Michael Brick, Former Times Reporter, Dies at 41 Michael Brick, a former reporter for The New York Times who covered crime in New York, education in Texas and extreme sports nationwide, died on Monday in Austin, Tex. He was 41. The cause was colon cancer, said his wife, Stacy. At his death, Mr. Brick was a senior writer for The Houston Chronicle. Mr. Brick started on the business desk at The Times in 2001 and helped cover the utility giant Enron’s collapse in a financial scandal. In 2005, he was sent to Louisiana to report on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; he returned to New York to cover crime and the courts. He also wrote feature articles, notably a ruminative, closely observed series in 2005 called “Summer at Ruby’s,” about a dive bar in Coney Island. “Inside, fluorescent lamps shine on the beer girl posters and the old-time photographs and the purblind man selling toilet paper by the ladies’ lavatory,” Mr. Brick wrote in one article. Mr. Brick left The Times staff in 2008, but signed a yearlong contract to write about unconventional and sometimes dangerous sports nationwide in a Times column called Pushing the Limit, profiling athletes who did just that. He wrote of skateboarders, boulderers, wild hog hunters and rattlesnake wranglers, among others. He continued to contribute articles to the newspaper from Texas, including coverage of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s shooting rampage that killed 13 people and wounded 32 others at Fort Hood, Tex., in 2009. Mr. Brick was the author of “Saving the School: The True Story of a Principal, a Teacher, a Coach, a Bunch of Kids, and a Year in the Crosshairs of Education Reform,” a well-received book, published in 2012, about the efforts of a group of dedicated educators to resuscitate a failing high school in Austin. In 2013, he published “The Big Race,” a Kindle Single e-book about a nationwide motorcycle race. He became a senior writer at The Chronicle in 2014. Christopher Michael Brick was born on June 21, 1974, in Cheverly, Md. His family moved to Dallas when he was 14, and he graduated from R.L. Turner High School in Carrollton in 1992 before attending the University of Texas at Austin. Mr. Brick left college to work for The Corpus Christi Caller-Times. He was later a speechwriter for a Texas state representative. He came to The Times after working for thestreet.com, a financial news site, and as a researcher on the 2001 book “The Informant,” about a price-fixing conspiracy, by Kurt Eichenwald, a former Times reporter. Besides his wife, with whom he lived in Austin, Mr. Brick is survived by a son, John-Henry; a daughter, Celia; another daughter from a previous relationship, Sadie Aasletten; his father, Robert; his mother, Mary; and a brother, Jeffrey.

Michael Brick leads his old band, the Music Grinders, in a final performance in mid-January at the Carousel Lounge, in Austin. They reunited for the first time in years for the event, billed as a living wake. Michael Brick leads his old band, the Music Grinders, in a final performance in mid-January at the Carousel Lounge, in Austin. They reunited for the first time in years for the event, billed as a living wake for Brick, who was a Houston Chronicle reporter. They were joined by Brick’s brother, Jeff, on the guitar, and gave an emotional performance to a house packed with family and friends. Brick held his strength and composure throughout the evening as he battle pain and nausea.



Michael Brick, a gifted songwriter and journalist who fronted rock bands in college, reported for The New York Times and spent much of the past year and a half roaming the oil patch as an energy writer for the Houston Chronicle, died Monday at his home in Austin after a long battle with cancer.

He was 41.

Brick, who spent a year inside Austin's Reagan High School to write the acclaimed book "Saving the School," joined the Chronicle in 2014, covered the Railroad Commission and found himself drawn to those whose lives were being affected by Texas' shale oil boom. He had previously covered business, crime and sports for The Times, freelanced for Esquire and other national magazines, and mentored a generation of student journalists as advisor to the Daily Texan at the University of Texas.




"Michael left an impression on everyone in our newsroom," said Vernon Loeb, the Chronicle's managing editor. "He was a luminous talent, able to write deeply empathetic stories that also had incredible sweep and drama. But none of that kept him from being the most generous colleague."

Known for his vintage fedoras and vests, Brick's formative years as a student were as much about rock 'n' roll as they were long-form prose. He wrote dozens and dozens of songs, became an accomplished musician and played guitar and mandolin in an assortment of bands.

Christopher Michael Brick was born in Cheverly, Md., on June 21, 1974. His parents moved their two inseparably close sons, Michael and Jeff, to Dallas when they were teenagers. In Texas, a state Brick came to embrace in all its complexity, his high school years were consumed by writing and music, sometimes skipping school to attend wordsmith workshops at a Farmers Branch library.
He would soon break into the world of newspapers as a student at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of The Daily Texan.


Among the stories he covered were the shooting of four federal agents killed at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco. He raced to the scene in one of the college newspaper's old cars. It would become his roadside office for days.

During his college days, he also wrote and sang songs for the band, Bottle of Smoke. He played guitar and mandolin.

After college, Brick headed to Brooklyn, where he formed a band called the Music Grinders and would tour with them.

His biggest break came when he was hired as a researcher for Kurt Eichenwald, an investigative reporter at The Times who was working on his second book, "The Informant," which became a movie.

Eichenwald said the young writer's energy and focus proved irresistible, even if he didn't have a traditional resume for such work.

"When I talked to him about the mistakes he made, he was not getting upset, not getting offended, but listening attentively and writing notes," Eichenwald recalled of their relationship, which at times felt like a journalism boot camp.

"Pretty soon, not only was he doing everything exceptionally, but I began to recognize his writing skills, which I hadn't been paying attention to," Eichenwald said. "By the time he was finished working with me, it became clear to me that on a lot of levels he was better than me."

"The student had exceeded the teacher; his reporting was excellent and his writing was astonishing," Eichenwald said. "He was a writer who had music in his prose."

Brick was hired by The Times in 2001 with Eichenwald's support and covered the collapse of Enron and the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, in addition to the police beat in New York City.
He wrote with rich detail about the lives of everyday people he covered, and would go on to report from dozens of U.S. states.

"He was a guy who could take the smallest event and turn it into a miraculous thing to read," Eichenwald said. Not only could Brick write, but he could report, and he knew how to search out the tiniest detail that would make a story sparkle, Eichenwald said.

In 2008, after 11 years in New York, Brick moved back to Austin to raise his family and become a freelance writer. He left town the day Lehman Brothers investment bank collapsed.

Brick continued to write for The Times from Texas, and his work was also published in Sports Illustrated, Esquire and other magazines.

His most ambitious project was the year he spent at Austin's struggling Reagan High School to write "Saving the School," which was published in 2012.

Principal Anabel Garza recalled that when Brick showed up, grade point averages were almost as low as enrollment, and authorities wanted to close Reagan down, but the community was rallying to try and save it.

She said she wasn't quite sure what to make of Brick at first, and she certainly never thought he'd follow through with his plan to spend so long at the school.

But he did, reporting deeply on faculty meetings, administrator huddles, pep rallies, classes and even serving food to parents during a community meeting.

"He just became part of life around here," she said. "He got to know us and our culture."

But at the same time, she said, Brick held onto objectivity about the school's story. He had a different manner about him than many educators.

"He listened to kids and respected every word without trying to change who they are," she said. "When I listen to kids, I listen for what I can change and make you better. When he listened to kids, he listened to who they were and valued that moment."

Brick joined the Chronicle in mid-2014 and almost immediately became a regular front page presence. In one story, he wrote about Hollas Hoffman, a preacher called out of retirement at the height of the oil boom: "God sent him to address early morning safety meetings, to hand out his phone number and most of all to lend an ear in times of grief, addiction and loneliness. God told him, hale at the age of 70, to spread the good news of Jesus Christ to the transient workers of the Eagle Ford Shale."

In another, he chronicled the hiring of David Craig Pearson, a seismologist brought on by the Railroad Commission to render an opinion on whether fracking caused earthquakes: "Surely the seismologist - this man of science, highly educated and blessed with good ol' boy roots in West Texas - must know what he's getting himself into. The Texas oil boom is the envy of the nation, a source of strength in uncertain geopolitical times. Smart people are moving in from the coasts. Investors are getting rich. Even a high school dropout can make decent money behind the wheel of a truck. Life is good."

Brick recently completed the manuscript for a children's picture book, which was written with his son, John-Henry. Brick noted on his Facebook page that the book had been rejected by some industry agents because it rhymes — and that seems to be out of fashion.

"It's the absurd story of Natalie Josephine Perez-McGee, a little girl who gets her first bicycle, tricks it out to ludicrous proportions and maybe learns a little something about simple pleasures," he wrote.

Though news writing seemed to come so easily to Brick, his skills as a musician and moves on the basketball court impressed in other circles.

On Sunday mornings, in East Austin's Alamo Pocket Park, he played in pickup games that drew together old and new residents in one of the city's gentrifying neighborhoods.

Several of the regular players presented Brick with a ball that was placed on a shelf in his living room, as were other mementos from those whose lives he had touched.

Prior to entering home hospice care, Brick took his family on a trip to New York so that his children could see he and his wife's old stomping grounds. After that, they spent Christmas making memories in a Colorado cabin. After his doctors at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston ended chemotherapy, Brick remarked to one of his distraught editors: "I'm not going home to die. I'm going home to live without chemotherapy."

In January, the family held John-Henry's eighth birthday celebration a month early to ensure father and son could share the moment.

In mid-January, Brick took the stage with his old band, the Music Grinders, for a final performance billed as his own wake.

Family and friends, including Garza and a former Reagan student, packed the Carousel Lounge. Brick took center stage at the storied club.

Jeff, Brick's brother, read aloud two of Brick's stories from The Times. He also joined the band and helped his brother sing "Beth Israel," a song Brick wrote about the view of a hospital from an apartment they shared when Brick first moved to New York. It had once been a brothel.

Brick held his strength and composure at the microphone.

"The word I keep coming back to is overwhelming. It has been a tough year, but the overwhelming show of support from all of you, from everywhere, for our family has ... words fail me," Brick told the crowd. "It is just great to see that manifest here tonight in all these faces. I chose the right people. I have been lucky enough to find the right people in life and I love you all."

While acknowledging that time was running out, he said he had given life his all.

"This whole year, I never felt like I was alone, that was the important thing," he said. "I'm not going anywhere quite yet, but looking back at it all, I didn't leave a thing on the table and here is the proof."

As the Music Grinders finished what would be their last performance, they stood side-by-side, held hands, and bowed to a standing ovation.

Brick then paused as he appeared to soak up the final moments of a night that he said he wished would never end.

He then walked forward, melting into a crowd of embraces.

Brick is survived by his wife, Stacy, and three children, John-Henry, Celia and Sadie Aasletten; his parents, Robert and Molly; and his brother, Jeffrey.

A service will be held in coming days at St. Louis Catholic Church, in Austin.