Tom Kaib dies

From The Plain Dealer
Thursday, March 26, 2009 Grant Segall
Plain Dealer Reporter

Lakewood -- Tom Kaib found stories all over.

He wrote about a felon turned deputy sheriff in Hardin County, motorcycle jumpers in Indiana and motel pitchman Tom Bodett in Alaska.

"He could pick a name off the map and go do a story on that place," said his wife, the former Shirley Arnett.

Kaib won many statewide and local prizes for stories, photos and headlines during 38 years working at The Plain Dealer.

He died Tuesday at his Lakewood home of complications of cancer. He was 71.

Kaib the reporter had a light touch.

"Baldy the bald eagle flew to Hueston Woods State Park courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service," he once began a story about rehabilitating wounded birds. "He was air-mailed."

Kaib the copy editor was firm, helpful and knowledgeable about grammar and local lore, from addresses to middle initials (a requirement back then).

Kaib the headline writer was playful: "Vroom of their own / Women motorcyclists shift to the front seat."

He was born in Wheeling, W.Va., joined that city's Intelligencer at 17 and worked his way through West Liberty State College. He also taught English at Warwood High School for a year, doubled as track coach with no experience in the sport and led the team to a state championship.

He joined The Plain Dealer in 1964.

In an era of looser workplaces, Kaib used to burn a candle to dissipate the newsroom's plentiful tobacco smoke. He also kept a hunting knife on his desk for paring apples and marking pages in books he'd read on breaks.

Kaib often moonlighted for other papers, sometimes under a pseudonym to avoid The Plain Dealer's wrath. On two straight Thursdays, Shirley's bowling day, Tom dashed to the scenes of bank robberies while Lakewood Sun-Post editors baby-sat the Kaibs' three preschoolers.

On the side, Kaib loved to fish Lake Erie and Rocky River. He gave away his golf clubs young but, after retiring in 2002, he helped at the Mastick Woods golf shop at Rocky River Reservation a couple of days a week.

(And the death notice:H. THOMAS KAIB, 71, of Lakewood, OH. Died March 24, 2009, at home. He had cancer. He was born Sept. 1, 1937, in Wheeling, WV, the son of the late Harold J. and Rita T. (nee Poulton) Kaib. He was a reporter, photographer and copy editor of The Plain Dealer newspaper, in Cleveland, for 38 years. Surviving are his wife, Shirley (nee Arnett) Kaib; two sons, Scott (wife, Gloriann), of Strongsville, OH and Donald of Deerfield Beach, FL; a daughter, Maria Locsei, of Mission Viejo, CA. Brother John (wife, Nancy), of Sun City, AZ and a sister, Mary Ann Kaib, of Wheeling, WV and three grandchildren, Cristi, Nicole and Jamie, of Strongsville, OH. Services were private, through the Cleveland Memorial Society. Contributions may be made to the Hospice of the Western Reserve.)