You can never anticipate what you may find when you start to search your family history. My wife had asked me to clean out an old metal box full of her late parents’ papers. I knew there was a handwritten history that her aunt had researched years ago. It traced their Irish heritage back for centuries. But among the papers, I found copies of several hand written poems by my wife’s grandmother. Norah Hagan was the person everyone wants for a grandmother. She took my wife Maureen on the trip of a lifetime when she was sixteen years old. A six week tour of Europe including, Ireland, Denmark, Austria, and Italy.

Norah died in 1976 while touring Greece with her daughter. She was 79. She died doing what she loved. Two of the poems I found were about her travels and her husband, John who died in 1967. On stationary with her initials NVH and datelined Cavan, Ireland, 1962 she wrote:

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We, as journalists, are destroying words. Our most important tool is being dulled by over use and misuse. We’ve done it to ourselves because it’s easy, and everyone else is doing it. This just causes the infection to spread. There are many examples of words that we have destroyed, but I have four that top the list. Major. Key. Controversy. Tragedy. How many times have you heard these on television newscasts? You may not realize it because they are sprinkled in so frequently. We just have accepted them as TV speak.

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He was the teacher you always remember. The one who had the greatest impact. When I learned Robert Muccigrosso, PhD. died last May after bypass surgery at 73, I had a sense of loss and remembrance. He was an English teacher at Nazareth High School in Brooklyn in the 1960s. My first encounter with him was not a favorable one. He cut me from the junior varsity baseball team in my sophomore year.

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We are downsizing. We are preparing to move to a smaller house next year after 37 years in our current home. This means getting rid of stuff we no longer need, or want, because we won’t have the room in the new place. Two early, and obvious, victims of the purge are the dozens of books we have accumulated over the years, and of course, the old vinyl record albums. Some records I still had from college. And, we can’t forget the box of 45s my wife still had in the attic. For twenty and thirty somethings, 45s are a little smaller than a personal pizza. They have a hole in the middle about the size of a half dollar. The hit song was on one side, and the less than hit song, was on the B side. They sold for about sixty-nine cents.

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How do you sum up someone’s life? What they accomplished. How they failed. How they succeeded. Who they loved. What impact did they have on others, which is the true measure of a life well lived.

While it may seem odd to some, I’ve always been interested in obituaries, and not just famous people. I look for people who I didn’t know, and often learn things about life and history. I know most people’s obituaries are in a little box, in the tiniest print, on one page in the newspaper. But you may be surprised what you can learn about people who have their life written about by a reporter.

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“Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now I’m found
Was blind, but now I see”

-John Newton, “Amazing Grace”

That’s packing a lot of information into four lines. I think we as journalists, whether television writers or reporters, print reporters, or bloggers can learn much from songwriters. They have limited time and space. They are trying to make a point, or share an idea, or stir an emotion, and make it work with music.

Just break down those four lines. The writer is talking about Amazing grace. What it sounds like. How it saved him. How he was lost. But now he is found. How his spiritual blindness was cured, and the future is clear. Short, concise, to the point, but also very descriptive. You know exactly what grace has done for the writer. The contrasting of the past and present, once lost, now found, was blind, now I can see. Short and powerful. No adjectives needed.

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It’s the size of a business card, and it sits in a glass case on our mantle. It holds the story of what may have been one of the most powerful and successful prayers of the 20th century, and the meaning it had for one special soldier.

It was 70 years ago that the last “good war” ended. Most of the men and women who fought that war are gone, but their memories and stories of that time have been passed down through the generations. Many never spoke of what they saw. No one spoke of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. One of the most critical battles of World War II was the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944. The Germans had launched an offensive that drove a bulge into the Allies front lines as they tried to sweep through the freezing cold and snow into Germany to finally end the war.

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All reporters need certain qualities. They should be curious, skeptical, fair, honest and relentless in the search for the truth. But maybe the most important quality is trust. I would tell all new reporter candidates that above all, I had to be able to trust them. Trust them to get it right. Trust that their sources were good. Trust them to ask the right questions. Trust them to know what they didn’t know. Trust them to ask for help when they needed it. I would tell them looking good and sounding good on camera was the easy part. Reporting under pressure, and getting it right is what mattered.

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Thousands of books, articles, academic courses, and movies have been written, taught, and watched by millions since Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.

I have been fascinated by Lincoln for years. I’ve read many books on his life. I’ve studied his speeches. I’ve even read books about one of his two secretaries, John Hay, and General Grant, John Wilkes Booth, and a book on one of the most critcal months in American history, April, 1865. But as I studied his life, it always amazed me how he even became president, and saved the country. An extarordinary man from the humblest of beginnings, who overcame overwhelming personal loss, to become one the most important figures in history.

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We all know the places. Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Fort Hood, Charleston, Chattanooga. Schools, churches, military facilities. We hear the Special Reports on radio, TV, on our phones. It has become the term that makes us shutter, “Active Shooter”. How many are hurt or dead? How long will it last? Did the police get the shooter right away? What’s the final count? And then, Who? Why? How did he get the gun? Stories of heroism and families torn apart in a split second. People, children just going to school, work, or church.

This past weekend my wife and I were at a weekly outdoor concert in a park in a small shore town. There were hundreds of people there sitting on their beach chairs. Old and young. Kids running around. There was the usual ice cream truck and hot dog cart parked on the edge of the crowd. A scene played out in thousands of communities on a beautiful summer evening.

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