Neal Travis, legendary journalist and gossip columnist, crammed a dozen lifetimes into his 62 short years. He lived it hard, two-fisted, in the permanent fast lane—he wouldn’t have it any other way. Neal did it “His Way”—cigarette (or an occasional pipe) in one hand, glass of wine in the other, even while on chemotherapy battling cancer. He faced the ultimate death threat the same way he faced everything else—straight up.

If there’s a journalism gene, Travis had it in his blood. He dropped out of high school at 16 to nab his first newspaper job at the New Zealand Dunedin Evening Star. At 18 he headed to Australia as a shipping reporter for the Sydney Sun, then moved on to New Guinea for a gig at the South Pacific Post. He finally landed a job at Rupert Murdoch’s Sydney Daily Mirror and ended up as the New York correspondent in 1966. As the New York Post put it: “That’s when Travis’ love affair with New Yorkers—and vice versa—began. It was a relationship that would last more than 35 years and win him friends in all the right places…” When Murdoch bought The Post in ‘77, Travis became the first Page Six editor, and in ‘93 he kicked off his own column “Neal Travis’ New York,” which he churned out until his death (though he also managed to crank out seven novels in the last 20 years). As Cindy Adams says, “Plain and simple, Neal Travis was about the best son-of-a-bitch newspaperman that ever came down the pike.” And as his best pal, Post columnist Steve Dunleavy, wrote: “We are mourning for ourselves. We won’t have the pleasure of Neal’s company … We are grieving because of the gap he is going to leave in our lives.”

Neal knew the game and played it well, a real pro, a great storyteller who always protected his sources and who, despite his power, never took himself seriously. When he came to the Hamptons many years ago with his lovely wife Tolly, he became an instant player. I personally owe so much gratitude to Neal—from the beginning he encouraged me to go forward with The Hampton Sheet. He believed in me, and now in his absence that’s more important than I ever realized. The best tribute I can think of to this great friend and renaissance man is to let some of the people closest to him and his “cast of characters” share their thoughts about Neal.

Col Allan, The Post’s editor-in-chief: “Neal loved journalism, but he loved The Post most of all. He wrote with skill and charm about this great city and its citizens.”