Post No. 3 -- Mentors and a Patient Person

April 7, 2007
I have been doing a weekly chemotherapy for the past three weeks and have next week off. While the therapy is not making me feel bad, it is sapping my energy and slowing me down. Thursday I actually cancelled plans to cover the hurricane conference in New Orleans because I wasn't sure I how far I had to walk and tote a laptop around. My colleague, Amy Wold, was covering it, too, and I was just going to look for a weekend story, so I didn't feel bad about cancelling. (Both my wife and mother were pleased to see me actually exercise some restraint and accept some limitation... it was not easy).

I ended up working on a climate change story that ran today and on the project I have been working on, so I got a lot accomplished.

Recently, I got an email from an old colleague from Alabama, Mike Sherman. Mike was working for the the Huntsville newspaper covering the capitol when I was covering the capitol for the old Alabama Journal (George Wallace was governor and it was really a great experience). Mike later went to work for the Montgomery newspapers and has since moved on. Anyway, he asked me if I had kept up with Clint Claybrook, one of the old hands I always considered to be a mentor. Clint, who covered the capitol with me, taught me a lot about being a reporter, especially an aggressive, investigative sort of guy. He taught me something about pit-bull style we sometimes need. We did some great work in Montgomery and played some fun rounds of golf. Unfortunately, we lost track of one another over time.

That got me to thinking about the other "mentor" that really made a difference in my career: Gibbs Adams of The Advocate. (It was the Morning Advocate then). The Louisiana Press Association Investigative Reporting Award is named for Gibbs. Because of that, it really meant a lot more to me when I won it in the past.

Gibbs' love was not reporting but "newspaperin," as he would have put it in his Bogalusa accent. (Another great pleasure were Monday mornings in the municipal building press room when he would regale Yvonne Foreman Campbell and I with the details of the sermons he heard in church with his family back in Bogalusa and he would always sing us a snatch of songs sung at the service. At his funeral, the minister said "Gibb Adams was a quiet man." We all looked at one another and wondered who the hell he was talking about).

When working on a project with Gibbs, if you took a break for a chili cheese dog in the courthouse cantina, you were lucky and you needed to eat really fast. He had only one speed -- full blast.

The real important thing he taught me was that it was possible to be tough but still treat people with respect. Sources, especially public officials, knew Gibbs was doing his job and it was not personal and I really tried to emulate that.

Gibbs died of a heart attack -- having lived longer than any male member of his family. The press room in the municipal building is also named for him and there's a picture of him outside the door.

Anyway, I think I was privileged to replace Gibbs in our newsroom as "the old guy" and pass on what he and Clint taught me to other younger reporters.

Shortly after Gibbs died, I was in working on something, I don't even remember, and I was stuck on where to look next; what to do next. I popped out of my seat and began looking around the newsroom for Gibbs to find out what my next step should be. All of a sudden, I remembered Gibbs was gone. Then I realized I was the "new" Gibbs and had to become a better reporter and digger. Gibbs had had me join Investigative Reporters and Editors and I started going to national conferences that year to learn how to be the new Gibbs.

The next few years saw some of the best reporting I ever did -- just trying to be the sort of reporter that Gibbs had been and learning from colleagues in IRE.

Some of that great reporting was done with Bob Anderson of our staff. Bob created the environment beat at The Advocate. In 1985, the editors put Bob and I and Sonny Albarado together to produce a ad-free tabloid on environmental problems in Louisiana. It was a great project and Bob and I identified a half-dozen projects that we wanted to follow up on.

He and I won the Scripps-Howard Edward Meeman Award for environmental reporting the next year (I later won it in 1999). There were AAAS and other awards that also flowed in. Later, I would take over the beat from Bob.

That all brings me to the final piece of today's blog. Bob and his wife, Laurie Smith Anderson, have been friends with Freda and I for decades. We all used to pile off to Houston once a year for Waterworld/Astroworld and Astros-Pirates ball games. In one case, we watched Mike Dunne, runner up for NL Rookie of the Year, pitch for the Pirates. Another time, we all spent a week at Navarre Beach together with all of our kids (and I remember watching porpoises doing flips and jumps out in the Gulf for about a half hour one day).

About 18 months ago, Laurie was diagnosed with cancer. I remember standing at the end of her hospital bed and pointing to myself and saying, hey, they can cure this stuff. At that point, it looked like I had been cured.

Laurie, who covered health for the newspapers for years, has been writing a column about her experience. Entitled "The Patient Person," it has been running every Friday in our People section. Unfortunately, there have been a few weeks where Laurie could not write the column, so Bob has written a few. In both cases, it has been some of the best writing I have seen from either one. She has been after me to write one, too.

I told Laurie it was hard for me to read. First, it is difficult to see what is happening to an old and cared-about friend. Second, I sometimes think I am seeing my future and it can be scary.

I highly recommend it to you if you have not seen it. Here's the link:

http://www.2theadvocate.com/columnists/patientperson

I like the title -- patient has a double meaning -- a person who is sick and needs medical help and the ability to exercise patience. I have never been good at either one. I have, if nothing else, become a more compliant patient. I am still working on the other definition ... and don't have a lot of hope mastering it in the time I have left (even if I lived to be 80 or more).

As you can tell, I am still not sure where I am going with this. -- Mike