Here is the biggest truth I’ve learned about the public editor’s job, in the five years I’ve done it:
Most of the readers I communicate with are nice people — even if they’re peeved, perturbed or perplexed over some aspect of coverage, even if they believe the media are part of some lap-dog/attack-dog conspiracy, even if we’ve spelled their name wrong and are calling for a correction, even if they’re a bit overamped about something.
For instance, this recent exchange with a Male Reader, who contacted me about a recent column I wrote after a CBS computer-whittler shaved 20 pounds off Katie Couric’s photo image.
Male Reader: “So let me get this straight. A) Women have flown in space, etc. THEREFORE . . . B) Men should be OK with a fat chick reading the news.
“This may come as a complete shock to you: Even if women invent nuclear fusion, open portals to other dimensions, solve the Middle East crisis and make Jews and Arabs love each other, invent time machines, cure cancer, solve the riddle of the pyramids, get elected president, plus whatever else, men will STILL desire to see attractive (as opposed to, say, ‘fat’) women on TV.”
My circumspect answer to him: “Wow. Your view of men sure is bleak.”
An excerpt of Male Reader’s response, which included an apology for his earlier “brazen tone”:
” . . . It ain’t just my view — it’s an objective fact. Men are hardwired to value (in your words) ‘the babe factor.’ It is a grotesque force and we know it. We are like talking monkeys. It’s a nonstop battle just to pretend we’re civilized. (Hint: The ‘nice’ guys you know are really, really good pretenders.) Good luck to Katie. But I’ll be watching Fox News.”
I counted that exchange as a success because ultimately it was civil; and we heard each other, even if we didn’t agree, this “fat chick” and that “talking monkey.”
But I also count it as a reminder that I am overdue in telling the story of a person I met through my job, proof positive that there are people — gentle men — who are not pretenders:
I realized, recently, that I hadn’t heard from Charlie Yale in a while.
Charlie was a longtime reader of The Courier-Journal and a not infrequent caller to the public editor’s desk, and I talked with him occasionally over about four years’ time.
Early on, it was no surprise when he said he was a retired accounting manager. Our conversations led me to believe he read the newspaper with the same eye for detail his old job required, and a penny is not so different than a word if you think about it.
I got so I’d recognize Charlie’s phone number on my caller ID, and if he was calling first thing in the morning, I knew he had found something he considered at least imprecise in the pages of the newspaper, and he expected more of and from his Courier-Journal.
Indeed, his philosophy of life indicated he was all about precision. He shared that philosophy with me several years ago. He pointed out that it was expressed in 17 words, and it was, I thought, a model of both economy and comprehensiveness:
“I like where I am; what I have; what I do; where I go; and with whom.”
All of that is how I met Charlie, but that’s not how I knew Charlie.
If he had a head for business, he had a heart for love.
I know this because he was a guy who’d drop you a line, not an e-mail, and I have kept a number of things he wrote to me. Almost all of them make a mention or two of his beloved Big Band music, or contain snippets of obscure poetry from long ago.
As I write this, I am looking at a letter Charlie sent that features the hand-written titles of 56 songs that made his “revised short list” of favorite Big Band tunes, which were mostly love songs.
Ever the account manager, he arranged them by sevens in “eight subjective groups.”
Ever the romantic, he designated “Stardust” as his “all-time No. 1 classic.”
A card I’ve held onto contains a copy of an anonymous poem clipped from Woman’s Home Companion magazine around 1936, and sent to Charlie by his girlfriend when he was in the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Charlie wrote that the untitled poem — which began with the lines, “Deep in my heart / a lute lay hid / a lute I knew / no hand could play / Until you came / and spoke to me / but yesterday . . . ” — was the “greatest love poem of the 20th Century to me.”
Most of the correspondence I have from him is signed with a cursive monogram, “Cly,” and underscored with a block-lettered “I/R,” which, he wrote, “means ‘incurable romantic.’ ”
I met Charlie in person only once, and that was one night last year, about a week before Christmas; he had asked me to speak to a group of account managers.
When I saw him, again I was not surprised to find him as dapper and fastidious as his lists and attention to detail suggested. We hugged as if we were long-lost friends. And maybe we were.
So recently, when I realized I hadn’t heard from him in a while, I called his home. His number was disconnected.
Fearing the worst, I checked the newspaper’s obituary archives, and I found Charlie.
He died, at 89 years of age, this past April 8.
I hadn’t seen the notice because I was out of town when he passed. And in the blur of my life since, it only occurred to me lately that I hadn’t talked to Charlie. Shame on me.
As I said, I have a job that brings me in daily contact with conflict, and that can be taxing and trying.
But there also are great gifts to be found in such a minefield, and Charlie Yale was one of those, and I hope I let him know that, when it counted.
He was smart and sunny and sweet, and he believed in sharing the good — the air of a tune, the meter of a line — even when he called to point out a goof or a gaffe.
I keep something he sent posted on a wall next to my desk, a daily reminder about finding peace and peace finding you, that really speaks to who and what this gentleman was:
Who seeks for heaven alone to save his soul,
May keep the path, but will not reach the goal;
While he who walks in love may wander far,
Yet God will bring him where the blessed are.
I wouldn’t have met Charlie Yale were it not for this job.
So I am, some days, where the blessed are — “talking monkeys” included or not.
I’ll miss you, Charlie.
