DES MOINES, Iowa --
May 28,2006
The Des Moines Register reports Sunday morning that columnist Rob Borsellino died about 10:15 Saturday night at Taylor House Hospice in Des Moines.
Borsellino, 56, announced in a column in February of 2005 that he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. He received an immediate outpouring of support from readers. "It was overwhelming - the response that I've gotten from this community and the folks who have reached out and offered to help," Borsellino said at the time. "It's a very humbling experience and I don't do humble well."
Borsellino is a Bronx, New York, native who moved to Des Moines in 1991 when his wife, Rekha Basu, got a job as a columnist with the Register. Many of his columns were a New Yorker's view of life in a midwestern medium-sized city. But it must have grown on him because when the family moved to a bigger newspaper in Florida in 2000, they returned about a year later saying that Iowa had gotten in their blood and that Des Moines was a better place to raise their two sons.
Borsellino testified before a Congressional committee in Washington about his disease, and he continued to write his column as frequently as possible.
It was just last month that friends gathered to support Borsellino at the Val-Air Ballroom during a concert with Merle Haggard and Borsellino's longtime idol Bob Dylan. Walking and talking had become difficult, and though he wrote about the experience in late April, he didn't write many columns after that.
