LIBERTARIANplace

TIMOTHY J. RUSSERT 1950-2008

I read the news of Tim's passing on my Treo as a breaking news release from the Wall Street Journal. I was sitting in a salon, waiting to get my haircut. I blurted out "Oh No!" I was devastated. 

My wife knew right away that I'd be having trouble. She called me and asked if I was okay. My eleven year old daughter gave me a hug when I came home. It's Okay, Daddy, she said. I told my friends who didn't quite get it, that this felt to me the way they felt when Elvis died-- Tim was my Elvis. He was my Buddy Holly/Big Bopper. John McClean's song came to mind with different lyrics. Not the music this time. This time it was the day the press died. Complete Article

I am a card carrying political junkie. Tim was the politial junkie's political junkie. I have enjoyed MTP for years. But for me it was more than that. As a native of Buffalo living in Chicago for the past 20 years, it was a comfort to have this high-profile Buffalo ex-pat say "Go Bills" or "Sabres" on national television.

Beyond that it was everything about his character. It was obvious from his greetings to Big Rus and Luke on special days, how much he loved and cherished his family, as well as his hometown. It was also obvious by the guests he had on the proram regularly and the dynamics between him and them, the between the lines messages going back and forth that he was a loyal friend and that his commitment to his friends was reciprocated. It also made it seem as if Tim was my friend too, and I was part of that intimate circle including Jim and Mary, Doris K. G., and all his roundtable regulars. So all the tributes from friends and colleagues made explicit what I had sensed about Tim intuitively and implicitly.

My eleven year old daughter sat with me and watched the entire tribute MTP show last Sunday and when it was over I told her, "I want you to learn from what you just saw and heard. I want you to realize why this man has been memorialized non-stop for days. It is because he was honest and fair to a fault, true to himself, loyal to family, a lover of life and of people, the quintessential friend, always the hometown booster, devout in his Catholic Faith, and never compromised. If you can be like that, I told my daughter, you will be loved, you will be successful. You will make your own giant mark on the world. And then I wept and my daughter comforted me again.

I wept because I, like so many others, realize that Tim was an original. We needed him for the rest of this election. He needed to live through the rest of this election. We needed him to continue to be the test of fire for anyone presuming to lead our country, for years to come. It was such a loss to our country as well as to those of us who loved him personally whether we had met him personally or not.

But it also made me grieve for myself, my family, my friends and former friends because I can see my own potential, my best self, role-modeled in Tim, my fellow Buffalonian. We are of the same generation, the same local earth, the same religion, but I missed so many opportunities to live that life. I betrayed many people including myself, forgot many friends, failed to be fair and honest, failed to be the best father or husband or Christian I could be. And after weeping for all of that, I said a prayer for Tim and asked him to pray for me that I can follow his lead for the rest of my life and be a fraction of the person he was. God bless his soul. God bless his family. My thoughts are with you. --jwh--