By Pieter VanBennekom
Staff Writer Emeritus

Ray McNulty, a giant of journalism on the local scene, and the widely respected author of the My Vero column in Vero Beach 32963 weekly newspaper for the past 12 years, died today, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026, after a brief but devastating illness.

McNulty, 67, is survived by his wife Kathy, a local attorney, two adult daughters, one granddaughter and two stepsons. Funeral arrangements were incomplete at press time for this edition.

"It was exactly 12 years ago that Ray McNulty joined the 32963 team and began writing a column that, week after week, distinguished the community's newspaper," said Milton R. Benjamin, President & Publisher of 32963 Media, in a tribute to the late columnist and reporter. "He was the only real journalist working at the Press Journal and the only person there I ever approached about joining us. A year after I first talked to him, he called and said he was ready. It was a defining moment for journalism in Indian River County.

"In the story announcing his arrival in these pages, I expressed the hope Ray would follow in the tradition of Pulitzer Prize-winning local columnists Jimmy Breslin and Mike Royko, and focus his commentary on the things that are special about Vero, while keeping an eye out for ways to make our beachside community even better," Benjamin added.

"Ray McNulty more than exceeded my expectations, and Vero Beach is a far better place today for his literate contributions to the civic discourse," Benjamin concluded.

Both in his columns and in his news coverage of the local scene, McNulty was scrupulously accurate. He was not intimidated by powerful figures and didn't hesitate to call out incompetence or hypocrisy where he saw it. He also frequently took to task outside agitators trying to bring national culture wars to Vero Beach and thus divide our tranquil beachside community with its cherished small-town feel, apart from the turmoil on the national scene.

McNulty's commentaries, written in his unique, breezy style, were never mean-spirited, and it was evident that the recurring theme of his column was to highlight what's good about Vero Beach – which is a lot – and try to preserve it.

His detailed coverage of the plans for the city's Three Corners development on the Indian River Lagoon, closely-contested local elections for county sheriff and continuing school board controversies won him many plaudits – as well as some detractors.

McNulty covered a lot of big sports events during his long and distinguished journalistic career, including Summer and Winter Olympics, World Series and Super Bowls, but he was also an avid sports fan and participant himself. In high school he was a two-sport athlete (football and lacrosse), and later in life he became a feared tennis player at the local Boulevard Tennis Club, and even two knee replacements could not slow him down much.

During his career, McNulty won many journalistic awards, including honors from the Associated Press Sports Editors, the Florida Sports Writers Association, the Florida Press Club, the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors and the Colorado Tennis Association. He also won first place in the Commentary division in the annual "best of Scripps" contest in 2008.

McNulty was born in Brooklyn, NY, and grew up on Long Island, where he attended Brentwood High School. He started his newspaper career at age 11, delivering the New York Daily News as a paper boy.

McNulty graduated from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, VA, in 1980, with a double major in Journalism and Sociology. His faculty adviser there was Clark Mollenhoff, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter.

His first journalism job out of college was as a police reporter for the Press Journal in Vero Beach, but a year later he joined the Indian River County news bureau of what was then Cocoa Today, later moving up to the newspaper’s main office in Melbourne.

McNulty worked as a sportswriter for the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville from 1983 to 1994, and then at the New York Post from 1994 to 1997, covering the Mets and the Yankees baseball teams, before moving to the West Coast and covering the Los Angeles Dodgers as the baseball columnist for the Orange County Register from 1997 to 1998.

McNulty then moved again to Colorado, as a columnist for the Colorado Springs Gazette from 1998 to 1999, and covered the Denver Broncos football team for the Boulder Daily Camera from 1999 to 2000, followed by stints on the Denver Post newspaper and the Colorado Associated Press bureau between 2000 and 2002, after which he returned home to Vero Beach.

Between 2002 and 2014, when he joined the staff of 32963, McNulty was the sports columnist for the Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers, which were later acquired by the Gannett chain.

When he joined the 32963 staff in 2014, he said he did so because he was "impressed with and intrigued by" the quality of the journalism he had seen while working for the competing daily newspaper.