Reprise from 14 June 2008: When Tim russert passed away during the height of the campaign, this was our tribute.
“I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints – you know that only the good die young.” – Billy Joel.
As I sat for hours searching for yet more words to express the magnitude of the deeply personal loss I feel of Tim Russert, the tears just will not stop flowing. Every clip shown even on FOX News(!), reduced me to tears. He is a man who so loved what he did, he inspired me to leave the corporate world and pursue what I love, sharing my truth through political and business journalism.
Tim Russert was 58 last month and he had just returned from a trip to Italy with his wife and son to celebrate his graduation from Boston College. Can you imagine anyone in such an important position just taking a holiday in the midst of a 24/7/366 campaign such as this one? But striking a balance was important to Tim and he was always so proud of son Luke’s accomplishments.
Tim Russert walked his talk in every moment of his life with a sense of quiet dignity, sincerity, decency, respect, a great love of his work and country and an intense almost Buddhist calm and serenity so missing in members of the media today. Tim was never breathless. He never screamed. He did not obfuscate, bloviate or intimidate (except through intense preparation, which always forced his subjects to be prepared).
Every Sunday morning and on every subsequent election coverage show from The Today Show to Morning Joe to MSNBC and Nightly News to Countdown… he made the complex simple and everyone in Washington and indeed around the world got their week’s talking points from him. We will miss how his mind worked with the great excitement of discovering something new. I especially loved the morning he crunched numbers saw how the electoral math could end in a 269-269 delegate tie! And whilst today not even sure how we even hold this election without him, I am certain he will sit up there kicking every one of us in the backside if we fail to live up to his example.
I watched an interview of Tim telling how his Dad, “Big Russ,” was his hero and when he sent his own son Luke off to University, he did so with the words, “do whatever you want, but don’t you dare get a tattoo!” When Tim’s book about his father came out Christmas of 2004, his son came home for term break and his Mom went in to Tim and said, “you won’t believe this, our son has a tattoo.” Tim was enraged and demanded to see it, and there, simply, on his arm were the letters “TJR,” a tribute to “Big Russ” and Tim, their joint, shared initials.
Praised by competitor and colleague alike from Paris covering the President’s EU trip at 3 am local time, Tim Russert was such a prolific figure it is almost impossible to express the impact of his sudden death while recording voiceovers for this Sunday’s show. He passed after the PC was shut down for the night here in the UK. I’ve been so used to turning on and plugging in the next morning to catch up with Countdown, Meet the Press, Nightly News and other feeds. After settling in to read the overnight feeds with my morning cuppa, his passing was the first headline off the FeedReader and that was it for the next seven hours.
I watched tribute after tribute in what had to have been an excruciating evening for Keith Olbermann, sitting there anchoring the wake and holding his own emotions together without being able to participate in it. The NBC Washington News Bureau was filled last night and today with people just wanting to come together.
Here was a man true to himself and who recognised his duty to get the story right, take care of and mentor/nurture those around him and always remembered and shared with anyone else who would listen how blessed a life he had. It was Tom Brokaw who said over and over again how Tim would smile that devilish grin of his and say to anyone who would listen, “do you believe this campaign? Do you believe we get paid to be able to sit here doing this?”
No Tim, it was we who were paid.
Every time you demonstrated your commitment to doing your homework and getting it right, you single-handedly showed the blowhards of FOX News and CNN (which has long lost its global lustre) that there is a way to be aggressive in the pursuit of truth and disagree without becoming ever personally disagreeable. You taught us to be true to truth and to oneself.
There is always an opportunity for a second chance at any moment in life and all that is needed is to follow your example at work, play and with family. It is a deep loss for us all. You have trained your followers well though and we all feel an extra burden of your expectation. There is not a one of us who wants to let you down. Our hearts go out to your global family.
There is a brighter star in the firmament this day and we are all the wiser and better for having known you. I once heard Deepak Chopra jokingly say, “a saint has a past and a sinner has a future.” The tears will soon dry for Saint Russ. We will never forget you and here’s hoping we all do a much better job because of you.
Quo vadimus? Where are we headed now?
