William Sonzski, writer at Boston papers, BC

William Sonzski was a journalistic jack-of-all-trades, author, reporter, freelance writer, and public relations executive, and he handled it all with panache.

"He had an inner exuberance that filled up a room when he entered," said Ben Birnbaum, editor of the Boston College Magazine.

Mr. Sonzski, a former reporter for the Boston Herald and the Chicago Sun-Times, died of cancer May 24 in his home in the South End of Boston. He was 70.

"He was a self-made man," said Birnbaum. "He came from Chicago, but you wouldn't know it from listening to him. He had a clipped accent that was almost British. If he said he had served with the Royal Fusiliers, you would have believed him."

And he had a booming voice. "When he was talking on the telephone, everyone knew it," said Birnbaum.

Mr. Sonzski was the author of two books.

His novel, "Punch Goes the Judy," published in 1971, told the story of a Vassar undergraduate who becomes wrapped up in the counterculture of the 1960s. Apparently he got it right. The reviewer for the Harvard Crimson described the book as "so moving and so alive that we want to stand up and cheer."

He was also the author of "Fatal Ambition: Greed and Murder in New England" (1991), a nonfiction account of a series of murders allegedly committed by James Blaikie in the Boston area in the 1970s.

But he was a newsman at heart.

"He was a reporter of the old school, " said Birnbaum. "He could make a quick phone call, sit down at a keyboard, and bang out a story without breaking a sweat."

And he knew how to dress. "He was a dapper man, who was always well dressed," said his wife, Marguerite Smit.

Mr. Sonzski grew up on the south side of Chicago and graduated from Northwestern University, where he played football.

He was a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1960 until 1963, when he became a press aide to Sargent Shriver, director of the Peace Corps.

In the 1960s, he became a reporter at the Boston Herald, which became the Boston Herald-Traveler in 1967. He worked for the paper first in Washington and later in Boston.

In the early 1970s, he lived in Pittsburgh and taught writing at Carnegie-Mellon University, Chatham College, and the University of Pittsburgh.

He moved back to Boston in 1973 and was a freelance writer for The Boston Globe and other publications.

From 1979 to 1984, he was manager of news and information services at Boston College.

"He arrived at BC at a time when we were working to professionalize its public relations operation," said Birnbaum.

"He was one of a kind, eccentric, and upbeat and had an opinion about everything; he enlivened every room that he entered," said Doug Whiting, vice president for university relations at Pace University in New York, who worked with Mr. Sonzski at Boston College.

Whiting remembered him as "absolutely meticulous, a perfectionist in everything he did."

In 1984, Mr. Sonzski became a correspondent for Time Magazine and the Boston Herald, for whom he reported on the contra war in Nicaragua and the Solidarity Movement in Poland.

Whiting described Mr. Sonzski as a man who was cool under pressure, who often related the story of a medical checkup he got before going to Nicaragua. "The doctor said: 'What's going on here? You're going to a war zone, and your blood pressure is lower than normal.' Will just shrugged."

Mr. Sonzski recently returned from Europe, where he had lived for 13 years. He lived in London for six years and in Amsterdam for seven before moving back to Boston earlier this year.

While in Europe he traveled widely.

"He got to ride a camel in the shadow of the pyramids in Egypt and retrace his uncle's battlefield experiences during the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium and the Ardennes," said his wife. "He said he didn't want to wait to retire to enjoy life."

In addition to his wife, Mr. Sonzski leaves a daughter, Gretchen Venkatesh of Santa Fe, and a granddaughter.

A funeral Mass will be said at 9 a.m. tomorrow in Blessed Sacrament Chapel at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston. Burial is private.