A Few Words About Two Friends

... and some unsolicited advice.

I lost two friends recently, only a few days apart.

Barry H. and I were journalism majors at Rutgers University. I got word the other day from his daughter that Barry had taken a nap — and never woke up.

I just wrote a note to his wife. I told her that Barry was therapy for me. When I last saw him, we reminisced about old times and we laughed. Take my advice: laugh more.

Barry was a good friend. If you have a good friend, you know what I mean.

A short story about Barry — who went on to be a major player in corporate PR. On October 7, 1956 Barry’s father came home from work and said he had two tickets to the next day’s World Series — Brooklyn Dodgers against the New York Yankees. Barry, a kid growing up in Brooklyn, was thrilled — but his mother said no, Barry couldn’t go to a baseball game, even a World Series game, on a school day. The next day Yankee pitcher Don Larsen pitched a perfect game against the Dodgers, the only perfect game ever in a World Series. Whenever I saw Barry, I brought up that story and laughed. Barry was still mad at his mother.

Another friend, this one from my early days at CBS News, died a few days later. Ed Rabel was a longtime correspondent at CBS, who later worked for NBC News. When I met Ed in the CBS News Atlanta Bureau, I had just been hired. Ed had been around a while, had covered the war in Vietnam. His journalistic knowledge along with his kindness made my life a lot easier than it would have been. CBS News can be a tough place for anybody, let alone the new kid on the block. Ed smoothed the way for me. I probably never thanked him; I should have.

I lost touch with Ed a while back — we even had a falling out over something he had written (about me). In 2014, Ed ran for Congress from his native West Virginia. He ran as an independent and got just over 4 percent of the vote. Around that time I learned that Ed was a progressive when it came to politics.

I never knew anything about Ed’s politics while we were at CBS. That’s just how it should be. He wasn’t a friend like Barry was, but Ed was a solid hard news journalist and, as I say, a friend when I needed one as I started my network news career.

The loss of my two friends got me thinking — and, so, I’d like to offer up a nobody-asked-my-opinion piece of advice: We live in hyper-politicized times. Don’t let politics consume too much of your time. Too much politics deadens the soul. Spend more time with friends. Talk about things that have nothing to do with politics. Talk about old times, if you’re of a certain age. And please, do your self a favor, and laugh.

I’d like to take my own advice and spend less time thinking and writing about politicians — and other stuff that has a way of bringing us down. But I’m a journalist — and journalists don’t write about banks that didn’t get robbed or planes that didn’t crash. We gravitate towards politicians who are loud and throw rhetorical bombs. Boy, would I like to ignore a lot of what Donald Trump says and does — but he doesn’t make it easy.

So if I can’t ignore the bad stuff, I know that you can’t either. Just don’t spend too much time fretting about it. Don’t let the talking heads on cable TV — people who make a living by dividing us — deaden your soul. Life is too short.

I’ll end with a line from John Spence, a business coach and author, that I hope you won’t find corny:

Making one person smile can change the world – maybe not the whole world, but their world.

Try it. I will.

And rest in peace, my friends.

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