Recently, a friend with whom I once worked at a newspaper e-mailed me and several of my former colleagues an obituary she’d written about a longtime editor of ours who’d died at the age of 86. (My friend still works at that paper.) It was fairly extensive and contained information about him I’d never known, such as the fact that he’d flown combat missions in the Pacific during World War II. It struck me as a nice, respectful piece.
I thanked her for letting me know, and wrote, simply, RIP. I commended her for seeing to it that our late boss got his due.
A few mornings later, I turned on my computer to find I’d been copied on several other messages about our departed editor. The first and most extensive contained a heartfelt reminiscence that another one of my former colleagues had written for the newspaper for which he now works. Headlined “World War II Vet Pushed for Hard-Hitting, Eloquent Stories,” the piece began by calling the deceased “one of my first and best editors” and concluded “I’m still thanking him for teaching me to give my very best to this business we love, no matter how hard the challenges.” In between, the piece painted a glowing portrait of a member of the Greatest Generation who had personified journalistic integrity—encouraging investigative work and ably mentoring many eager young reporters such as the essay’s author.
Another e-mail made reference to a nice editorial about our former editor that had run in his old newspaper, and a news story about his death in which many touching things had been said.
The final message in my e-mail queue that morning was from my best friend at the paper during those years—a guy who himself now is another newspaper's managing editor. He thanked the essay writer for his “awesome piece.” It had nicely summed up, he wrote, “so much of what many of the rest of us thought.”
I had an incredibly strong urge at that point to join the conversation—to hit “reply to all” and share with all of these former co-workers my own thoughts about this man who’d been my very first boss, and part of my professional life for most of the 1980s. I’d had a strong reaction to what I’d been reading and badly wanted to weigh in. But I resisted.
You see, I didn’t at all recognize the man these people I respect were praising. I’d actually been glad to read about his World War II heroism because it had given me a reason to respect him and not think quite so ill of the dead. To me, as a boss he’d always been a dyspeptic boor and journalist of little consequence who'd spent most of his time holed up his office writing wishy-washy editorials and delighting in nitpicking grammatical errors. I’d never known him to crusade for hard-hitting stories or mentor anybody. To the contrary, he’d always seemed disconnected from the newsroom and lightly regarded by those who made daily coverage decisions. The one time I could remember his emerging from his office to argue a story placement was the day when, as I recounted in a previous blog post, he insisted the news of John Lennon’s assassination wasn’t a front-page story.
When I considered the word “mentor,” all I could come up with was a flamboyant puppy-dog crush he’d had on a young office assistant at a time that his first wife was dying—a sad episode that no doubt spoke to his loneliness but hardly had engendered respect.
I don’t mean to suggest I hated the guy. In fact, I’d seen him at a few staff reunions over the years—the last of which was not that long before his death—and I’d enjoyed talking with him. He’d had a rich and happy retirement, during which he’d indulged a passion for historical research, to his community’s benefit. He seemed happy and relatively health, and I was glad for him.
But as I read all the posthumous tributes rolling in, my visceral urge was to shoot an e-mail to my friends and former colleagues whose content would be telegraphed by the subject line “WTF?!” What was the deal with all this revisionist history? I mean, good God, just because we’re in our 50s now, do we have to view everything through the fatuous glow of nostalgia? Had this guy been pretty much of a prick, or hadn’t he? Hadn’t we all mocked him behind his back when we worked under him? How had he suddenly become a composite Pappy Boyington and Walter Cronkite? Was this the same comically crabby scold another colleague of our era had smirkingly dubbed “Ming the Merciless”?
But I did not write and send such an-mail. Mostly, I’ll concede, because, whatever my friends’ willful delusions and aging-boomer sentimentalities might have been, they seemed to be enjoying this little world they’d created, and I didn’t want to crash the party and be seen as an asshole. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything, as the saying goes. I’d take the high road. My simple RIP had been sincere. I’d just leave things at that.
Yet now, just a few days after having read all those e-mails, here I am writing about this, in a forum where some of those former co-workers might read it. Why? Because I’ve had some time to reread and rethink things, and to adjust my perspective accordingly. Because I am enough of an asshole to feel the need to air my initial reactions to tributes that read too much like hagiography to me. But also because I feel compelled to issue a mea culpa, and an apology of sorts to a dead man.
When I took a closer look at the essay that my former colleague had written for his current employer, I was particular struck by the lines, “When he really liked a story, he’d sit down at his typewriter, peck out a short note about it, and pin it on the bulletin board. I got a couple of those notes from him. I treasured them.” I have no memory of any such practice. Could it be because I never received such a note? Could it be because I’d never really merited one? Might it have been that my old editor found little worth mentoring in me?
Because I’ve got to admit something. I wasn’t a great reporter. Or, frankly, even a particularly good one. Especially in my early days, when I covered news rather than features and had to dig for information, attend endless meetings and write about breaking stories on deadline. I always hated confrontation—still do—and thus never was a good fit for covering things like municipal government and the crime beat. My constitutional preference for routine and steady hours didn’t jibe well with being called after hours to check something out, or sitting at a zoning commission meeting at midnight and wishing the homeowner with the legitimate gripe would please just shut the hell up and let me go home. I was a limited interviewer, in that I can’t write both fast and legibly, I’ve always typed with one finger, and I never learned shorthand. I’m not cool under pressure and always hated writing on deadline. I got to where I was decent at it, I think, but generally speaking, the calmer the mind, the better-written and more thorough the story.
Later in his tribute essay, my former colleague recounted that he and another reporter once wrote an expose on illegal gambling operations in a neighboring county, urged on by the editor. Might it have been, then, that my old boss’s enthusiasms really had extended beyond pointing out misspellings and questioning the newsworthiness of an ex-Beatle’s murder?
Another thing caught my eye as I reread that essay. The writer mentioned that our editor sometimes would ask him why a story mattered. I’d completely forgotten about that, but that did ring a bell. Our editor had asked me that a few times. At least. I no longer recall any specific story about which he’d challenged me, or what I’d answered. But yes, he had asked.
What I mean to say with all this is, clearly my experiences with this man didn’t reflect everyone’s. Even if my colleagues’ praise still strikes me as hyperbolic, what I’ve come to believe and understand is that my longstanding denigration was unfair and one-dimensional. Whatever else he was or wasn’t, my old editor was a guy who’d put his life on the line for his country, who’d cared about his profession and who’d made a lasting and positive impression on many of the young reporters he oversaw. That’s not nothing. Far from it. When my own obituary someday is written, will I be able to claim that much?
In a subsequent e-mail, the essay writer had stated, “We really did have something special under him.” Did we? I’m not exactly a convert, but I’ll certainly concede that memory and perception are very tricky things, indeed.
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