Monday, May 17, 2004 6:04 PM
BY PATT MORRISON
A memorial plaque honoring longtime Los Angeles Times foreign correspon- dent Mark Fineman was unveiled at Cal State Northridge on April 23, exactly seven months after he died of a heart attack on assignment in Baghdad.
The plaque joins others in the Fallen Journalists Memorial at Manzanita Hall The memorial honors California journal- ists who have died in the course of their duties since 1920. The memorial was created by the Los Angeles Press Club, and moved to the university, its permanent home, in 2001.
Mark’s mother, Juanita, attended the memorial, as did friends and relatives from across the country, Northern California to Washington D.C. Mark’s wife, Michelle Prosser-Fineman, his stepdaughter, Harmony Little, and his brother, Glen Fineman, were among the family members present.
The Times’ indispensable foreign desk assistant, Mike Faneuff, who assembled a memory book about Mark, emceed the brief, intimate event, which mingled laughter and tears at remembered moments with the swashbuckling, impassioned and loyal journalist who found the world’s hotspots irresistibly attractive. Times staffer Ken Reich shared his memories of Mark, including an incident when a colleague asked Mark, who had just left Iraq, what he thought of the place. “It’s great if you like anarchy,’’ Mark said — “and I love anarchy.’’
The Press Club was represented by past presidents Jerry Clark and Patt Morrison.
Times foreign editor emeritus Al Shuster, who hired Mark, remembered reading Mark’s stories in other newspapers — gripping, well-told accounts filed from places of chaos and strife — and how those stories “reached up and grabbed me by the throat and said, `Hire me, hire me!’ ‘’ At one point, Shuster observed, “You know, Mark would have hated this room. No smoking. No beer. No good stories.’’ Shuster looked out the second-floor window of the building, across the campus, and added, “But by day’s end, Mark would have found a story out there, a good story. Probably page one.’’
