Longtime Arizona Daily Star journalist and music aficionado Keiven βKerryβ McVeigh has died. He was 62.
McVeigh was born in Auburn, New York, and moved to Tucson when he was 8. He graduated from Amphitheater High School and studied journalism at the University of Arizona, graduating with a bachelorβs degree in 1975. He earned his masterβs several years later.
Journalism was an early love for McVeigh, said his younger sister, Sheila Gill.
βHeβd always been interested in that sort of thing. In seventh grade, he made his own magazine and circulated it at school.
βIt was a newsy, funny, artsy kind of thing,β she said. βIt was called βKook,β with the last K backward, because he was always a little bit βkookyβ himself.
βHe was always a doer,β Gill said.
McVeigh worked as a copy editor and reporter in Kingman after graduating from the UA and then at the Star from 1986 until earlier this year. He was known as an exacting and talented copy editor who saved many reporters from making mistakes of language or fact. He received numerous awards for headline writing.
βMcVeigh loved Tucson, and his headlines always had a strong local voice,β said Star copy editor Peter Sibley. βHis musical knowledge seemed bottomless. He was a great copy editor and friend.β
McVeigh was also a gifted guitarist, music collector and historian. He assisted in the production of the albums βThe Tucson Soundβ and βLetβs Talk About Girls.β Both focused on rock bands from Tucson in the 1960s and were released in the 1990s on Dionysus Records.
McVeigh is survived by a younger brother, Rory McVeigh, and his mother, Catherine McVeigh, to whom he was extremely devoted, Gill said.
βHe was really special to my mother,β she said. βThe sun rose and set with Kerry and he helped make her happy.β
He is also survived by his dog, Zion, who has been adopted by a friend.
McVeigh, who had been in poor health, died shortly after Thanksgiving. The family is planning a memorial, likely in January.
