He was moderator for a May 19, 2005, panel on "Reporting From Iraq," held in the NPC conference rooms. His own reporting from a 2005 trip to Iraq made headlines at the time, and he wrote about that six years later as Hill editor-at-large contributing to HuffPost. Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., had the 2005 reporting by Eisele memorialized in the Senate Congressional Record of April 27, 2005, (p. 4386).
Al Eisele, co-founder of The Hill, dies at 85
The Wire was alerted to the announcement of the death June 29 of National Press Club member Albert Eisele that appeared June 30 in The Hill newspaper, which he co-founded in 1994 with fellow Club member Martin Tolchin. Eisele lived in Falls Church, Virginia, and died the day after his 85th birthday.
A graduate of St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, his bio from 2006 on the school's website lists his accomplishments in journalism as well as politics and business, providing insight into what journalists call "the revolving door" of reporters and editors becoming press liaisons for members of Congress or government appointees, often returning to journalism after stints "on the other side."
Eisele joined the Club in November 1995. The St. John's bio says he stepped down as Hill editor in 2005. During 2005, Eisele appeared on panels at the NPC on at least two occasions that were carried on C-SPAN.
Al Eisele, moderating a panel at the National Press Club May 19, 2005, on "Reporting From Iraq." Photo: screen shot from C-SPAN video
Al Eisele (left) with then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., at the 2006 opening of the new Washington bureau of the Chicago Tribune. Photo: from Patrick Seitz's Tweet
On April 1, 2005, Eisele was on a panel speaking in the NPC Ballroom for a tribute to the "Life and Career of Hunter S. Thompson." When the panelists were asked by the moderator to each say what he was doing when he heard the news of Thompson's passing, Eisele recalled that "I was going to go out -- I usually go out every year, my brother-in-law has got a condo in Beaver Creek [Colorado], and I go out and spend a week skiing, and then I always go over to [Aspen] and spend the night with Hunter, and I was actually getting ready to do that the following week,
and I talked to Curtis [Robinson, editor of the Aspen Daily News at the time he was a fellow panelist] about going out there, then I turned on NPR one morning and heard a reference to Hunter Thompson's death, and I was shocked. I had just talked to him about two weeks ago, and I was going to be out there, and he said, well, come by and see me, which we always did. That's where I was [when 'Gonzo Journalist' Thompson died Feb. 20, 2005]."
In tweeting about the death, Eisele's son-in-law Patrick Seitz included a photo showing him in 2006 with Barack Obama, then a U.S. senator from Illinois, at the opening of a new Chicago Tribune bureau office in Washington, D.C. His father-in-law was not all desk work and foreign correspondence, Seitz said. He also "was a pitcher in the Cleveland Indians baseball organization for three-and-a-half seasons."