Bill Morem: My hero’s advice for a successful life

I haven’t seen a copy in years, but if Reader’s Digest still has a department called The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met, I’d nominate Jeff Nelligan for that distinction.

I ran across his name a couple of weeks ago at the end of a small Associated Press blurb dealing with the 10.6 percent Medicare fee cut for doctors. Nelligan is the director of media affairs for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Washington, DC. It’s just the latest in dozens of gigs the versatile Nelligan has held.

I first met him in 1979 when the VW bug he was riding in hit the curb in front of the old Cambrian newspaper building in the West Village. He opened the passenger door, releasing a wave of clattering beer cans onto the street and, with hyena-like laughter, said he was reporting for duty as my new reporter. It was perhaps the only time in my life that I was actually struck dumb.

Nelligan had sent me his résumé, which included graduation from Williams College, a prestigious East Coast liberal arts institute that has a peculiar history of supplying directors for the CIA. As the managing editor of The Cambrian under then-owner Scoop Morgan, I’d hired Nelligan sight unseen.

Over the course of the next couple of years he never ceased to amaze me. Whether it was the quality of his writ-

ing, or discovering him playing better than passable jazz piano in a bar, or seeing him running up Highway 1 as though the devil were on his tail in preparation for his first marathon—where he would take third place — he was a force of nature.

He was also an idealistic liberal with a special loathing for the military-industrial complex and anything to do with “systems.” His columns managed to wring winces from even the community’s liberals.

And then we went our separate ways. Little did I realize that Nellie was to undergo an almost total transformation from ink-slinging liberal to staunch conservative who would forge a career within the Republican establishment.

His re-education began when he hired on as an editorial writer for the San Diego Tribune. From there he wrote right-wing commentary for William F. Buckley’s National Review Magazine, got a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, served 14 years in the National Guard after acing the U. S. Army Assault School and the French Army Brevet Commando School, served as a press secretary for Congressman Bill Thomas and was the media’s go-to man as the director of public affairs for the Government Accountability Office, Department of Transportation and U. S. Agency for International Development in the State Department.

How did he do it? Here are some of his tips for swimming with the sharks in life:

• Mistakes will be made. Drive through them.

• Quit whining. No one is owed, everyone must earn.

• Let others help The People. Be selfish. Instead of worrying about the “exploited,” exploit yourself.

• Be decisive. Don’t equivocate. Don’t become paralyzed in any matter, big or small.

• Finally, always yuk it up. And there you have it—a recipe for transformation. I can still hear those hyena-like yuks amid a clatter of beer cans.