Journalists and others remember Klott

"Gary did as much to shape SABEW and personal finance journalism as anyone has during my tenure with the group and in the business. SABEW's Best in Business contest came into being while Gary was president. Its ethics policy was shaped under his guidance. It's not an exaggeration to say that he was involved in all of the key components that pushed the group onto the national journalism stage.

On a personal note, Gary was quick with a joke and a laugh, and quicker still to help out a journalist who was struggling to understand some complex tax issue. He was exacting in his standards, which made him perfect for the tax beat, and he wanted everyone to understand the ins and outs that he knew. There are probably hundreds of journalists out there who would have faced embarrassing corrections had Gary not been so generous with his time."
- Charles Jaffe, SABEW President

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"Gary was the prime mover behind the current SABEW ethics policy which he fought for and lived in his own work."
- Bill Barnhart, Chicago Tribune

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"No one in journalism knew the tax code as well as Gary Klott. He was amazingly thorough about its ins and outs. He understood where the tax code could hurt you and help you. He was also generous in pointing journalists to parts of the code that would harvest great stories affecting all people.

In addition, Gary built a great web site in Taxplanet.com.

His commitment to excellence in reporting about taxes was without peer, and he was a good and dear friend. I shall miss him. "
- Charley Blaine, Microsoft Money

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"I recall Gary was quite passionate on the importance of ethics in business journalism, especially at a time when the deep recession of the early '90s was introducing some practices that raised serious concerns about the separation of the editorial and advertising departments. He also expressed concern about stock brokers writing personal finance columns.

We had some rather lengthy board meetings to discuss these ethical issues, but it was time well spent.

His passing at such a relatively young age is clearly a shock. But I'm pleased that he lived to see issues of integrity and ethics in business become front-page news.

We'll all miss his passion for ethics in business journalism and his commitment to SABEW. "
- Mark Calvey, San Francisco Business Times

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"I am so sad to hear about Gary. Gary was the best tax writer around. And good to work with, too. We carried his column and tax packages when I was personal business editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. And I picked up the tax sections when I moved to the Roanoke Times as business editor. I've never had to run a correction on anything he wrote, never. He will be missed. "
- Gertha Coffee, Roanoke Times

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"Gary Klott personified the best qualities of our profession. Although we may focus on the current wave of accounting scandals and outrageous executive behavior, the fundamentals of business journalism are not glamorous. To be really good in our business, you have to know your stuff, and Gary did. You need a detailed understanding of the concepts and language of business, and Gary possessed that. You need a solid sense of where a story's action is happening, which is often buried deep inside a complex web of financial information and arcane rules.

Most of all, you need an ethical framework within which to view and report the news. And Gary provided an unwavering ethical voice during the years I was fortunate enough to work with him at SABEW. His principled and relentless discussions of the ethical dimension of our behavior consumed many of our board meetings.

If SABEW has value today, it is in large measure because Gary and others like him were devoted to their crafts and passionately committed to improving the practice of business journalism. The bedrock of our profession has been put in place and protected by people like Gary Klott."
- Phil Moeller, SABEW President 1988, Publisher, insure.com

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"I spoke with Gary just a couple weeks ago, to ask him if I could send him a bunch of tearsheets displaying stories he wrote for Gannett News Service. He wrote an annual guide to preparing your income taxes for us for 10 years or so.

"Gary was a pleasure to work with. He was an expert on tax law and knew how to translate complicated legalese into stories people could understand. He also was always curious about what was going on at SABEW."
- Craig Schwed, Gannett News Service

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"I met Gary when he and I both worked at The New York Times in the 1980s. He had joined the Times from UPI, and he was the resident tax expert. That expertise, of course, led to his successful career free-lancing and writing books after he left the Times.

Gary was a stickler for details and ethics, sometimes to the point of distraction. But he was driven by a selfless passion for the craft. What's more, his attention to detail proved critical when he was writing about taxes. We occasionally picked up his syndicated series of tax tidbits for use during the filing season. Not surprisingly, the items attracted lots of attention, particularly from accountants. The great thing was that if the accountants challenged Gary on something, he always had the answer, and he was usually a step ahead of the accountants.

Gary broke into journalism after serving in the Navy during the Vietnam War. He made several stops before getting to UPI. One of them was in my home state of Nebraska, where he was a TV news anchor for a station plopped in the middle of the sparsely populated Sandhills region. I believe the station had the distinction of covering more square miles with fewer people in the audience than any other in the U.S. Still, Gary was the anchor, so -- as he told it -- he proudly claimed the best table at the best restaurant in town: the corner booth at the Pizza Hut.

I think the last time I saw Gary was at an annual SABEW conference a few years ago. He was still passionate about business journalism. But he was even more animated when the topic turned to Sandy and the kids. He was definitely a proud daddy.

My heart goes out to his family."
- Rex Seline, Forth Worth Star-Telegram

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"Gary's crisp style made the often-complex subject of taxes understandable for readers of his columns and visitors to his taxplanet.com Web site. He was a bridge connecting the American public with the tax laws, and this work dovetailed with our own here at the IRS. I appreciated his professionalism in tax reporting and his enthusiastic "Gotcha!" when we were discussing an issue. "
- Don Roberts, spokesman, IRS Media Relations Office.

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