The Immortal Mortals

There are certain prominent people I somehow can’t imagine ever dying, despite the statistical impossibility they won’t. These individuals can be downright ancient, yet I tend to be stunned when they ultimately check out.

One such person was Daniel Schorr, the investigative journalist and commentator. He was 93 when he passed away on July 23, yet you could’ve knocked me over with the proverbial feather when I got the news. As some similarly gobsmacked luminary asked on the radio that day, hadn’t we just heard him critiquing Middle East policy or the Russian spy swap on NPR—his media home for the final 25 of his 60 years in broadcasting? I’d seen him interviewed onstage in a Smithsonian program a few years ago, and his conversation then was so lively, his mind so sharp, that I’d subliminally assumed he’d outlive me—mathematics and actuarial tables be damned.

I admired Dan Schorr, who built a long and controversial career exposing perceived injustices and hypocrisies and generally pissing off the powerful. He had, by all accounts, a big ego, and he could be self-righteous, but I didn’t have to personally like him to appreciate the contributions he made to the national conversation. In fact, though, I did kind of like him—and not just because my politically conservative parents didn’t. On NPR, he engagingly reminisced and kibitzed with host Scott Simon, who days after Schorr’s death warmly and with great affection eulogized his late colleague and friend.

But, getting back on topic, Schorr was one of those people whose mortality never quite seemed a given, to me. Another was the actor and Golden Age of Radio star George Burns. He already was roughly as old as God when he started portraying Him in the movies in the 1970s, yet Burns just kept chomping cigars and croaking out jokes until he, too—rather to my surprise—finally croaked in 1996. Then there’s fitness guru Jack LaLanne, who may at this very moment be doing jumping jacks at age 95. I watched him on black and white TV when I was a kid; now he’s doing infomercials on digital cable. On the distaff side of celebrity, comedian Phyllis Diller immediately comes to mind. She’s not so much in the public eye any more, but she still pops up occasionally on tributes to much younger comics. Surely her self-amused cackle won’t ever be quieted. Right?

What called this subject to mind in the first place was reading a newspaper story earlier this week about Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, who I believe first joined the Nittany Lions’ gridiron staff sometime before the school relocated to State College, Pennsylvania, from Pangea. The article quoted the 83-year-old coach as saying recent intestinal problems were “nothing very serious,” and that he might, in fact, continue coaching for another “one year, two years, five years, whatever.”

Never mind that many Penn State alumni, from what I’ve read and heard for years now, think Paterno’s refusal to hand over the pigskin to someone younger, savvier and more energetic really stinks. And never mind that this state of affairs quite literally may stink, in that the coach himself concedes his recent intestinal problems left him, at times, “not having control of some things.” Meaning? “I had to be careful and not to get into a position where I would embarrass myself.” Paterno’s sort of reassuring update yesterday was, “I hope I’m ready to go. I think I am.”

What this degree of determination tells me is that even if Coach Paterno craps out on the football field in the next few seasons, he won’t go quietly into that good night. His passage into the Big Sleep may be noisy, it may be smelly, but it won’t be soon, I’ll wager. And I imagine his obituary, whenever it comes—will blindside me. As have, or will, the death notices of all the other immortal mortals on my mental list.

Perhaps I’ll encounter the fateful news on ESPN’s bottom-of-the-screen ticker. I’ll ask myself, “What? Didn’t I just see Coach Paterno barking instructions to his quarterback at that bowl game?” Or, perhaps by that point my question will be, “Didn’t I just see him shilling for Depends in a TV commercial on the Hallmark Channel?”