By Dan Hirshberg

When I started my newspaper career many years ago, I was strictly a sports writer. Eventually I realized I wanted to also write occasionally about non-sports stories. This is way back before the Star-Gazette became a weekly newspaper that regularly covered news and sports in the Washington-Hackettstown area. That Star-Gazette, of course, is long gone. In any case once in a while I would come across a story idea that intrigued me at that time. This is when the weekly paper of record was the Community Forum. The front page each week was devoted to a full page spread to some sort of feature story.

I heard about this guy who went by the moniker, The Tracker, who had a wilderness survival school in Asbury (on the Warren County side). This was Tom Brown Jr.’s Tracker School, which taught ways to live off the land with only the “tools” that the Earth provided. I checked out one of the classes taking place at the school’s farm, interviewed Tom, and wrote the story. Full page with a lot or photos.

A few years later, after I had left the newspaper business and turned to public relations work, I read somewhere that the Tracker School was looking to expand into a larger expanse in Hunterdon County. However, they were being met with a lot of resistance from residents who really had no idea what the Tracker School was about. I felt bad for the Tracker School folks because I did know what it was about and the cool things they did. I called the school, explained that I felt they were getting a raw deal, and offered my services. A meeting was set up.

Not sure how to dress for the meeting, I wore a nice shirt and pants, and a tie. As my father-in-law would say to me afterwards, I walked into the woods and came out of the woods with a client. The shirt and tie were never needed ever again when it came to the Tracker School.

I bring all this up now because Brown, the author of many books on the wilderness and environment, recently passed away. 

I actually owe a lot to Tom. The Tracker School was my first real PR client and working with him and the school afforded me a host of lessons in how to deal with the media (now that I was on the opposite side!). He and his wife at the time, Debbie, trusted me from Day One. When I left the Tracker office that first day I went with a full set of books and their confidence to make things happen. 

It was a heck of a run over the course of many years. One of the first things I did was coordinate a photo and video shoot (with Ron Jaghab of HTV Media Productions) for PR purposes. We would write dozens of press releases that got attention throughout the U.S. And then, we got regular bigtime media hits.

Lost hiker in the woods? Escaped criminal from a prison? A tiger on the loose? Who did the media call for an interview? Tom Brown Jr.!  CNN, Fox News, NBC, newspapers and radio stations, Morning Talk shows, and the list goes on. Additionally he was featured in Sports Illustrated, Playboy and other major magazines. At one point he became the spokesperson for a specially designed knife. 

While I was working with Tom he became a consultant on a major movie production that was loosely based on his life. He – and all of us – were so excited. We couldn’t wait to see the finished product. The Hunted, starring Benicio del Toro and Tommy Lee Jones, would be a box office failure. We all knew it before it even got to theaters. I remember sitting in the MTV Theater in New York City with Tom, his wife, agent and a few others, for a first viewing of the film. When it was over we all looked at each other and wondered, hopefully, that it wasn’t the final cut. But it was and the disappointment on Tom’s face said it all.   

While that was a downer, I had so many great memories of working with Tom, whether it was at a different site in Hunterdon County or in his beloved Pine Barrens in South Jersey.  It was also a family affair for me and mine. My wife, Susan, son Nate and daughter Melanie, all took Tracker School classes. Nate even worked in the Tracker School office for a summer. 

Tom was intense at times, hilarious at times, but always thinking, always concerned about those around him and the environment. On that last point he was way ahead of the curve. He was concerned about the environment before it became what it is today. 

He will be missed by a lot of people, me included.