'He surely will be missed': Remembering Newport Daily News reporter, columnist Jim Gillis

NEWPORT — Jim Gillis, a respected reporter and columnist for the Newport Daily News for more than 40 years, died this week at age 64, at a time when he was still planning future stories.

He had an institutional knowledge of Newport, Aquidneck Island and its people. Many residents looked forward to his weekly column on Fridays, "Spare Change." 

Gillis began working at The Daily News in 1980 and retired in 2013 as a full-time reporter because he was in need of a kidney transplant and was on dialysis. But he continued to write articles and features for the paper.

He wrote about everything, but he was also the designated arts and entertainment writer for decades. The folk and jazz festivals, classical and contemporary musical performances, as well as film festivals and local theater productions were all part of his beat.

In memory of Jim, we talked to a few people about the impact he had on the community and on them. He had close contact with people like Carolyn McClair, the former longtime publicist for the festivals and a friend of their founder, George Wein.

“I loved Jim Gillis and we treated each other as brother and sister,” she said. “We grew very close over the years. Even when it wasn’t folk or jazz festival time, we always had time to talk to each other about music and the people I set up interviews for and the other people he interviewed. We trusted and respected each other. It didn’t matter what we were working on; we were there to help each other. Music was life for both of us. I can’t imagine not having it in my life and I can’t imagine not having Jim Gillis in my life. I am grateful I had him in my life for so long.”

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Jim had a lifetime ticket to the festivals, even if he wasn’t writing about them. “He could come anytime he wanted,” McClair said.

Gillis wrote about Wein’s impact and his death for The Newport Daily News in September 2021. Wein was very close to Jim and considered him a personal friend, McClair said.

“Jim was one of the few media people invited to the private services for George,” she said.

Allyson McCalla, now in her 40s and director of operations for Bike Newport, feels like she has known Gillis for her whole life. During her youth and early 20s, she was a member of Off the Curb, a hip-hop dance troupe and outreach group that “kept kids off the streets,” she said.

“Jim would report on us pretty frequently and I would see him on assignment,” she said. “He always went out of his way to say hi to me and others. He covered Off the Curb when we expanded across the state, saw some of my basketball games, and covered other events. He said he watched me grow and develop, and was proud of where I landed. He was a sweet guy and always had something nice to say. I appreciate the work he has done reporting on the community and the many people he has known in his life.”

“He even came to my cousin’s wedding, so he’s part of the extended family in a way,” she added.

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“He certainly had the pulse of the community in so many ways,” said Bud Cicilline, former executive director of Newport County Community Mental Health Center and former state senator representing Newport. “He expressed feelings and thoughts in his columns that showed he cared about the community. He was very fair, direct and understanding in all my interactions with him. He was very interested in people and had great respect for them in all their circumstances. This is such a loss for all of us.”

Pauline Perkins-Moye, director of resident services for the Newport Housing Authority and a longtime activist, remembers traveling with Gillis in 1989 on a bus down to Washington, D.C., to participate in a national march to draw attention to the homeless.

“He was such a nice guy,” she said. “He talked all the way down and I talked all the way back. He loved it — his stories captured what it was all about. They came straight from his heart. He was such a great writer and fair to everybody.”

Veronica Mays, coordinator of the Five Star Souper Kitchen at the Community Baptist Church, remembered the many years Jim covered annual events honoring Martin Luther King at the MLK Center sponsored by the NAACP. That, and so much else.

“He was the guest speaker one year,” she said. “He was just the man about town, everybody knew and loved Jim. He had so much compassion. You could count on him to be honest and insightful in his stories. He was really a special guy.”

“His style of writing was heaven sent and his columns and articles displayed a certain warmness, truthfulness and genuine desire to help those in need from organizations to families,” said Jimmy Winters, president of the Newport Chapter of the NAACP. “He surely will be missed."

Tom Perrotti, former artistic director and educational director for Common Fence Point for 29 years, is one of many people who had a long professional relationship with Gillis.

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“Jim was one of our major supporters of the programs, he did so much for us,” Perrotti said. “We were talking all the time about Common Fence Music and music in general. I knew him before Common Fence, but it was always about music and local artists. I knew him from the shows, from phone calls …, he was a dear friend who connected through music and writing.”

Gillis was married to Julie Bisbano, an English teacher at Portsmouth High School and former student of Perrotti’s. Perrotti was their neighbor while Jim and Julie lived on Burdick Avenue until recently.

When he was inducted into the Rhode Island Journalism Hall of Fame in 2021, Gillis said the most important meeting of his life during his newspaper career occurred in 1991, when he was introduced to Bisbano.

He has not had it easy health-wise. He experienced kidney failure in 2007, underwent dialysis treatments for years and received a kidney transplant in March 2020. Julie was by his side through all of that. He had a “strong body that withstood years of trauma and illness,” she said this week.

Among his many good characteristics, he “had the ability to make everyone he spoke to feel listened to and heard,” Bisbano said. “When he was having a conversation, that was the only thing that he was focused on.”

Gillis said before his induction into the Hall of Fame that some of the hardest assignments he had were covering military funerals, including those of Army Sgt. Christopher Potts and Army Sgt. Michael R. Weidemann, both of whom were killed in Iraq, and Army Sgt. Michael F. Paranzino, who died in Afghanistan.

The many readers who did not know Gillis well personally still appreciated his work.

Paul Leys, co-owner of Gustave White Sotheby’s International Realty in Newport, said he “loved looking forward to his column every Friday in the NDN. Always such insight into our close-knit community. This is such a loss.”Gary Cornog, a former head of the English department at St. George's School and former dean of admissions at Columbia University, once said, “Jim Gillis is really the normative voice of Aquidneck Island.”

Gillis had an encyclopedic memory for the people and events of Aquidneck Island, past and present, that astounded those who talked to him. He loved quirky stories as well, like when he surprisingly ran into an old acquaintance stocking shelves late one night in a supermarket. When Jim asked him how he was doing, the guy replied, “I’m shelf-employed.”

Jim seemed to have a million stories like that, but now he won’t be able to share them with us anymore.

This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Jim Gillis, Newport Daily News reporter, columnist, dead at 64