Enjoying the interval

“There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.”

Spanish philosopher George Santayana said that, and his words have special meaning today as news spreads of yet another death in The Dallas Morning News family. Shockingly, that’s three in the past week.

Bill Evans, former DMN managing editor, died today after a long illness. He was 84.

Bill was a kind and generous man, tough when he had to be but warm and courteous always. He was a gentleman in the finest and noblest sense of the word.

He loved the DMN deeply and worked hard to further its interests. In most respects, he succeeded admirably, running the newsroom during the period when the paper was gaining a national reputation for journalistic excellence and winning a slew of Pulitzers.

Bill presided over a massive expansion of the news staff at a time when top-flight journalists from all over the country wanted to work there. His door was always open, well, mostly, and on the occasions when he would stride across his newsroom, his presence did not inspire fear or dread, but rather the opposite. He came most often to deliver praise, not condemnation.

Loyalty. That’s a word I associate with Bill Evans. His loyalty, not offered lightly, could be depended on.

I remember the time I took a salary issue to Bill, who served as the court of last resort in such matters. He listened carefully to my argument for a raise, then leaned back in his chair.

“Kerry,” he began, “there’s one thing we expect from employees of The Dallas Morning News. And that’s loyalty…”

Uh-oh, I thought, here it comes. The lecture and then the brush off.  I squared my shoulders and prepared for it.

“On the other hand,” Bill continued, “as an employee, you have every right to expect loyalty from The Dallas Morning News. You make a good argument, and you’ll get the raise.”

Only yesterday, we lost James Davis, 74, a stalwart on the News Desk for many years. He was a joy to work with, steady under pressure, generous in praise and deed. Like Bill, James was a journalist of the old school, with a deep rumbling laugh and a grin that could light up a room or defuse a tense deadline dispute.

And last week, Jeff Weiss, 62, storyteller par excellence, succumbed to his final battle with brain cancer. He sought “to go out like fireworks.” Indeed, he did, in an explosion of superlative explanatory journalism that detailed the cancer that was killing him and his philosophical acceptance of his own death.

Now, they are gone, and we are left a little sadder and the world a little dimmer at their passing.

It’s fashionable these days, and politically expedient, to disparage legitimate journalism as fake news and to label its faithful, hardworking practitioners as enemies of the American people.

That’s the worst kind of nonsense. Jeff Weiss, James Davis and Bill Evans were not enemies of the people. They were decent and honorable men who raised families and worked under bone-crushing daily deadlines to do a difficult job. They did both jobs well and left the world a better place.

It’s what Santayana had in mind, I think, about enjoying the interval between birth and death.