Farewell

There was something amiss yesterday afternoon. I caught up with an old friend who I had not seen in months at my favorite hamburger stand. We had a great time and shared a few laughs. By about 1:30pm it was no longer all good. With this lunch running long I had to cancel a coffee appointment with my friend Vern so I could make another appointment with my friend Sam about a job I was interested in. I'm never late and I don't cancel appointments. My lazy Friday afternoon socializing had come undone.

I was darting through traffic while the air conditioner on the BMW was struggling to keep up with this 100 degree Texas Spring day. My Blackberry was lying on the console under the emergency brake when it chimed with a text message. A quick glance down and I paid no further attention, it was from Meet The Press and every Friday they send me a text with Sunday's line up. Nothing I can't catch up with later.

Tim Russert was dead.

There are people in my life that I've always admired from afar. After so many years you develop a personal relationship with them, you look forward to seeing them or reading about them as if they were family. These relationships endure as you have a respect for the person and their professional existence. Tim Russert was such a person in my life. I'll never see him on Sunday mornings again.

I've always been a news junkie. I love to follow politics. In elementary school I was disqualified from current events contests in class as I would consistently win. Each day was filled with an hour of news. That has carried on into my adult life as well. I feel lost if I don't know what is going on.

Every Sunday it has been Meet The Press for as long as I can remember. I picked up watching the program post college but I'm sure I caught episodes while in school. Tim Russert has been the only moderator I've known as he picked up the spot in 1991. At first he was just the host, but the more you watched, it was clear the show was his.

Maybe it was the Buffalo connection, but I have these feelings for others that are not from there. Tim was a quintessential Buffalonian. Proud working class Irish Catholic family where the children please their parents by working hard and getting farther ahead then they were. But not forgetting where they came from. Like most of us from Buffalo, we leave the city and region to establish our professional lives. Our parents stay behind, as his and mine have. We visit and wish they were closer. We sit there in silence at the airport gate while we wait to board our planes to other places.

I understood him and maybe he would have understood me. I love the hypothetical question of "If you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be?" Tim was easily on my list of people. As well as many of his quests. I can't imagine what dinner is like with Mary Matalin and her husband James Carville. They were frequent guests on the show. If you know who they are, you'd want to sit in the car with them too when they are lost and without directions to their destination. Now that would be fun.

As I waited for the garage door to open I picked up my Blackberry off the console to check my messages and find out who was going to be on MTP on Sunday. The message was simple. Confused, I ran upstairs to my office to read MSNBC. It was everywhere and Tim Russert was indeed gone.

My Sundays will never be the same.