Jane E. Healy, who wrote the thoroughly reported “Florida’s Shame,” a series of editorials about runaway growth in Central Florida that won the Orlando Sentinel its first Pulitzer Prize in 1988, wryly predicted how she would be remembered after she passed.
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When the honor was announced, she quipped to co-workers, “Well, now we know what the first line of my obituary will say.”
But Healy, who died Friday at home under hospice care at age 77, was much more than an award-winner for the newspaper and the Orlando community, said L. John Haile, who served as the Sentinel’s editor for 15 years and promoted her in 1994 to oversee a staff of 380.
She succumbed to a rare blood disorder known as MDS, myelodysplastic syndrome, which she said had also caused her mother’s death. MDS is a group of disorders caused by blood cells that are poorly formed or don’t work properly, according to an overview on mayoclinic.org.
“Jane was a remarkable person and, without a doubt, one of the best journalists I ever worked with,” said Haile, whose staff went on to win two more Pulitzers. “She believed a newspaper had an obligation not just to cover the news without fear or favor but to use its editorial voice to lead and to hold public officials accountable…She wanted Orlando and Florida to be all they could be.”
A daughter of a longtime White House correspondent, Healy, born in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and graduated in 1971 from the University of Maryland. She began a 40-year journalism career with a job as a copy aide in the Washington bureau of the New York Daily News. She quickly amassed a story portfolio impressive enough to persuade the Sentinel to hire her in 1973 as a metro reporter, covering local government and politics.
She was added to the editorial board in 1981 and was named editorial page editor in 1985, holding that job for nine years before her move to head the newsroom.
“She was fearless and laser focused in fighting to keep growth from destroying the very things that made people want to come here,” Haile said. “She brought a rare perspicacity to the job that let her see through all the arguments and the clutter to what was really being said and why. Rarely did anything get past her. Jane lived and breathed Orlando and her editorials and, later, her columns were powerful because of it.”
He cited her forceful arguments that residents should not have to pay for services and construction needed to support Orlando’s tourism. Healy believed the hotel tax funding local tourism marketing should foot more of the bill.
“She particularly wanted the largess of the tourist tax to help pay for infrastructure and social services and she continued to fight for that even in retirement and after she became ill,” Haile said. “One of her early battles was to make sure the first Orlando arena was built downtown as had been promised when voters approved the tourist tax. That was huge in securing the future of downtown.”
Healy welcomed friends at her home though she was growing weaker over the last several weeks.
“Jane faced her terminal diagnosis with immense calm and courage,” said Linda Chapin, Orange County mayor from 1990 to 1998 and, after her time in public office, a close friend of Healy’s. “She has always dealt with facts above all else. The classic reporter.”
Michael Griffin, now senior vice president for advocacy and public policy at AdventHealth, worked with Healy at the newspaper for nearly a quarter century, serving on the Sentinel editorial board while Healy led the panel. He described her as a demanding but deft editor.
“She held people to the same standard she held herself to,” he said. “We got stuff done.”
Griffin said the Sentinel was “the conscience of Orlando” when Healy steered its editorial pages.
“If I can be really candid, Jane could come off as kind of hard, very guarded,” he said. “But she didn’t care about being popular.”
Under Healy, editorial writers had to defend their opinions to the editorial board before they were published, he said.
“She always made our stuff better,” Griffin said.
After eight years as the newspaper’s managing editor, she returned to the editorial pages.
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There she earned recognition again, this time as a Pulitzer finalist in 2007 for authoring an update of her prize-winning work, which focused on growth management problems in Central Florida and highlighted polluted waterways, traffic and other consequences of overdevelopment.
Healy retired from the Sentinel in 2008 but continued to write a Sunday politics column titled “Feet to the Fire.” A tagline at the end of each column encouraged readers to email her about public officials who needed to be held accountable to fulfill a promise or duty.
Orlando native Toni Jennings, a lifelong Republican who was Florida’s first female lieutenant governor and a two-time state Senate president, considered Democrat Healy a friend, though the friendship flourished more “after both of us were not doing the jobs we had always done.”
They were born the same month of the same year and got together for mutual birthday luncheons to catch up.
Jennings, a member of the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame, said people sat up and took notice when Healy won the Pulitzer.
“She knew what she was talking and writing about because she had researched it, she had reported it,” Jennings said. “She was fair and factual — that’s all I will ever ask of anybody in the reporting business — and that’s what she was. I’ll add this, too: She was right.”
Jennings said Healy’s work in the 1980’s, 90’s and early 2000’s “quite literally helped shape the community we are today.”
In March 2023, Healy and Tony Jenkins of Florida Blue were named as co-chairs of a task force created by Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings to examine potential uses of future Tourist Development Tax revenues. She was chosen in part because of her familiarity with the tax, also known as a resort tax, which was debated then created in the late 1970’s when she covered county government.
“It’s time to take a look at the uses of TDT revenue and input from the community is imperative,” Demings said in announcing the panel. “We are grateful that Jane and Tony have agreed to share their leadership and deep knowledge of the Central Florida community to this task force as it considers new projects or opportunities for TDT funding that will benefit Orange County and its residents.”
The task force recommended six projects for TDT funding, including nearly $600 million in improvements to the Orange County Convention Center and $400 million worth of upgrades to Camping World Stadium intended to enhance the venue and help it land more marquee concerts and events.
But Healy also suggested the mayor and commissioners recommend the Legislature let all counties impose a 1% local “Tourist Impact Tax” with revenues earmarked for needs other than tourism promotion — in Orange County’s case to fund desperately needed affordable housing.
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Her suggestion did not lead to expanded uses of TDT as she had hoped it would, and the debate she provoked continues to this day.
Healy’s alma mater honored her career in 2022 by including her in the inaugural class of inductees to the university’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism Hall of Fame. She served as a member and later chair of Maryland’s Knight Center for Specialized Journalism.
Her Hall of Fame biography notes that one of her two sons, Kevin Healy Clark, followed her into journalism, working for the Wall Street Journal out of college and later as a National Football League reporter for The Ringer, a media company and sports and entertainment website.
Her other son, Randall Healy Clark, resides at her home in Orlando.
She was formerly married to Jim Clark, a UCF senior lecturer, author, historian, political commentator and longtime Orlando Sentinel journalist. He was 78 when he died of a heart attack in October.
“To lose two important members of our Orlando Sentinel family in such a short amount of time is so sad,” Sentinel executive editor Roger Simmons said. “Jim hired me at the Sentinel, and Jane was someone I quickly grew to respect and admire for her journalism, leadership and later for the advice she offered me through the years. We’ll never forget her and her meaningful contributions to Central Florida.”
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A celebration of Healy’s life is planned with a date yet to be determined.