Farewell, friend
Let me tell you a story. It’s about a little girl, a doctor’s office waiting room full of cancer patients in various stages of denial, and the man with a reddened right cheek. Nobody is happy to be in that room. The little girl can’t sit still. She is precocious, uncaring of the cancer karma that fills the air. A few minutes ago her mother made a half-hearted attempt to keep the little girl in her chair – it didn’t work. Right now she’s standing in front of the man with the red cheek. He puts out his right hand, fingers pointing toward the ceiling, thumb left, palm forward. The little girl does the same – a high five frozen in mid-slap, her hand dwarfed by the man’s. Slowly he moves his left hand to join the other in a posture of prayer with the tiny hand between the two.
“Where’s did your hand go?” he asks with a mischevious look, “Where is it?”
She giggles pulls back her hand for him to see and toddles back to her chair. For about one minute.
Then, she’s back, same trick, same hand sandwich. Same giggle, same scamper back to the safety of her perch. The room grows a half-degree warmer. The pensive crowd watches with disinterest but one or two catch the girl’s gift of gab – smiles break out in spite of the dread of the place. The hour ahead seems less awful.
Soon a spirited round of patty cakes gets underway. Mr. Red Cheek, that is Dennis, is no good at it but he learns quickly. Giggle girl is a fine teacher.
There is an ending to this vignette but I never got to hear it because Dennis, the storyteller, was interrupted for some reason over coffee at Starbucks. He doesn’t often get distracted, yet this time he did. He’s been telling stories professionally for a half-century, so he certainly knows how to end one. So have I. Perhaps that’s why we’re friends. We’ve been swapping tales about the news industry that we love for years over coffee while pursuing remarkably similar careers, touching many of the same bases and appreciating many of the same pioneers of the “good old days” of radio, reporting, and solid journalism. Names like Douglas Edwards and Eric Sevareid, Winston Burdett, Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith and Marvin Kalb and many, many others come up often. No one else in the English speaking world much cares about these names, but we do.
People are attracted to a good storyteller. Dennis is one of the best, as the owner of a sly and dry and oh-so-brittle wit, he’s able to catch the most diaphanous reference in what might be considered useless Trivia. He is locked down tight on important factoids having anything at all to do with historical figures in journalism, broadcasting, Americana, government and politics; opinionated far beyond what is considered politically correct, while able always to present a fair, unbiased account of the news. He is the last-known apologist for all of the aforementioned Edward R. Murrow “boys”, who invented modern broadcast journalism.
Even our wives followed remarkably similar paths, mostly defined by where their husband’s itinerant careers led them yet winding up with enough consecutive years to qualify as a respectable career at the Fresno Unified School District.
Our conversations began years ago about which was better, the graduated lens bifocal glasses or conventional bifocals? This was at a dog and pony show news conference staged by the newly hatched High-Speed Rail Authority back when people believed a bullet train could be built for a paltry few billion dollars. We would bump into each other often while covering various events at City Hall, or the County Courthouse, etc. I admired his energy and passion for getting the story and getting it right. He often spun me yarns about the early days of Fresno.
We both retired at about the same time. Our blog is called the Elliott-Hart Report but it could just as easily have been the Hart-Elliott Report. We write about stuff we want to write about.
Fresno will miss Dennis and Sharon. From our vantage, they are riding off into the sunset with happy trails stretching between Paso Robles and Ames, Iowa for many years to come. We will get together for coffee when the Harts are in town for medical appointments and such. I look forward to that. Maybe then I’ll get to hear the rest of the Little Girl’s Disappearing Hand story. Or maybe not. Maybe Dennis will have an even better story to tell. He always does.