Hugh McCann, a science writer who was fixture at the Detroit News and Free Press for decades, died Friday at the Munson Hospice House in Traverse City at age 86.
Keith Matheny of the Detroit Free Press reports McCann was part of the Free Press staff that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1968 for its coverage of the 1967 Detroit riot.
McCann worked seven years at the Newsweek Detroit bureau and joined the Freep in thee mid-1960s. He joined the Detroit News in the mid-1970s and retired from there in 1997
The Freep writs:
He covered topics ranging from the rise of the Renaissance Center to the disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa. But it was the science beat — an area of coverage waning in most newspapers today — that was his years-long passion, family members and former colleagues said.
“He had the highest of journalism ethics — he passed that on to three of his five children who went into journalism,” said Mr. McCann’s oldest daughter, Karey McCann-Goode. “He was a science writer and he passed that on to all of us.”
Born in Kilkeel, County Down, Northern Ireland, on March 12, 1928, Mr. McCann briefly attended the University of Belfast to follow in the footsteps of his father and study for a medical doctorate, but he opted to pursue civil engineering as a quicker way to support his widowed mother and eight younger siblings.
In the postwar 1940s he left for Johannesburg, South Africa, and found work with a gold mining company.
Seeking better opportunity, Mr. McCann left for the U.S., arriving in 1950 to study engineering but then joined the U.S. Army during the Korean War. Returning after the war, Mr. McCann used the GI Bill to study engineering at Indiana Technical University in Ft. Wayne, Ind. Later, at the University of Michigan, he changed his major to journalism.
