My version of Heaven would have all the people I ever loved all hanging out together, having as much espresso and red wine as they want, eating Joel Durand’s chocolates until I come around the corner for that final lap, break through the finish line tape, and they all hoist me up and pour Gatorade on me.
Yes, I picture all my dead homies following some great Twitter-feed in the sky of all the people they like to keep tabs on.
This always comes up for me in July, because three of the women who influenced my life deeply died in July. Different years, different reasons, but it’s weird enough that each summer I brace myself and take my mom to all her doctor’s appointments.
I believe whenever something happens in our life that makes a huge impression on us, it comes up over and over again around its anniversary every year…some form of psychic branding. I think that’s why we’re so into our birthdays. Maybe it’s because these three people are on my brain so much in July, but I feel their presence so much more clearly during this month. It makes me happy, almost as though I have them back for a little bit.
So this month, I’ll introduce you to my dead homies.
The first is the one I knew for the shortest period of time: one afternoon, in fact. But she had a profound influence on me. Her name was Katharine Meyer Graham, and she’s the former publisher of the Washington Post.
Born into an affluent family, Kay was destined to be a pampered housewife. But after her husband Phil committed suicide, she stepped up to run the family business, the Post. Guided by Ben Bradlee and Warren Buffett, she led the paper to both editorial and financial glory.
She wrote a pretty amazing book, Personal History, which won a Pulitzer Prize. I read it on a flight to Europe after picking it up in a bargain bin at Border’s. I was a junior in college, and a Journalism major, so I figured I should hear what this chick had to say. But I looked at it as edification, not entertainment.
I was soooooo wrong. She takes clear-eyed stock of her life and how she got through it, and it’s a glimpse into a fascinating mind.
Now, quit rolling your eyes at me. I know reading her book doesn’t make her my homey. About three months after that, I was in a journalism ethics seminar. I was in a new school, older than everyone else, and a single mom. I wasn’t feeling very sure of myself, to put it mildly. But the lessons from her book guided me through some of that rough patch.
So when my teacher said we each should get a speaker to talk to our class about Ethics, I thought, “Of course! Mrs. Graham.” Cause I live near DC, and she lives near DC. We should TOTALLY hang out!”
So I stayed up all night and wrote her a letter about how she was a trailblazer, opening doors for women in Journalism, yadda yadda yadda. But I firmly believe the most important thing I said in that letter was that I would bake her a chocolate cake from scratch. I faxed it off to her office and eagerly waited for a reply. I wanted soooooo badly for it to happen.
I remember waiting in my car for a class to begin, and squeezing my eyes shut and thinking “Please please please please please.” I don’t even know why I wanted it so badly at the time, just that I needed to win one. I needed something good to happen.
The next afternoon, there was a message at my house, from a woman in DC named Evelyn Small. My mom was stoked. “This is it, I know it!” she said.
“Probably someone wants me to sub their Yoga class, mom.” I said, grumpy, cause I was afraid to hope.
But when I called the number, Evelyn answered, “This is Evelyn Small, Katharine Graham’s assistant.”
Once I recovered my voice and stopped stammering, we made arrangements for my class to meet Mrs. Graham and Mrs. Small at the Post printing plant in College Park. I floatd through the next two weeks.
On the decided day, I packed the chocolate cake in a baker’s box, with roses in the corners. I dressed in my new suit to meet my hero.
It was one of those rare moments in life that lived up precisely to my expectations. She spent two hours with the fifteen of us, answering questions and talking about the changing face of Journalism. She called the internet “The electronic threat,” and spoke of how no newspaper was turning a profit in cyberspace yet.
And when it was time to go, she turned to Evelyn and said, in her elegant Vassar voice, “Evelyn, darling. WHERE is my cake? We mustn’t forget my cake.” One of my fondest memories in this life is watching Mrs. Graham walk up the long corridor, holding my cake box, and turning around to wave.
That was in October. In July, she fell at a conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. She hit her head and never woke back up. I went to her funeral at the National Cathedral, with thousands of other mourners. I watched YoYo-Ma play the cello, and Henry Kissinger eulogize her, and I thought, Thank you. Thank you for teaching me that sometimes, all you have to do is ask. If you never put it out there, you never get it back. And a little chocolate goes a long way.
Tell me your hero stories, living dead, met or unmet.
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