Joel Siegel Dies

by Michele Cheplic | More from this Blogger

Did you see the tribute ABC did to Joel Siegel this morning? It made me tear up even though I had seen most of the footage when it aired last night on 20/20. For those of you who are having a hard time placing the name, Joel Siegel was Good Morning America's longtime film critic and former WABC entertainment correspondent. He died Friday after a decade-long battle with cancer. He was 63.

His friends and colleagues at ABC called him a "brilliant reviewer" and a "great reporter." Diane Sawyer called him a "gladiator" and Charlie Gibson referred to Siegel as a "funny and bright man." One of the funniest Siegel lines in my book came when he was reviewing "The Pursuit if Happyness." Siegel said the film deserves "a C for spelling and an A for acting."

His professional achievements aside, there's little doubt Siegel's greatest accomplishment was being a father. The film critic was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1997 - a week after he and wife, Ena Swansea, found out she was pregnant with their son, Dylan. Dylan (now 9-years-old) was the son Siegel had late in life and knew he wouldn't see to maturity. And, as he noted in the 20/20 interview, not because he was battling cancer, but simply because he was "old."

His age coupled with the fact that his cancer was spreading prompted Siegel to write the book Lessons for Dylan, which was released in 2003.

"I think of all the things I want to do with Dylan, and what I'd miss if I wasn't able to do them," he once said in an interview. "One is taking him to his first ball game. I want to be there for that. I want to be sitting next to him when he watches the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera."

This morning Gibson called Siegel's memoir to his son a "marvelous legacy." There's no way the boy wouldn't know how much his father loved him, remarked the Good Morning America hosts. Gibson added that even when Siegel was at his sickest (just 8 days ago) the film critic mustered enough energy to take Dylan to a screening of the new animated film Ratatouille at a Times Square movie theatre.

Can you imagine what the reportedly frail looking Siegel--who had spent thousands of hours of his life reviewing films--was thinking as he sat in that movie theater with his son?

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Learn more about Michele Cheplic

Michele Cheplic was born and raised in Hilo, Hawaii, but now lives in Wisconsin. Michele graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in Journalism.

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