowland, an African-American, whom the local papers had falsely accused of raping Sarah Page, a Caucasian woman. Street fights ensued and by the end of the week, a prosperous section of town inhabited mostly by African-Americans had been completely destroyed. The mobs that ruled Tulsa's streets that night included both Caucasian and African-American people. In the crowd was an African-American war veteran carrying a gun. He was determined, according to Jim Morris of CNN.com, to protect his friend Rowland, whom he was afraid the "white" mob would lynch. When a Caucasian man confronted the armed veteran and tried to take his gun away from him, the gun went off, the Caucasian man was dead, the riot was on. No one knows for sure how many people were killed before the riots ended, but most people agree that the majority killed were African-Americans. Some estimates state that one hundred people died; other estimates are much higher, some reaching as high as three thousand. Many were killed by gunfire. Other people had their homes burned. Some survivors of the riots claim that explosive devices were dropped on their homes from airplanes flying overhead. The riots lasted two days. In the end, thirty-four blocks of the African-American community called Greenwood had been burnt to the ground. Calling The Burning engrossing and revealing as Timothy Madigan did an excellent job of tracing events leading up to the riot and of evoking the dense atmosphere of racial hatred that pervaded post-Civil War America: the hardships of emancipation, the murderous rides of the Ku Klux Klan, the oppression of Jim Crow laws and the thousands of lynchings of African-Americans, usually for imagined crimes.

Madigan turned to personal history for his 2006 I'm Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers, a memoir of his relationship with the beloved television children's show host who died in 2003. Once again, Madigan's journalism led him to this story, for in 1995 he was assigned a profile of Rogers for the Star-Telegram. A friendship blossomed as a result, and subsequent communication with Rogers helped Madigan through difficulties and crises in his own life, including a marital breakdown and the death of his brother. Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian minister, provided spiritual guidance and consolation for Madigan, while for millions of children he developed a television safe haven with his Mister Rogers Neighborhood. For Madigan, as for many of these viewers, Madigan became something of a surrogate father, and the author's memoir does not hold back on this point.

Achievements

• By the mid-1990s, Timothy Madigan had become one of the most decorated newspaper reporters in Texas history. He was three times named the state's top reporter. In a journalism career spanning more than three decades, he has written for the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Politico, Reader's Digest, and for thirty years the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

    (With chilling details, humanity, and the narrative thrust...)

    2001
  • Getting Grief Right: Finding Your Story of Love in the Sorrow of Loss

    (When the New York Times ran Patrick O'Malley's story abou...)

    2017
  • A Life Among Humans

    (A Life Among Humans begins with a heart-wrenching scene -...)

    2013
  • Extra Innings: Fred Claire's Journey to City of Hope and Finding a World Championship Team

    (While Extra Innings recalls Fred Claire's remarkable base...)

    2020
  • Every Common Sight

    (From the killing fields of the Battle of the Bulge, Wende...)

    2014
  • I'm Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers

    (The book reveals Fred Rogers as a person who deserves a p...)

    2006
  • See No Evil: Blind Devotion and Bloodshed in David Koresh's Holy War 1993

Views

Timothy Madigan finds the process of writing is really the process of rewriting. He tells students that the first draft is nothing more than a sculptor's mass of clay, ready to be manipulated and shaped into its final form. He also thinks that writing is less about inspiration than about rewriting.

Interests

• playing the guitar

• Writers

  John le Carré, John Steinbeck, Charles Dickens

• Sport & Clubs

  ice hockey

Connections

Timothy Madigan is married to Catherine Madigan. They have two children: Melanie and Patrick.

Father:

Myke Madigan

Mother:

Lois Madigan

Wife:

Catherine Madigan

Daughter:

Melanie Madigan

Son:

Patrick Madigan

Friend:

Fred Rogers

Timothy Madigan and Fred Rogers first met in 1995 when Madigan was assigned to write a profile of children's television icon Fred Rogers for the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram. One November morning, he met Fred at the WQED station in Pittsburgh. Fred greeted him with a smile and said a heartfelt, "Welcome to our Neighborhood." Madigan, watching from the sidelines, saw an episode of "Mister Rogers Neighborhood" unfold, and then later had a chance to sit down and talk with Fred. They spoke about family, friends, childhoods, religion, and heroes - a talk that was unlike any profile interview Madigan had ever had. A few days later after following Rogers around and quizzing him regularly, something happened that was unthinkable to Madigan at the time - Rogers called him at his hotel room, "Tim, this is Fred Rogers. If you don't have other plans, I was wondering whether you'd like to join my family and me for church tomorrow." Of all the people who had profiled Rogers, Madigan was the first he ever invited to church.

After suffering marital problems and struggling with depression, Madigan found an advisor in Rogers who imparted a gentle but powerful perspective on spirituality, marriage, depression, and the nature of true friendship. With his friend's loving and patient guidance, Madigan eventually came to understand that his emotional troubles were rooted in a deep fear that his father had never truly been proud of him. Hence the mantra of the friendship between the two, the phrase Rogers used to conclude dozens of letters and email messages to Madigan: I'm Proud of You. Their life-altering friendship lasted until Rogers's death in 2003. Madigan's book, I'm Proud of You: My Friendship With Fred Rogers, reveals his life-altering friendship with Fred Rogers.

References

• Tim Madigan