Barbara Bush Dies at 92

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Former first lady Barbara Bush, who died yesterday at the age of 92, was a remarkable woman, and her attributes are justifiably being remembered today. She said many things that should inspire the rest of us on our journeys through life.

I have felt considerable empathy for the Bush family, especially Mrs. Bush's children, who have had the pleasure of having their mother with them longer than most. I learned when my own mother died that, no matter how old we are when it happens, it feels strange to be a motherless child.

And I have learned that is a feeling that never really goes away.

I have no doubt that George W. Bush, who is now 71 years old, is feeling that way tonight — in spite of his insistence that "my soul is comforted" by his mother's certainty that there was an afterlife waiting for her.

The loss of a parent is a blow for most people, whether it is expected or not.

But it is also worth remembering that she, like all of us, was human and subject to the same shortcomings we all have.

For example, when her husband, then–Vice President George H.W. Bush, debated the first woman to be on a national ticket, Geraldine Ferraro, in October 1984, Mrs. Bush, when asked her opinion of Ferraro, replied, "I can't say it, but it rhymes with rich."

Well, we all have our shortcomings, as I said.

And most of the time Mrs. Bush was inspirational, reminding us of things that really count in life. But she wasn't perfect. None of us are.

We shouldn't lose sight of that fact as the accolades pour in.

Farewell to a Great Journalist

There was a time in my life when I was on the journalism faculty at the University of Oklahoma.

The director of the school of journalism was a man named David Dary. A native of Manhattan, Kansas, he began his career as a broadcast journalist (he introduced President Kennedy on CBS just before Kennedy delivered his Cuban Missile Crisis speech in 1962), then moved on to teaching and writing about "old–time Kansas," as he put it.

I just learned today that he passed away less than a month ago.

In Dary's obituary, Beccy Tanner of the Wichita Eagle called Dary "one of Kansas' best storytellers." I have no doubt about the truth of that statement.

I have read excerpts from his books — I have never read one of his books from start to finish, but I have long wanted to and may well do so — and, being something of a historian myself, I think his engaging storytelling style was made possible by his training as a journalist. He wrote more than 20 books, most of them focused on the old American West — and he did it well enough to be inducted into the Kansas Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2010 for his literary contributions to the history of the cowboy.

From what I have read, his research was impeccable and his style was entertaining — which, frankly, I would expect. During my time at OU, I spent many hours in his office, discussing all sorts of journalism–related topics and learning more from him than I ever learned in a classroom.

At the beginning of my first semester at OU, Dary and his wife hosted a dinner for the journalism faculty. I became acquainted with most of my new colleagues on that occasion, but what I really remember is looking at the bookshelves in his home, where he kept copies of all the books he had written up to that point. I was mesmerized. He walked up behind me and said something — I don't remember now what he said — and I told him how impressed I was. He smiled and said something typically modest — probably "thank you" — and then he asked me if I was getting settled in to my new job all right.

I once served on a search committee with him to find a new professor for the print journalism department. It was one of the best experiences of my life.

A family crisis prompted me to leave Oklahoma and return to Texas a few years later, but I never forgot his kindness to me while I was there.

He was a dedicated journalist, having rebuilt the OU journalism program during his tenure — and I know he inspired the students who took his classes.

Rest in peace, sir.

Remembering My Friend

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It was five years ago today that I lost Steve, one of my best friends, to lung cancer, and my mind is preoccupied with thoughts of him.

I knew Steve when I lived in Arkansas — Little Rock, to be exact. He and his wife Kathy moved in across the hall from a friend of mine, Brady, who lived in an apartment complex close to the one where I lived — easily within walking distance. In fact, I recall a time when we had no choice but to walk to each other's apartments. It was in the last winter I spent in Little Rock, and we got an uncharacteristically heavy snowfall (for Arkansas). We were snowbound for a few days, but the three of us passed the time playing a computer football game at my apartment — and watching TV at Steve's.

In the past, Arkansas snow tended to disappear by midday after an inch or two accumulated during the night. But on this occasion, several inches fell — they still speak of that blizzard in Arkansas — and it was two or three days before enough snow melted for cars to start getting around again.

I have many fond memories of that time. I suppose everyone has periods like that in their lives that they wish would never end, but they always do, of course. When I left Arkansas, it was to enroll in graduate school; at the time I didn't think the move would be permanent. I always figured I would move back to Arkansas after I finished working on my master's. I never did, though, and there are times when I really regret that. It wasn't a conscious decision on my part — it is just the way things turned out.

Steve and a mutual friend of ours, Mike Culpepper (who is also deceased), came to visit me in Texas not long after I moved here. When they arrived and I answered the door, Steve's first words to me were, "You don't live across the parking lot anymore!" That was certainly true. I now lived more than 300 miles away.

I do regret not seeing Steve before he died. I would have liked to have told him how much his friendship had meant to me and how much I was going to miss him. Near the end of his life, I'm not sure Steve would have comprehended what was being said, but still it would have meant a lot to me to express those thoughts to him.

Steve was a typical Arkansas sportsman. I'm not speaking only of the Razorbacks — although Steve was a diehard Hogs fan. He loved to hunt and fish. I went fishing with him a few times, but I never went hunting with him. I've never been a hunter, and I have never owned a gun, but I did join him at deer camp once. The picture at the top of this post was taken that weekend. That was how I did my hunting on that occasion — with a camera.

This picture wasn't as sharp as I would have liked — I've never been more than an amateur photographer — but it is one of my favorites. It captures the vivid sunlight of that day (there is no real indication how chilly it was), and it shows Steve and my dog Pepper (he's that black lump behind Steve).

Steve and Pepper met each other that weekend, and they bonded over a box of fried chicken that Steve had. They would have bonded anyway, I'm sure. Steve was a friendly guy, and Pepper was a friendly dog, especially to anyone who gave him food. Both are gone now, and I miss them very much.

It isn't my way to be melancholy about the past, but sometimes melancholy thoughts take over for awhile, and today is one of those times. If I could go back to any day in my life and re–live it, today I would probably pick that day at deer camp.

Steve would probably understand, but he wouldn't want me to live in the past. Pepper, of course, wouldn't understand much except that I wasn't happy, and it would be his way to try to cheer me up.

In their own ways, they were both forward–looking personalities. I am grateful they were in my life, and I strive to learn from their examples.

I miss you, my friends. Wish you were here.

If I Should Die Tomorrow ...

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Late last week reports suggested possible terrorist attacks in New York, Virginia and here in Texas tomorrow, the day before the 2016 election.

No specific locations were mentioned, and Texas is a really big place. The prospects for terrorist attacks here — and in those other states, too, for that matter — are practically endless.

ISIS isn't the culprit in these reports. Al Qaeda (a familiar name from the past) is. But if a terrorist attack occurs, will it really matter which one is behind it? Isn't terrorism terrorism, no matter who carries it out?

In the now–infamous words of Hillary Clinton, what difference would it make? Except, I suppose, to be sure which one is held responsible.

But we're already pursuing both, aren't we? I mean, that is what I thought. Maybe I was wrong.

Still when the state in which one lives is mentioned in such a context, it is only natural to wonder if something could happen where you live. I spend close to two hours commuting back and forth to work each weekday. It isn't hard for me to imagine something happening along my commute route.

That has forced me to contemplate something I don't like to contemplate — my own death — mainly because when I do, I generally tend to focus on my regrets, all the things I wanted to do but won't get to do.

Oddly, though, as Monday approaches, I find myself at peace. I haven't been thinking about the things that I didn't do. I've been thinking of the things for which I am grateful.

If I should die tomorrow, I am thankful for so many things.

I had loving parents who gave me a wonderful childhood. We weren't rich. I didn't have everything I wanted, but I had everything I needed to be happy and healthy.

My father was a religion professor at a private college. Sometimes he took continuing education courses in the summers, but some years he had summers entirely off. When he did, my parents took my brother and me on road trips. We saw so many historic sites and monuments when I was growing up. I wish everyone could have that experience. It gave me an in–depth education of my country's history — and a perspective on the subject most of my friends did not have.

I had great mentors in my life — teachers, co–workers, ministers. I'm grateful for all the things they taught me, and I try to put those lessons into action whenever I can. And I am thankful for the encouragement they gave me. I have tried to return the favor to those who have come after me.

I've had good friends in my life. Some are deceased now, and if there is an afterlife I look forward to seeing them soon. I have good friends who still exist in this life. Some have left my life, for one reason or another, and some are still in my life. We disagree about things from time to time, but the true friends don't let that stand in the way. For long, anyway. And I have many true friends.

I could have chosen a more lucrative profession, I suppose, but it sure has been fun. In fact, in hindsight, the only truly bad thing about working for newspapers was the pay. I got to meet some interesting folks, both in and out of the newsroom but always because of my newspaper jobs. Oh, sure, there were things about my newspaper jobs that I didn't like — but isn't it that way with every job?

My field has also given me an opportunity, as a journalism professor, to work with young aspiring journalists, and that has been a rewarding experience. In recent years I have served as an adjunct advising a community college newspaper that was recently named the best college newspaper by the Associated College Press. The other nine finalists were four–year schools.

My job has given me the opportunity to do the things I always wanted to do when I was growing up. I wanted to write, and I have done that. As this blog clearly shows, I am writing today. I hope that, whenever I do die, I will have written something that day.

I can't be sure of that, of course. Sometimes people are unconscious for days, weeks, months, even years before they die. So I can't be absolutely certain that I will write something in the hours just before I die.

But if a terrorist attack occurs here tomorrow — and I become a victim of that attack — then this post will be testimony to the fact that I did write something in the hours before I died. I died with my boots on, you might say.

Now, just because I am at peace with the idea of dying does not mean it is what I want to happen. I want to live to see tomorrow's sunset and Tuesday's sunrise.

I'd like to see who wins the presidency after the nastiest campaign in my memory — and probably in the history of the United States. I've been studying American presidential history nearly all my life, and I know there have been some nasty campaigns in the past so I won't go so far as to claim this has been the worst ever, but it has certainly been the worst in my lifetime.

Just to satisfy my own curiosity, I would like to know who the American voters choose to lead them for the next four years. To not be able to see that would be like watching all but the last 10 minutes of a movie.

It would have to go on my list of unfinished business. Some people might call that a "bucket list." I don't really have a bucket list. (Sometimes I feel like comedian John Pinette, who said he had a list, but it wasn't a bucket list — although, he added, it did rhyme with bucket.) It's just a list of things I would like to finish before I die.

But I guess we all die leaving something incomplete. So if I die tomorrow, there will be things that are unfinished. That's the way it is.

And now, let tomorrow come — and bring whatever it brings.

My Mother's Day

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Today is an important anniversary for me.

Yes, I know it is Cinco de Mayo, the commemoration of Mexico's victory over French forces in the Battle of Puebla in 1862. It is also the anniversary of the flash flood here in Dallas that took my mother's life — an event that has had infinitely more significance in mine than the battle that was fought more than 150 years ago.

Now, I always think of Mom at this time of year — actually, she crosses my mind at least once every day — but, for some reason, memories of Mom have been especially plentiful for me this year. There is no particular reason for that, I suppose. This isn't what might be called a milestone anniversary. Last year was, but this year is not.

It took me a long time to come to terms with what happened — and, in some ways, I guess I still have work to do, but I have largely come to terms with it.

The time around my mother's death and funeral has been a blur for me for many years. The strongest memory I have of that time is how unusually green everything was. That was an indicator of the conditions that led to Mom's death. There had been so much rain that spring that the ground was saturated. When the rain began to fall on the night my mother died, there was no place for the water to go. Thus, the flooding. Nearly two dozen people died that night.

Now, it always gets green here in the spring as it does just about everywhere else. It is the intensity level that changes, depending upon how much rain we get. If we don't get much rain, the green can be kind of dull, bordering on brown — an almost sure sign of a scorched–earth summer to come.

But the green of the grass and the trees that spring was deep, rich, vibrant. I have lived here more than 20 years — and visited here frequently as a child — and I have only seen green like that around here one other time — last year, which, as I say, was a milestone anniversary. We had a lot of rain — and some flooding, too. Talk about deja vu.

The green this spring seems to be more ordinary, kind of an average green. There is nothing about it, really, that should make me think of Mom or the time when she died.

And it doesn't. In fact, it isn't a visual thing at all. It's the sounds.

We lived in the country when I was growing up, and the sounds of wildlife were all around us. Birds, mostly, I suppose, but there were also crickets — and sounds that I still can't identify. Those sounds were the sounds of home — like the sounds of my parents' voices coming from downstairs or the wind rustling the leaves in the trees outside my bedroom window.

When I was growing up, I guess I was what was called a morning person. I got that from Dad, I guess. He's always been a morning person.

Anyway, I remember many mornings when I awoke before the sun came up, and I sat next to my window and listened to the sounds around me. I remember hearing the birds. I never saw them, and I have never been very good at identifying birds by the sounds they made so I don't know what kind of birds they were. But the same kind of bird must have taken up residence near my apartment because the song I have heard in recent days is one I have heard before, and it brings back strong memories of being a teenager.

That brings me to another point. As I say, I was a morning person when I was a boy, and I guess I remained one through my college years, but I got a newspaper job when I was 24 that required me to work nights. It wasn't easy, but I finally made the transition that had to be made if a morning person by nature was going to work a job that kept him at the office until after midnight.

Then I made the decision to go back to graduate school, and I worked at the local paper, which was an afternoon paper. That meant I had to be at work at 5 a.m. I would put in eight hours in the newsroom, then I would work for three hours in the afternoon as a teaching assistant in the editing lab. Graduate classes always met at night so if I had a class on a particular night, that would take about three more hours.

I kind of lost track of whether I was a morning person or a night person under those 20–hour–a–day conditions.

I've been working jobs that had more standard daytime hours for quite awhile now so I kind of drift from morning person to night person back to morning person. Lately I've been more of a morning person — at least as far as when I wake up is concerned. As it was when I was in my teens, I am often up before daybreak, and I listen to the sounds around me. I live in a city now so the sounds are the sounds one hears in a city — car engines running, buses stopping at the bus stop in front of my apartment building, the occasional wailing siren from a police car as it goes speeding by.

But even those sounds, mingled with the sounds of birds, remind me of Mom. She was a first–grade teacher, and there were times when I visited my parents and I would drive her to school in the mornings while I was visiting. The sounds of the city and the sounds of the birds remind me of mornings when I helped her carry her stuff to the car, then drove her to school and helped her unload.

I had kind of forgotten those mornings, but I'm glad to be reminded of them. I guess there wasn't anything remarkable about those times, just that I shared them with Mom.

And that was enough to make them special.

The Day FDR Died

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My parents were both teenagers when, 70 years ago today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Ga. He was 63 years old.

Like millions of other teenage Americans, my parents could not remember a time when FDR had not been president — and, unless the 22nd Amendment is repealed, theirs will be the only generation like that. No succeeding president will ever be able to serve more than 10 years; if circumstances ever do permit one person to serve as president for 10 years (which can only happen if a vice president succeeds a president who has just under half of his current term left and then is elected to two four–year terms), it will be nearly, but not quite, as long as FDR's actual tenure turned out to be. Roosevelt was elected to four four–year terms, but he died only a few months into his fourth term so he wound up serving 12 years, not 16.

The authors of the 22nd Amendment made it clear the restriction would not apply to whoever was president when it became the law of the land. So Harry Truman, who succeeded Roosevelt and was the president when the 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951, could have served more than 10 years. Truman, of course, did go on to win a four–year term of his own in 1948, but his popularity had deteriorated so by 1952 that Truman chose not to run again.

Thirty years from now, we may be able to find out if the New York Times was correct when it wrote, following FDR's death, "Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House."

That story is yet to be written, of course, and I often doubt that it ever will, so little regard do most people seem to have for history anymore. By the time 2045 rolls around, it is possible that few people will remember his name, let alone his actual existence. There will be fewer still who will remember him as a living, breathing human being who led his country through its worst economic crisis and a war to stop fascism.

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Here's a tip for anyone who may be reading this 30 years from now: Those who are alive in 2045 who want to know more about FDR's life and death should read Jim Bishop's book, "FDR's Last Year: April 1944 to April 1945." It is likely that those who read it will learn more about FDR and the decisions he made (and why he made them) than nearly all Americans knew at the time.

That isn't unusual, I suppose. At one time or another, every administration must operate in secret. Some do cross the line and use unlawful tactics, though, so a republic must remain forever wary, and the press must never lose sight of its primary role — watchdog.

Of course, there are certain things that were long considered personal and off limits that are not that way anymore. The members of the press who covered FDR knew that he was handicapped, but they never mentioned it in their articles nor did they photograph FDR in a way that showed the heavy leg braces he wore or the wheelchair in which he sat.

And it seems no one outside Roosevelt's inner circle knew that the woman with whom he had been having an affair for two decades, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, was with him at the Little White House, the cottage where he had stayed when he came to bathe and exercise in the natural spring waters of western Georgia, when he died. In spite of reports of an affair between FDR and an unnamed woman — and the mention in a book by FDR secretary Grace Tully, who was also there, of Rutherfurd as one who was present when Roosevelt died — the affair itself wasn't public knowledge until the 1966 publication of a book written by a former Roosevelt aide.

Over the years, I have become convinced that the story of Franklin D. Roosevelt should be a cautionary tale for presidents and their doctors. Indeed, in some ways, I guess it has. Bishop's book showed that the president's doctor knew FDR was dying, could see it in his face and body, for at least a year before Roosevelt finally died, but he did not stop Roosevelt from doing many of the things that were accelerating his decline. Presidential physicians seem to have more authority with their patients now.

Bishop's passage about the moment when FDR was stricken paints a vivid domestic picture of a spring afternoon. It was lunch time, and Roosevelt was posing for artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff, who was painting his portrait. It seemed like a fairly ordinary kind of lazy afternoon when Roosevelt began rubbing his temples. "I have a terrific headache," he said, almost in a whisper, then slumped and his hand fell to his side.

One of the women on hand thought perhaps the president had dropped something and asked him what he had dropped. Roosevelt's eyes were on Rutherfurd who was standing straight ahead, Bishop wrote, then he slipped into unconsciousness. Shoumatoff screamed and never got back to the portrait she had been painting as the folks on hand focused all their energies on trying to save the president's life. For the last 70 years, her painting has been known as the "Unfinished Portrait."

As a veteran of newsrooms, I have often wondered what it must have been like for people who were working on days when important, truly historic events, like the death of a president, occurred out of the blue. Oh, I've had my share of races with the deadline clock, but there haven't been any major unexpected events on days when I have been at work at a newspaper. So it was that I read with interest Val Lauder's recollections of being a young copygirl for the old Chicago Daily News, an afternoon daily, when FDR died. When the news came racing across the newswire, she wrote, the newsroom was sucked into "the silence of shock."

Newsrooms are noisy places. When a cloak of silence descends upon one, it becomes an eerie place.

Then, like an aftershock, the newsroom sprang into action. "The Daily News, an afternoon newspaper, was strictly limited in the hours it could publish," Lauder wrote. "Only an hour or so remained for EXTRAs."

Observing that "I knew clips would be needed," Lauder made a beeline for the newspaper's morgue. A newspaper morgue isn't a place where bodies are kept (well, I guess that is a matter of opinion); it is or was, basically, a newspaper's library where clips and photos were kept in file folders (perhaps they are now extinct, like photographers' dark rooms, with everything being stored digitally).

Anyway, Lauder discovered there was a lot of material on FDR but not so much on the new president, Harry Truman. It reminded me of the first time Ross Perot ran for president. I was working for an afternoon daily in Texas, and we had just finished putting together that day's paper and the presses were running when the news came that Perot was officially in.

It was a chance for the managing editor to go to the pressroom and say something I've always wanted to say — "Stop the presses!"

Which he did.

And I was dispatched to gather information from our morgue for a story on Perot — but I found, when I went to the morgue, that the material we had on Perot was sparse, even though Perot had been a prominent Texan who had been making news as an entrepreneur for 30 years. We went with the newswire story instead.

By the way, an observation here: From time to time, a populist candidate like Perot will gather some momentum, presumably on the logic that, as a political neophyte, such a candidate has not been corrupted by the system. For some, there is a desire to return to the days when it seems it was possible for someone to rise from the ranks of ordinary civilian to the highest office in the land. But political neophytes are apt to make mistakes, which is why they almost never win the presidency — unless they happen to be General Eisenhower fresh from winning World War II against the Nazis.

And which is why I don't think a Ben Carson candidacy will get very far, regardless of what some have told me.

But I digress.

For those who had been close to Franklin D. Roosevelt, his death 70 years ago today was a loss, but it may not have been a surprise. For the rest of the nation, though, it must have been a shock. Roosevelt's appearance clearly had changed in his 12 years in the White House, but many people could rationalize that as normal aging. In the aftermath of his death, they had to come to terms with some unpleasant facts.

The Dearborn (Mich.) Press & Guide probably summed things up for many when it wrote recently, "This year marks the 70th anniversary of several events huge in our nation’s history. None stunned us more than the sudden death in office of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ..."

It was a milestone in mass communication, though, as the Press & Guide observed: "It had been 22 years since President Warren G. Harding had died in office in 1923, and there were no networks then. Radio news, if there was such a thing, meant an announcer grabbed a newspaper and read it on the air. ... In 1945, within minutes of the 5:47 p.m., Eastern time, INS announcement, the sad message had been flashed to a nation."

The next time that a president died in office — John F. Kennedy in 1963 — many Americans got the news and followed the developing story on television.

We've had no presidential deaths since then, but the next time we have one, my guess is that most Americans will get the news via the internet — or whatever technology is dominant at the time.

The Day Reagan Died

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"I was friends with President Ronald Reagan, and he once said to me, 'I don't know how anybody can serve in public office without being an actor.'"

Warren Beatty

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Ten years ago tomorrow, Ronald Reagan died at the age of 93.

I remember when I heard the news. It was a Saturday afternoon in early June — kind of hot, too, which isn't unusual in Texas — and I was watching TV. All of a sudden, there was a news bulletin announcing that Reagan had died.

A press statement made on behalf of Nancy Reagan was read on the air: "My family and I would like the world to know that President Ronald Reagan has died after 10 years of Alzheimer's disease at 93 years of age. We appreciate everyone's prayers."

I didn't expect it. Often, it seems, famous people get sick and then linger for awhile before they die. You get some warning. That's how it was with Richard Nixon. He had a stroke, then he lapsed into a coma, and then he died.

But I don't remember being aware that Reagan had been sick. Oh, I knew, like everyone else did, that he had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease for several years, but, as anyone who has watched a family member with Alzheimer's can tell you, that can go on for a long time.

I learned later that he had been suffering from pneumonia in his final days. (I didn't know that at the time, but I had no trouble comprehending it. Much the same thing happened to a good friend of mine years after Reagan's death. My friend had cancer, which seemed to be in remission, but the aggressive treatment she had received had compromised her immune system, and pneumonia finished her off.)

At the time, no president had lived longer; Gerald Ford has since replaced Reagan as the longest–lived president. (Reagan's vice president will turn 90 a week from tomorrow — and that will be a first in American history, a president and his vice president both living into their 90s.)

There is a certain irony in that since Reagan was the oldest person to be elected president when he won the office in 1980 — and, before he became president, I had often heard it said that the presidency was a man–killing job, that those who held the office tended to have shorter lives than most of their contemporaries after they left the White House.

When Reagan became president, I was convinced he would not live to the end of his four–year term, that the presidency would crush him, and his vice president, George H.W. Bush, soon would be our next president.

Yet, Reagan lived more than 15 years after serving two complete terms as president. Bush did become our next president — but not right away.

Reagan was always defying my expectations. I wasn't one of his fans when he was in office so my expectations for him usually weren't too high to begin with, but he not only exceeded them, he did so with considerable room to spare on many occasions.

I'm not speaking of policy. I'm speaking about those times when Reagan really earned his reputation as the Great Communicator because he communicated with everyone — not just those who were his admirers.

On those occasions that called on his communication skills — two of the most noteworthy, I suppose, were when he spoke on the 40th anniversary of D–Day (just about 20 years to the day before his death) and when the space shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986 — he made just about everyone, even those who frequently disagreed with him, feel a little bit better or a little prouder.

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I considered myself a Democrat during Reagan's presidency. (I now regard myself as an independent.) And, when I look back on his presidency, I remember being envious of his speaking skills. He was able to reach out to those with whom he disagreed — without feeling compelled to belittle them. When he did poke fun, he did so with a gentle kind of wry humor that he often aimed at himself.

That's always been a rare trait, I guess. It seems to be in particularly short supply today.

Ten years ago, the television coverage — of Reagan lying in repose in California, then being transported to Washington where he would lie in state, then finally his return to California for one last memorial service prior to his burial at the Ronald Reagan Library — was pervasive. After awhile, it all looked the same — except for the backdrops and the faces in the crowds. There were processions and eulogies and a flag–draped coffin.

If you weren't paying close attention, it could be mistaken for footage from previous days.

I'm sure it was all a blur for the Reagans. I remember watching Ron Reagan being interviewed later about the funeral and observing that it occurred to him, as the motorcade made its way through the streets of Washington, that there were two people being mourned — the private Reagan, the one he knew, and the public Reagan. He said he saw someone holding a sign that said, "Now there was a president" and realized what his father meant to the people of his country.

Even his detractors.

The most memorable moment — for me — came at the end of the final service, which came at the end of what must have been a very long week for the Reagan family.

Nancy Reagan, who will never be on my list of favorite first ladies, was given the folded American flag that had adorned her husband's coffin, and she was escorted to the casket to pay her last respects. She placed the flag on it, then rested her head on the lid of the coffin and whispered to it. A thought that flashed through my mind as I watched was that she must have placed her head on her husband's chest at times when he was alive.

She remained that way so long that, finally, her children, Ron and Patti, came to her, embraced her and whispered to her, apparently nudging her away from the casket. She seemed hesitant to leave her husband. I'm only guessing now, of course, but it's a guess born from experience. I've been in similar situations in my life — although not with hundreds of people, most of them dignitaries, watching in person and millions more watching on TV — and I think I can imagine what her children said to her.

"We can come back later, maybe tomorrow, when no one else is here, and we can stay as long as you want."

As they spoke to her, she kept rubbing the lid of the coffin, almost as if she was dusting it, which makes no sense, but it was clear from her face that she was not focused on what she was doing, anyway. It was an absent–minded sort of thing, a reflex.

I remember my grandmother doing something like that after my grandfather died.

Whatever was said, it coaxed Mrs. Reagan away from the casket. She nodded at something her daughter whispered in her ear, bent to kiss the coffin and allowed herself to be led away.

After she had gone, I kept watching — and I saw members of the Reagan family who were seldom, if ever, seen during his presidency. I guessed, based on those I could identify, that we were looking at Reagan's grandchildren, some nieces and nephews, perhaps, maybe some close friends.

It was a reminder that, when someone dies, many people are affected. When that person has been president, regardless of politics, the sense of loss is even greater.

It was a poignant scene.

Mrs. Reagan recently said that she finds it difficult to believe her husband has been gone for a decade.

"I still feel his presence every day," she said, "and often find him in my dreams at night."

If Wishes Were Fishes

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"If wishes were fishes, we'd all cast nets."

Frank Herbert (1920–1986)

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I've been thinking lately of decisions I wish I could be allowed to make again — because I know I would make different choices.

It's that old "if I knew then what I know now" thing. I remember hearing that when I was a teenager and giggling at it the way teenagers do, in their way of making you aware that they are merely humoring you — but, in fact, they don't appreciate the irony and probably can't until they've put on more mileage. I realize now, as I reflect on it, that I knew a lot less then than I thought I did. (I like to think I know more now.)

Another way of putting it was "You can't go home again" — and that is something else at which most teenagers would probably smirk because they know it is rubbish. They think that because most teenagers have experienced time, but few have experienced space, and it is only after experiencing both that you can grasp that concept.

It is only after you have experienced an extended distance from the only home you may have had that you can appreciate the truth of that cliche. In one's absence, the memory of home becomes romanticized. You forget the bad things — and there were bad things because there are always bad things — and you idealize the good.

I think that often plays a role in the difficulties that some soldiers experience when they come home from a war. It isn't the only factor, of course, but I do believe it is one of them. Expectations are raised to a level that is simply unrealistic.

Still, I suppose most people have the inclination to look back wistfully on their youths. I know I do.

If I knew then what I know now, I'd treasure the time I had with friends who are no longer with us even more than I did. There were some friends whose deaths were anticipated, so I had time to reflect on how much they meant to me before they died. Others died unexpectedly; those are the ones who haunt me. I miss both sets of friends equally, but there is a sense of unfinished business with one group.

I feel that with my mother. She died in a flash flood 19 years ago this month — on Cinco de Mayo, as a matter of fact. Since the anniversary is always so close to Mother's Day, that holiday is always a reminder.

As if I needed one.

I've lived with many regrets. I regret the times I didn't tell her I loved her. I made a fatal mistake — I took her for granted.

Well, I made that mistake repeatedly when I was a teenager, not so much later. We had a good relationship, and I'm sure she knew I loved her — mothers usually do. I did tell her that often, as a matter of fact — but not the last time I saw her.

Next year, Mother's Day will fall on the 20th anniversary of her funeral. That's a date I will always remember as well. I lived in another state in those days and couldn't be in Dallas until the evening of the 9th. Arrangements were made for the funeral to be on the 10th.

For the first few days after the flood, it was easy to fool myself into believing that things weren't really as I had been told. Oh, I knew that wasn't the case, but outwardly my life had not changed. Everything was exactly the same ...

Until I arrived in Dallas. I got here late on the night of the 9th. My father had already gone to bed, so no one greeted me. I went into the dining room, fully expecting to see Mom come through the door at any minute. Instead I saw all the tell–tale signs of a death — flowers and cards on the dining table, flowing into the living room, and lots of covered dishes in the refrigerator.

I remember getting something to drink and just sitting in the dining room, looking around at a room that was so familiar and yet seemed so alien to me. I wish I could have a do–over for those moments. I would do a better job of preparing myself for what was to come in just a few hours.

The next day, at the funeral, everything hit me at once. I felt like Indiana Jones getting crushed by the big ball.

Yes, sir, if I had to go through that experience again (and I might have to; my father is still living), there are a lot of things I would wish for. I would wish to be better prepared this time. I guess the end result is no better, but it beats being blindsided.

Most of all, I guess, I would wish to not have to go through it again.

But that isn't how life works, is it?

Still in Nixon's Grip

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Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas eulogizes Richard Nixon on April 27, 1994.

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I will always remember the moment when, 20 years ago today, I heard that Richard Nixon had died.

It wasn't one of those milestone moments people ask about decades later — like where one was when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Nixon had suffered a stroke and lapsed into a coma. It was not unexpected, and, besides, at 81, he was nearly twice as old as JFK had been when he died.

Still, you must understand. Nixon was president when I was a child. I remember seeing war protests on TV in which hate and anger were mostly what were on display. Judging from the defensive responses I saw and heard coming from the Nixon White House, it was clear there was no love lost between the sides. I never really understood why so many people were surprised when the extent of Nixon's response came out via the secret tape recordings that ultimately destroyed his presidency.

It all was a logical reaction — from Nixon's paranoid perspective.

Anyway, Nixon really shaped and defined the times in which I grew up. When he was president, I honestly couldn't imagine a time when he would not be president. I could not imagine a time when America would be free of his grip.

And then he resigned. The unthinkable not only became thinkable, it became fact.

Nearly 20 years later, he was dead. I remember feeling astonished by the relentless passage of time.

There have been seven presidencies since Nixon left the White House. Five of them, including the incumbent in 1994, already had become entries in American history texts by the time Nixon died.

And now 20 years have passed since Nixon's death. Two more presidents have been elected; a third will be elected in a couple of years. I am humbled anew by the speed of the passage of time.

Five years ago, on the eve of the 15th anniversary of Nixon's death, I wrote that he was "deeply flawed." I still believe that.

I believed that 20 years ago tonight when I heard he had died. I was living in Norman, Okla. It was a Friday evening, and I was watching my TV. Suddenly, the channel I was watching interrupted the broadcast with the news bulletin that Nixon had died.

He had been in the news all week — since suffering a stroke on Monday. At first, it seemed likely he would recover, even though his movement and vision were impaired, but he lapsed into a coma and died that Friday.

It was the first time a former president had died in more than two decades. It doesn't happen often. Only two former presidents have died since Nixon died, but it could happen at any time. The fact that two former presidents are in their late 80s (Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, who will be 90 in June) makes the likelihood of another presidential funeral in the near future a distinct possibility; Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are in their 60s and seem to be in good health, but they could be vulnerable as well.

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In keeping with his wishes, Nixon did not receive a full state funeral, which would have called for his body to lie in state at the Capitol and probably some kind of funeral service in Washington. Everything was done in California. The five presidents who had succeeded him were there, along with many of his foes and allies from his years in Washington.

Both of his vice presidents were there. Gerald Ford, of course, had succeeded him when he resigned, but Spiro Agnew had been his first vice president, and he was there to pay his respects.

It was, I believe, the last public appearance by Ronald Reagan. His affliction with Alzheimer's was announced that year, and he was the next former president to die, a little more than 10 years later.

On the 20th anniversary of Nixon's death, it seems that no one is writing about him. He has been left behind with the other relics from the 20th century.

Ironically, Nixon's presidency continues to influence American policy and American spending in the 21st century. The president who sought "peace with honor" in Vietnam launched a war on drugs that America continues to fight and lose because it can't seem to find an honorable way out — and Americans continue to die because of it.

In so many ways, America is still in his grip.

The Mysterious Death of Warren Harding

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President Warren Harding and his wife, Florence

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Today is a milestone anniversary of a presidential death that is still shrouded in mystery.

No, I am not speaking of the Kennedy assassination.

Here in Dallas, we know (or most of us do) that this year is the 50th anniversary of that assassination — which is, of course, still a subject for debate, but this year it seems to be even more of an industry than usual (until just recently, the city was taking applications for free tickets for people who want to be in Dealey Plaza at the precise moment on November 22 — 50 years later, of course — when the president was shot).

Before we turn our full attention to that anniversary, let us pause for a minute or two to think about another presidential death that happened 90 years ago today.

I'm speaking of Warren Harding, America's 29th president, of whom H.L. Mencken wrote

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"He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."

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Based on what I have read of President Harding, he was an amiable, well–meaning individual, but he was also someone who was easily manipulated.

He was a journalist by trade and had a relaxed management style as publisher of a newspaper in Marion, Ohio. It has been said that, in some 30 years as the newspaper's publisher, Harding never fired anyone. He seemed to like people, and they liked him. But, as I say, there were those in his administration who took advantage of him.

On Aug. 2, 1923, President Harding died of an apparent heart attack in San Francisco. But there were suspicions at the time of other causes — and those suspicions have lingered. It might have been a stroke, some thought, or it might have been ptomaine poisoning.

Or it might have been a deliberate act.

Harding had been on a speaking tour of the western United States that summer. It could have been anything, people said at the time — heat, food, whatever — and an autopsy would have clarified things considerably. But, as Kennesaw State professor Russell Aiuto observes at Crime Library, there was no autopsy. The president's widow, Florence Harding, would not allow it.

"Within an hour of [Harding's] death, he was embalmed, rouged, powdered, dressed and in his casket," Aiuto writes. "By morning, he was on a train, headed back to Washington, D.C."

That got suspicious tongues wagging. Think the Kennedy assassination is awash in conspiracy theories? For nearly a century now, Harding's death has variously been attributed to natural causes, negligent homicide, suicide and murder. There is a solution to suit every taste.

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President Warren Harding and
Vice President Calvin Coolidge

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Natural causes is supported by the knowledge that, as Aiuto observes, Harding "lived the fat–filled, tobacco–infused and alcohol–drenched life of early 20th Century America with gusto." There are indications that Harding suffered from coronary artery disease that went undiagnosed and, consequently, untreated.

Negligent homicide had its defenders, too — like one of Harding's physicians, who believed Harding could have been saved had it not been for medical treatment he had been given, treatment that would have been effective if Harding suffered from indigestion but not effective for angina.

Then there have been suggestions that Harding may have killed himself.

It seems to be beyond dispute that Harding was despondent, presumably about Cabinet members whose conduct was under fire, during his tour of the West. And his behavior during that time prompted questions at the very least. He had made out a new will before leaving Washington in June. He sold his newspaper, which he had owned and published for decades, a few weeks earlier — and for far less than its value.

But suicide seems less likely when one considers that the signs pointed to his intention to seek re–election the next year.

That brings us to the last prospect, murder. Like the current occupant of the Oval Office, Harding's administration was beset by numerous scandals, any one of which could have led to homicide.

Even Mrs. Harding has been mentioned as a suspect. A book that was written by a man with a checkered past and published several years after her husband's death alleged that Mrs. Harding had two motives: 1) to save his reputation by having him die while he was at his most popular, and 2) to get even with him for his extramarital affairs, especially one that supposedly produced an illegitimate child.

Mrs. Harding died a year after her husband so it wasn't possible for her to defend herself against the charges — which don't seem to have been given much credibility.

Aiuto describes Harding's life and presidency as both comic and tragic. "Harding had many admirable traits — kindness, charm, generosity — but he was basically an inept man, without many talents," Aiuto writes.

"Besides the buffoonery of his days in the Senate and the White House," Aiuto goes on, "there is the tale of a man in over his head, trusting of untrustworthy associates, trying to do his best."

It's possible that one of those untrustworthy associates — with unguarded access to the president — poisoned him. It's just as possible — maybe even moreso — that Harding's lifestyle or medical malpractice hastened his demise.

After 90 years, though, it seems highly unlikely that the truth of the matter will ever be known.

Good Riddance to the Night Stalker

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"I love to kill people. I love to watch them die. I would shoot them in the head and they would wiggle and squirm all over the place and then just stop. Or I would cut them with a knife and watch their faces turn real white. I love all that blood."

Richard Ramirez

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Ordinarily, it is not my habit to rejoice upon hearing that another human being has died.

But there are exceptions to that rule. And Richard Ramirez is one of them.

If you are under 35, you might not know who Ramirez, who died of natural causes today, was.

He was known as the "Night Stalker," a brutal serial killer who absolutely terrified southern California in the mid–1980s. In 1989, he was convicted of 13 murders, five attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries. He was given the death penalty but remained on Death Row nearly 25 years later because of California's lengthy appeals process.

Frankly, I was never quite sure what there was to appeal. From everything that I read, the case was a slam dunk. But appeals are mandated by California law.

(Since California reinstated the death penalty in the late 1970s, it has been more likely that an inmate who was sentenced to be executed would die of other causes.

("Ramirez is the 59th inmate condemned in California to have died of natural causes since the state reinstated capital punishment," reports CNN. "Twenty–two others committed suicide, and six died of other causes. The state ... has executed 13 inmates since 1979; one other California offender was executed in Missouri.")

The name "Night Stalker" was given to him in a newspaper report because his crimes always took place at night. It was inspired by the name of a TV movie from the 1970s starring Darren McGavin as a newspaper reporter.

McGavin was the original night stalker, but he committed no crimes — so, in that sense, the name was a misnomer. Ramirez was named after a fictional character who tried to prevent people like Ramirez from committing violent acts.

It would have been more appropriate to name him after the title of one of the songs ("Night Prowler") on his favorite record album, AC/DC's "Highway to Hell."

An avowed satanist, Ramirez's reign of terror began in 1984 and ended in 1985 when, the day after his picture had been made public, he was cornered and beaten by a group of angry Los Angeles residents. They held him until police arrived.

His trial began in 1988; he was convicted the next year and had been in prison ever since.

Because he had been in custody for nearly 25 years, Californians almost certainly gave him no thought anymore — until today when they learned he had died.

No doubt, there are some for whom his death will be the closure for which they have been waiting — perhaps some of his victims who were not killed (and there were a few of those).

For those people, I am happy — especially if the knowledge that Ramirez was behind bars all these years brought them no peace.

Perhaps they will find peace now.

As for Ramirez, well, I'm just glad he's gone.

If he, too, has found some measure of peace, I'm glad.

Goodbye, Steve

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I received a phone call today that, sadly, was like many others I have had in my life. I knew it was coming. But it's never a welcome phone call, even when it is expected.

A good friend of mine, Steve Davidson, died of cancer early today. I knew him when I lived in Little Rock in the 1980s. We haven't seen each other in quite awhile, but I have kept up with him through our mutual friend, Brady.

It was through Brady that I learned Steve was sick, and, in the words of Yogi Berra, it was like deja vu all over again. Another friend in our circle, Mike Culpepper, died of cancer more than 20 years ago, and I kept up with the changes in his condition through Brady. Steve, Brady and I were pallbearers at his funeral.

Brady and I spoke on the phone last night. He spent some time with Steve yesterday. Family and friends had been summoned to Steve's side in anticipation of the end, but Steve apparently surprised everyone. When Brady called me last night, I expected him to tell me that it was over. But, he said, Steve was still breathing when he left.

His breathing was increasingly labored, Brady told me, and he said he didn't expect Steve to live through the night. He didn't. Apparently, he died at 4 this morning.

The picture at the top of this post was taken when Steve and I arranged to meet in southern Arkansas in the fall of 1988. I had been living in Texas for a couple of months, and we got together one weekend. Steve was a deer hunter; I don't own a gun, but I brought my camera, as you can see.

See that little black lump behind Steve? That was my dog, Pepper, curled up into a ball and taking a nap. He was part black Lab and part something else. At that time, he was still a puppy, probably about 10 or 12 weeks old (I got him as a stray so I don't really know when he was born). He went everywhere with me in those days. He loved to run, to chase a rubber ball or do anything, really, and I recall that he thoroughly enjoyed that weekend in the woods. So did I — even though it was very cold.

Steve was Pepper's buddy, maybe moreso than any of my other friends (although Pepper really got along with everybody). I think it may have been because Steve was the first of my old friends to meet Pepper. As a matter of fact, they met on that trip to deer camp in October of 1988.

(I knew they would hit it off when I saw Steve giving table scraps to Pepper.)

When that picture was taken, we had been out hiking through the woods, and Steve had decided to sit down and take a breather. Pepper flopped down behind him and, as dogs do, caught a few Z's while we humans were resting and talking and laughing. When we got up to go, he was up and ready, too.

Somewhere, I have another picture of Steve with Pepper that was taken on that trip to deer camp. Steve was sitting in a folding chair at our campsite. Pepper was sitting next to him, and Steve was stroking his head. I'm not sure where that picture is, but, if I find it, I think I might have it framed. It's one of my favorites, and I need to have it on display.

Hard to believe that weekend was nearly 25 years ago. It's even harder to believe that I will never see Steve again.

Remember that circle of friends I mentioned earlier in this post? When I was living in Little Rock, we formed a computer football league, using a football game disk I had found for my old Commodore 64. The league survived for three years after I left Arkansas. Every time I came back for a visit, I packed up my computer, and my visits became football weekends.

Eventually, the league fell by the wayside. But our friendships never did. The league began to falter after Mike died, but it survived for another year or so. But that's another story.

When I left Arkansas, it was to enroll in graduate school. About a week after I moved, Mike and Steve came down for a visit. The three of us went to Six Flags Over Texas, and I'll never forget sitting on a bench with Steve and watching as Mike rode a roller coaster over and over again. It became a running joke with the three of us, one that Steve and I never mentioned again after Mike died.

Now, I'm the only living person who remembers that afternoon.

I was between my first and second semesters of grad school when Steve and Mike paid me another visit — around New Year's. As it happened, Arkansas was playing in the Cotton Bowl, and we decided, at the very last minute, that we wanted to go to the game. I tried to pull every string I could, never thinking that I could actually get something at the last minute — but, lo and behold, I was able to get three tickets, and we went to the game.

The Razorbacks didn't play too well that day, but the three of us had a fine time, anyway. I still have the game program I bought that day, and, from time to time, I thumb through it, and my thoughts return to that sun–splashed afternoon. For many years, it has been mostly a reminder to me of Mike. Now, it will remind me of Steve as well — and of the afternoon the three of us shared.

Again, I am now the only living person who recalls that experience.

Sports so often figured prominently in our friendship — and I am not speaking only of computer football or the Cotton Bowl.

When I first knew Steve, I was working on the sports desk of what was then the most widely circulated newspaper in Arkansas — the Arkansas Gazette. That job came with certain perks that appealed to Steve. For one, I had access to early editions of the newspaper, which came in handy on Saturday nights when the first edition of the Sunday paper complete with the coupons hit the newsroom.

On those occasions, I often brought several copies of the coupon inserts to Steve and my other friends.

As a member of the Gazette's sports team, I used to get a season pass to watch the minor league baseball team in Little Rock, the Arkansas Travelers. This wasn't as valuable as it sounds — admission to Traveler games in those days was only about two bucks a head — but I used it frequently on my nights off.

Since admission was free for me, I would pay for half of Steve's ticket, and it was like each of us got in for a single dollar. Besides, as a Gazette copy editor, I could go up to the press box and visit whoever was covering the game for the newspaper that night, and Steve went with me.

Steve enjoyed rubbing elbows with people whose bylines he had been seeing for years. And he got a kick out of the bird's–eye view of the action on the field.

Same thing applied to horse racing.

I didn't get a free season pass to the races at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, but whenever Steve and I went there together, I did get us in to the press box where we could see the writer who was covering the horses for the Gazette — and, on one memorable occasion, I introduced Steve to Terry Wallace, the fellow who called the races at Oaklawn.

I don't think I ever saw Steve so starstruck. He'd been hearing that man's voice call every race he had ever seen at Oaklawn — and there he was, shaking hands with him, chatting with him.

"I'll never forget that," he told me when we left the press box that day. I hope that was a pleasant memory for Steve over the years.

There is even a sports connection to the timing of Steve's death. Nineteen years ago today, the Arkansas Razorbacks basketball team defeated Tulsa in the regional semifinals. They ultimately won it all.

I kind of think that might have appealed to Steve.

Perhaps my greatest regret after Mike died was the fact that I never said goodbye to him. I should have. I had a couple of opportunities, and I let them slip through my fingers. Maybe I was scared. I don't know.

I'm older now, and I truly believe that if I had been in Little Rock this weekend, I would have been able to tell Steve that he had been a true friend and that I will miss him.

I think he knew. I hope he did.

The Randomness of Life

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I took this picture of Mom's grave this morning. See that
dark marker in the center? That's where she is buried.

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A couple of days ago, Stan Musial's wife, Lil Musial, died at the age of 91.

I think it is fair to say hers was a storybook life. The Musials were married for more than 70 years, and they raised four children, who gave them 11 grandchildren, who have given them 12 great–grandchildren so far. Stan is remembered as one of the great hitters of all time — unorthodox in his stance and swing but very effective — and Lil is remembered as his constant booster, his #1 fan.

Mrs. Musial passed away at 6 p.m. on Thursday — "her favorite number," one of her grandchildren told the St. Louis Post–Dispatch, as her husband's uniform number was 6.

Her grandson also said she had been sick recently, and the family had been been aware that her death was imminent — so many family members were at her side when the end came.

I guess that's the way most of us hope to make our exits — with the people who mean the most to us at our side.

And I wish life was fair that way. But it isn't.

Today, I have been thinking of a song that Paul Simon recorded in the mid–1970s. I think it was called "Some Folks' Lives."

The refrain of the song, as I recall, went like this: "Some folks' lives roll easy / Some folks' lives never roll at all."

I'm not sure why that song is in my head today. Perhaps it is because today is the anniversary of the day my mother died. Thoughts of Mom often bring thoughts of Paul Simon to my mind. She was a fan of Simon & Garfunkel, and many of my childhood memories include her and the Simon & Garfunkel records she frequently played. On such occasions, the music literally filled the house.

But why that song?

I'm not really sure — except that the manner of Mom's death (she drowned in a flash flood) was so sudden and shocking. It's been exactly 17 years since she died, and I can still remember how I felt each day for a long time thereafter and the general melancholy that lingered much longer.

Perhaps thoughts of that song are more about my own life, not Mom's.

There are only two things of which one can be absolutely certain in life, I have been told — death and taxes.

There are some things that folks tend to take for granted — for example, that parents will not outlive their children. And that's usually the way it works. But sometimes children die before their parents do. There have been people with whom I grew up who died while their parents were still living. Nothing fair about that.

So, while people may think, may even expect, that they will die before their children, there are no guarantees.

Neither are there any guarantees that there will be enough advance notice of your approaching death that the people in your life can be assembled and at your side when the time comes.

Even that taxes thing isn't absolute. That part presupposes that everyone will (at least) live to adulthood — and participate in that annual ritual of paying income taxes. But I've known people who died when they were still children, still totally dependent on their parents — and did not yet file tax returns..

If they were old enough, of course, they paid sales taxes. I guess my first real experience with sales tax was when I would buy gum and candy with my weekly allowance when I was about 4 or 5, but it sometimes happens that small children die so even that sales tax thing would not be something they would experience.

Death is the one constant. It's the one thing that everyone will experience. But the experience is different for everyone.

Parents tend to assume that their children will have to bury them — just as most of them had to bury their own parents. It's the natural order of things, and most people probably expect that they will die relatively peacefully in their beds of some disease that tends to afflict the old, surrounded by the people they love. Much like Lil Musial.

Odds are, anyway.

But it isn't always that way. People don't always outlive their parents. Sometimes people die young, and sometimes people never find a significant other and wind up dying alone. It's different for everyone.

I guess most people, given a choice, would prefer the way my grandfather died — in his sleep with plans to go fishing with one of his buddies the next day. There was no lingering illness that forced him to spend his final days, weeks, months in a hospital room. When he died, he may well have been dreaming of a day spent dedicated to one of his passions in the company of one of his closest friends.

Perhaps, in his last moments, he dreamed he was reeling in the biggest fish he had ever caught.

Not a bad way to ease out of this world and into what, if anything, comes next. But people who don't take their own lives have no real say in how or when the end comes.

Most people probably only think of death in general terms — an event that will happen sometime in the future, presumably the distant future — and they don't think at all of how their deaths will affect those who are left behind. When people have children, it has been my experience that they give little, if any, thought to that day when they will die and their children will have to cope with a new reality — and any unpleasant memories from the experience.

(When my mother died, I was living in another state, and my father had been injured in the flood. It fell to my brother to identify her body. I have always tried to remember that he must carry that memory.)

If people do give it any thought, it is the kind of thought that usually goes unexpressed until circumstances make it necessary.

My mother, I'm sure, rarely gave any thought to the eventual circumstances of her death or how it would affect her family and her friends. She probably never gave much thought to which friends and relatives would outlive her — except that she probably assumed she would outlive my father. Both of my grandmothers outlived my grandfathers, and I think that was the pattern in the previous generations although you'd have to confirm that with my father. He's the genealogist in the family.

It is an ironic story, an irony she might have appreciated if she hadn't been the casualty.

In the last decade (or more) of her life, my mother was greatly influenced by the sight of my grandmother slipping deeper into dementia. Mom always called it "hardening of the arteries," and I am no doctor so that may well be a sort of layman's way of describing an actual medical condition, but, for the last 20 years or so, I have believed that what my grandmother really had was Alzheimer's disease.

I think Alzheimer's was first identified more than a century ago, but I don't recall hearing much, if anything, about it until after my grandmother died. I was young, though. Perhaps I just wasn't paying attention.

She lived with my parents for a couple of years before the burden of meeting her needs became too great for my working mother, and she was put in a series of nursing homes before Mom finally settled on one that she believed had an honest staff that would provide the best of care for my grandmother.

My grandmother lived into her 90s, and my mother, who believed (as I did) that she would live a long life, too, eagerly absorbed every tip — be it from a study in a medical journal, a newspaper article or word of mouth — that promised to enhance mental acuity, even to advanced age. Through diet. Through exercise. Through whatever.

If Mom was going to live into her 90s, by golly, she was going to make sure that she was mentally engaged to the end. She wasn't going to spend year after year sitting in a chair and staring vacantly out the window of a nursing home.

Mom feared an end like the one she saw her mother go through. She didn't want her children's last memories of her to be of an old woman who didn't know them, wasn't even aware when they were in the room with her.

Turned out, that wasn't in the cards for her. And, not long after her death, I remember a family friend observing that "she went out at the top of her game." I suppose it would have made her proud that she was forever frozen in people's memories as a vibrant life force.

But I think I speak for just about everyone who knew her when I say that we could have lived with her in a diminished state if it had meant we could have another 25 or 30 years with her.

She outlived her mother by about six years. I know it wasn't what I expected — and I am about as certain as I can be that it wasn't what she expected, either.

But that is how it worked out. Some folks' lives roll easy. Some folks' lives never roll at all. My family's lives, I think, fall somewhere in between.

I've been musing a lot about how the future plays out. Maybe it's the influence of that TV commercial where the little boy and his grandfather are sitting on the front porch of the grandfather's house, and the grandson is talking about how much he loves to be there.

"I'm going to have a house just like this when I grow up," he says confidently.

"I hope so," replies his grandfather as the narrator starts to speak about future prospects for home ownership.

That commercial never fails to make me think about things that go far beyond real estate. No one ever seems to think about those parts of it. (Well, I do, but, perhaps, as George Carlin said of himself, that is the kind of thought that kept me out of the really good schools.)

Yes, it would be nice if we always got some advance warning that someone we loved was about to die — but, if we did, it might suggest that we have more control over things than we actually do.

Because today is Cinco de Mayo — a fairly prominent holiday here in Texas — I've been thinking about a particularly touching Christmas episode of M*A*S*H in which the doctors tried to keep a mortally wounded soldier alive (technically) until after midnight so the date on his death certificate would be Dec. 26, and his children would not have to think of Christmas as the day their father died.

Soldiers have a pretty high rate of unexpected deaths, and most of those deaths probably occur with no relatives and few, if any, friends nearby.

But the soldiers' relatives probably treated their last moments together as if they really would be the last ones — ever. They knew that death was a real possibility.

That's something we all should realize. The last time I saw Mom, the thought that it would be the last time never entered my mind. In hindsight, I have told myself that, somehow, Mom may have sensed it was the last time, and I have told myself that I remember a little something extra in her last embrace.

But then there are times when I think that is something I must have dreamed up, that there was nothing unusual about our parting embrace, nothing that hadn't been there a thousand times before. Mom always hugged me when we said goodbye.

That was on an Easter Sunday. Mom was killed less than three weeks later.

Maybe it was for the best the way it turned out.

But I will always wish I told her all the things I wanted to tell her. They all came down to one simple sentence. It was one I said to her often, and I always meant it. I just wish I could have told her one more time.

I love you.

Nixon's 'Evil Genius' Dies

In the Nixon White House, Charles Colson was known as an "evil genius," a master of "dirty tricks," the guy who (reportedly) said he would walk over his own grandmother to ensure the re–election of Richard Nixon.

He was more than 18 years younger than Nixon so, I suppose, it was appropriate that he should die nearly 18 years to the day after Nixon did.

And, to many, I suppose, his story is an inspiring one, even if Nixon's is not — a man who spent the first half of his life exploiting the weaknesses in the system and the second half of his life trying to repair them.

It is a story, I guess, of one man's quest for redemption, and that is something I can appreciate. Once, when I was filling out a job application, I had to answer the following question — "What is your favorite word and why?"

My answer was that my favorite word was redemption because it suggests that no mistake or bad decision a person makes in his/her life is permanent, that a second chance is always possible.

And, in hindsight, it is clear Colson's life — well, the first half of it, anyway — was loaded with mistakes and bad decisions.

He was involved in the decisions to develop and fund the infamous White House Plumbers unit to gather intelligence on the Democrats, and at least one recording of a conversation he had with Nixon in June 1972 indicates his early involvement in efforts to obstruct justice in the Watergate investigation.

Colson was in prison when Nixon resigned the presidency, and he emerged about five months later with a new purpose in life.

It is understandable, I presume, that those who had been the targets of his wrath were skeptical, but Colson apparently was a changed man. And, on the occasion of his death, that unwillingness to acknowledge that Colson turned over a new leaf offends his defenders.

"Prison opened his eyes not only to God," writes Fr. Johannes Jacobse in The Observer, "but the desperate conditions of other prisoners."

He points out that Colson founded Prison Fellowship, a Christian outreach program for prisoners and ex–prisoners and their families.

"The world has lost a good man," asserts Fr. Jacobse.

In the South Florida Sun–Sentinel, James D. Davis laments the overemphasis in the media on Colson's political career and under–emphasis on his faith–based activities.

"Even in reporting his death, not everyone grasped the spiritual side of Colson," writes Davis, observing that "[o]f the 57 paragraphs in the Washington Post's obituary, only seven or eight dealt with the faith that steered his life for more than 38 years — and three of the paragraphs mentioned the 'skepticism and even hilarity' from many columnists who heard of his conversion."

Personally, I always felt Colson was sincere in his expression of faith. I was still young when he was released from prison, and I was no more certain then than I am today that I shared his beliefs, but the things he said seemed genuine to me.

I was brought up in the buckle of the Bible Belt, so when I say Colson's words and actions seemed plausible to me, you can believe it. I think I know the real article when I see it.

That doesn't mean that it wouldn't be possible for someone to fake the "born again" experience.

And, to be sure, I have seen my share of people who fooled others with some well–chosen words and phrases. Sooner or later, their deceptions were exposed.

But Colson matched the words with deeds for four decades.

If he started out as a phony, a disbeliever, he must have become persuaded at some point. It would take a remarkably skilled hypocrite to pull off such a charade for that long.

Colson was always true to his conservative beliefs, which he reconciled with his religious beliefs. He opposed homosexuality, and, although he never (to my knowledge) contended that Hurricane Katrina was some sort of judgment or punishment from God, he did say it was a "warning" from God and implied that there would be worse to come if it was ignored: "[O]ne lesson I learned from Katrina is that we had better win the war on terror and resolve to prevent another 9–11. Katrina exposed how easy it would be to take a city out."

Ironically, it seems to me, Charles Colson, who spent a significant portion of the first half of his life driving wedges between people went on to spend a significant portion of the second half of his life trying to bring them together.

And Sarah Pulliam Bailey of GetReligion.org wishes more of the writers who seem to remember only the first half of that life would move on.

"It's clear that some reporters are stuck in the 1970s," Bailey writes, "apparently unaware of how the state of evangelicalism was shaped by Colson's complex life and legacy."

Maybe that is Colson's real legacy. Perhaps, in Colson's own story of redemption is a cautionary tale for the rest of us about our relationships with each other.

The Art of the Interview

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Mike Wallace died yesterday.

He was 93 years old so his death, while sad for his survivors, cannot be considered either unexpected or tragic. But his loss is considerable for anyone who appreciates the art of the interview.

In a career that spanned seven decades, Wallace interviewed just about everybody who was anybody — presidents, kings, newsmakers of all kinds. I suppose most of his interviews were conducted in his work for CBS' 60 Minutes. He did some interviewing as a staffer for the University of Michigan's student newspaper, but a lot of the work he did in his youth would be better classified as entertainment.

He did some announcing, even some acting, on radio in the 1940s and hosted some game shows in the 1950s. The latter is not as unusual as it might seem today. In those days, newscasters, as they were called, did it all. In addition to announcing, they did commercials and hosted game shows.

And that generated most of Wallace's income for awhile.

But it was his interview work in the late 1950s and early 1960s that led to his job with 60 Minutes.

In that capacity, he really did interview just about everyone, all the movers and shakers of the late 20th century, but he did say about six years ago that he regretted the one that got away — former first lady Pat Nixon.

I have conducted many interviews in my life, and I can assure anyone who has never done one that it is much more difficult than it may appear. Most people who get interviewed tend to feel that they are somehow doing the interviewer a huge favor by sitting down and answering a few questions, which really puts the interviewer at a disadvantage.

There are some interview subjects who do not think that they are above the likes of any interviewer, but they are rare (and, my experience is, the bigger they are, the more likely it is that they will feel this way).

I've seen more than one interviewer come away with a poor interview because the subject seized the psychological high ground. It takes someone with confidence in himself and the validity of his questions to walk into an interview setting and treat his subjects as equals — and be treated as an equal in return. That was the amazing thing about Mike Wallace.

I share little tricks with my students, and I hope those tricks will help them conduct better interviews, but I often wonder if being a great interviewer isn't one of those things one is born with, sort of like when Stan Musial was hired to coach batting.

Musial was one of the greatest hitters ever to play baseball, but no one, not even Musial himself, could teach his unorthodox batting stance to others. It worked for him. It didn't work for anyone else.

Similarly, I wouldn't encourage young reporters to emulate Wallace — except, perhaps, to study the kinds of questions he asked. He always tried to develop a rapport with his interviewees, but he was tough, and he got right to the point. Sometimes it got him in trouble. Most of the time, it got him great stories.

Broadcasting isn't what it used to be. Wallace's death is a reminder that the practitioners of high–quality broadcasting are just about gone now.

"There simply hasn't been another broadcast journalist with that much talent," said 60 Minutes' executive producer Jeff Fager. That's pretty high praise coming from the chairman of CBS News, a network news division that has been graced by the presence of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Daniel Schorr — and many, many more.

Rest in peace, Mike Wallace.