Former Southampton Summer Resident Timothy Glynn Mapes Dies At 42

Timothy Glynn Mapes

Timothy Glynn Mapes, son of Glynn and Elizabeth Mapes of Southampton, died with his parents by his side at his home in London on November 15 a long battle with brain cancer. He was 42.

A descendant of the oldest founding families in Southampton, including the Burnetts, Sayres and Jennings, he spent summers during his childhood at the home of his great-aunt, Edna Wood, on Wickapogue Road, which had been owned by the Woods for several generations. The rest of the year, he and his family lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn. He graduated from neighborhood public schools, then Stuyvesant High School, Williams College and the London School of Economics.

Mr. Mapes was a foreign correspondent all of his adult life, beginning in Warsaw, Poland, in 1990, where he covered the movement from communism to democracy as a stringer for the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. Soon after, he was hired by Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, and was sent first to New Delhi as bureau chief, and then later to Singapore and to Jakarta, also as bureau chief, reporting on Asian economic development, the rise of Islamic political groups and madrasas and the tsunami.

It was while covering the tsunami in Indonesia in 2005 that he suddenly fell ill and had to be airlifted to Singapore, where he was diagnosed and underwent surgery for a brain tumor. Following a surgery and subsequent treatments, he was still able to continue working as a journalist until this past June. During those five years, the Wall Street Journal transferred him first to Brussels and then to London.

Survivors said Mr. Mapes was a man of few words with an unprepossessing, even determinedly scruffy demeanor who nevertheless was famous for inducing his sources to “spill the beans” more than they intended to.

In a farewell tribute to him, colleagues compared him to Encyclopedia Brown. They also agreed on his ability to surprise, not only with his understanding of historical and current events, but also his ironic wit, gentle good nature, and love of a good party. The Indonesian rock group Slank, has been said to count him as their “personal friend and most loyal fan outside ... of Surabaya.”

Indonesia was the place toward which Mr. Mapes had the closest personal affinity. A friend has described him as “more Javanese than the Javanese,” referring to his ability to accept what comes in life, even its most difficult experiences. Colleagues and friends universally commented on how this outlook guided his brave and uncomplaining attitude toward his illness.

In addition to his parents, he is survived by a sister, Susannah Mapes Randall and her family of Salt Lake City, Utah; and an aunt Margaret Adlum and grandmother Edith Wood Adlum, both of Massachusetts.

Memorial gatherings have been held in Mr. Mapes’s honor in London, Jakarta and New York.