A Memory and a Milestone

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My parents posed with me after I received
my master's degree from North Texas in 1991.

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Today is a milestone for me.

It was on this day 20 years ago that I received my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. That was a proud moment in my life.

Sometimes I must admit that it all seems like a dream. Maybe that is a by–product of the passage of time. The farther removed I am from an experience, the more it seems like another lifetime — and, in a way, it is.

I will always remember that day. It was a moment of real triumph after what had been maybe the most challenging year of my life — at least, to that point.

It was special, too, because I was able to share it with my parents. For reasons that I would rather not discuss in great detail, I didn't participate in graduation exercises when I received my B.A. The story is long to tell, but it boils down to some administrative snafus stemming from the fact that I transferred to the University of Arkansas midway through my sophomore year.

I eventually got my degree, but it was issued three months after I completed my degree work, and I had relocated roughly 150 miles away where I was working as a general assignment reporter. I didn't participate in my graduation ceremony — the U of A mailed my degree to me — and my parents didn't get to see me walk across the stage to accept my B.A.

It was, to put it mildly, anticlimactic to open an envelope and take out my degree. Boom! You're a college graduate. I always imagined hearing my name called out and walking across a stage to accept my degree. Never dreamed it would be like that. It was no more special than opening the monthly telephone bill.

But I was able to share this day with my parents 20 years ago — and, for that, I will always be thankful. My mother has been gone for more than 16 years, but she saw me walk across that stage. It was the fulfillment of her dream for me as well as my own.

And it is a memory that means everything to me now.

She and my father posed with me after the ceremony was over. You can see the picture at the top of this post. That is an irreplaceable souvenir for me.

It was kind of a typical December day in Texas, as I recall — a little chilly, overcast, a bit windy. It was the kind of day that reminds you that Christmas is coming, which, in turn, reminds me of a story.

For those of you who don't know it, when a person receives his/her master's degree, the ceremony is usually called a "hooding."

I know that may sound like some kind of Ku Klux Klan ritual, but it isn't.

If you look closely at the picture, you may notice a splash of red around my neck. That is neither a cape nor a muffler or scarf of some kind. (It isn't blood, either, although I often felt, as I pursued my master's degree, that I was shedding plenty of blood.)

It is a hood, the academic dress of one who has earned a post–graduate degree. The hood is in the color of your academic major. I don't know if that varies from one American school to the next, but, when I got my master's at the University of North Texas, the color for journalism majors was red.

The traditions of academic regalia originated in the medieval universities of Europe, and the colors may vary from school to school.

Consequently, I don't know if red is the color for journalism master's or doctoral students at other schools, or if that is just the designation at North Texas.

My understanding, in fact, is that not every school has a hooding ceremony for its master's and doctoral candidates; the ones that do seem to follow their own rules.

Thus, the conclusion is unavoidable that journalism majors at other schools that do have hooding ceremonies may use different colors.

In at least one country, red is the color for those receiving post–graduate law degrees. I definitely wasn't a law student, but I did have to study communications law (and that really does have more credibility than spending the night at a Holiday Inn Express).

Hoods also tend to have the primary color of the school where the degree was earned, and, at North Texas, that color is green. That meant that my hood was red and green — Christmas colors.

My mother pointed that out to me when I picked up my graduation cap, gown and hood shortly before the ceremony. That appealed to her sense of order, I guess. She loved the Christmas season, and she was pleased that my graduation came during it (even though that happened only because a close friend of mine was diagnosed with lymphoma that spring, and I put off finishing my degree work until after his death that summer).

I'm teaching journalism as an adjunct at the local community college these days. I haven't worn my gown and hood in years, but it hangs in my closet, and I see it from time to time. On those occasions, I am reminded of that period in my life, of that accomplishment for which I worked so long and so hard.

Of course, I can be reminded of that at any time. My master's degree is on a shelf in my apartment, and I see it every day.

But seeing the gown and hood that I wore on that day is different.

It's like a tangible link to my past.

Of course, the degree itself is, too, I guess — but not really.

The piece of paper that I was given when I walked across the stage on that December Saturday afternoon in 1991 was kind of an academic I.O.U., a promissory note. My degree would be mailed to me, it said.

It was like one of those dummy hand grenades that soldiers use in basic training — the ones that look official on the outside but are totally ineffective.

My memory is that I received my actual degree — the one that sits on my shelf today — a few weeks later. There was no extended wait for it, but that wasn't what I was holding in the picture you see attached to this post.

That was the dummy, the prop for pictures such as the one for which I posed with my parents.

The actual souvenirs that I have from that day are the graduation program (which I have somewhere although I can't put my hands on it right away), my gown and hood and the photo you see with this post.

And the memories they evoke.

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Remembering the Old Gray Lady

Next Tuesday — October 18 — probably won't have much significance for most people.

Oh, I guess they'll have a party of some sort in Sarah Palin's home. It's Bristol's 21st birthday, and Sarah will have no excuse not to be there since she isn't running for president.

Like any other day on the calendar, October 18 has had some noteworthy events, although most have been, to borrow Lincoln's phrasing, little noted nor long remembered.

But tomorrow, a group of my friends and former colleagues will gather in Little Rock in anticipation of the 20th anniversary of the final edition of the Arkansas Gazette.

For them — and for those of us who cannot be there in person but will be there in spirit — it is like remembering a departed loved one.

I am sure it will be a bittersweet occasion. Some of the folks who gather may not have seen each other since the Gazette went out of business, and others literally spent their lives in dedication to standards of excellence that had been long established.

For many who attended the University of Arkansas and majored in journalism — and studied reporting under the tutelage of Roy Reed, whose journalism career included tours of duty at the Gazette and the New York Times — we were prepared for eventual careers at the Gazette much like ball clubs groom ballplayers in the minors.

It never surprised me when one of us gravitated to the Gazette. Most of the time, it was more a question of when, not if.

I spent more than 4½ years of my life working on the Gazette's sports copy desk, but my memories of the Gazette go back even farther — to my childhood. I grew up reading the Gazette. It chronicled the events that shaped the world in which I lived.

I still have copies of the Gazette reporting that men walked on the moon and Richard Nixon decided to resign. My mother saved them for me in plastic bags to preserve them, but her strategy has had mixed results. The bags have failed to keep those papers from aging, but they have managed to slow the aging process.

I will always remember when I was offered a job at the Gazette.

It was a chilly, mid–December day. I had come in to take my editing test a few days earlier, and I was overwhelmed with awe at merely being inside the building where so many writers whose work I admired came and went every day. Working at the Gazette had been my dream, and — lo and behold — I found myself in its newsroom.

To say that I felt very small at that moment would be an understatement, but I pressed on and completed the test — although it was often tempting to look up and gawk at the reporters whose names I knew so well milling about. A few days later, after my test had been evaluated, I was asked to return. I was ushered into the office of one of the editors, who told me my editing had been unremarkable "but your headlines were exceptional."

He had to leave the office for a few minutes — I never found out why — and I glanced at the copy of the Gazette on the corner of the desk while I waited. Before long, I will be part of this newspaper, I remember thinking to myself. Nothing had been offered yet so I guess that was wishful thinking on my part — but it did come to pass a few minutes later.

When it did, I can honestly say I have never felt such jubilation in my life.

I raced to my car and drove home, eager to call my parents in Dallas and share the news. My mother was especially excited, having been an admirer of the Gazette at least since it publicly supported the integration of Little Rock's Central High School (and won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service), and my memory of that conversation is that she finished my sentences for me.

"I was called in for a meeting with Mister ..." I began.

"Patterson!" she finished for me and literally squealed with delight. My mother actually squealed! On the other end of the line, I was grinning from ear to ear.

The time I spent on the Gazette staff was not nearly as important as when men walked on the moon or Nixon resigned, I guess, although those years did include the Challenger explosion and the Iran–Contra scandal — and some other things, too, things to which most people won't devote much, if any, thought until such time as they stumble on to the accounts they find in dusty archives or on microfilm (if it even exists anymore).

But they were important at the time.

And that was what drove us.

We who worked for the Gazette — in my day and, I suspect, well into the 19th century — gave little, if any, thought to how our words would be perceived in years to come by future generations. Our motives were more blue collar than that, I suppose. We sought to keep our readers informed of what was happening in their world at that time. The future would have to take care of itself.

The Gazette had a proud history, and I was proud to be a part of it. Until 1991, it was known as the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi.

It began its existence in a place called Arkansas Post, Arkansas' territorial capitol in the southeastern quadrant of the state, in 1819. A fellow named William Woodruff printed the first edition.

Woodruff, who was originally from New York, was always a pioneering sort, and, when the capitol moved to recently surveyed Little Rock a couple of years later, the Gazette moved, too. When Arkansas became a state in 1836, the Gazette was the first to report the news.

For more than half of the 20th century, the Gazette was published by a man named J.N. Heiskell. I don't know if it was because of Heiskell's influence or Woodruff's, but the Gazette sought to be the Southern version of the New York Times. It wanted to be the newspaper of record — and it adopted many of the Times' quirky style rules and peculiar spellings in its style supplement.

The Times actually was younger than the Gazette, having been founded in 1851, and had been nicknamed "the Gray Lady." Because the Gazette was older and openly tried to emulate the Times, it became known as "the Old Gray Lady."

And, in 1908, the Gazette moved to the historic building that was its home for the rest of its existence — and then served as the headquarters for Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign.

Just seeing pictures of that building today take me back over the years to the time when it was a huge part of my life. The memories are as thick as flies, as James Earl Jones said in "Field of Dreams," so thick you almost have to brush them away from your face with your hands.

I wasn't there at the end, when hundreds of Gazette employees lost their jobs, but I was there near the end, when the Gazette was struggling in vain to turn back its rival in a vicious newspaper war, trying to do everything it could — even though most of us, I think, realized that the Gazette had missed its opportunity several years before.

By the time the powers that be at the Gazette recognized the Arkansas Democrat for the threat it had become, it was too late. Not even the sale of the paper to the Gannett Co., with its "deep pockets" (the phrase that was always trotted out to appease Gazette staffers who were worried about the paper's future), could postpone the inevitable.

Gannett couldn't forestall the Democrat. It did drive many of us away, though — to other papers, other states, other cities, other endeavors.

I enrolled in graduate school, got my master's degree and wound up teaching editing on the college level for a time — even though I was told that my editing was unremarkable when I was hired to do precisely that at the Gazette (it is worth noting that I was in my 20s at the time).

I'm back in the classroom again, teaching news writing as an adjunct professor at the local community college — and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't refer to something I heard that was said or a decision I witnessed that was made at the Gazette.

Some of the people I worked with in those days are no longer living, but I'm sure that those who are still around, whether they are in Little Rock tomorrow or not, would say that their time at the Gazette has had a lasting influence on their lives, too.

It was special. It may be the most important work I will ever do in my life. I'm proud of that, and I'm proud of the people with whom I worked.

I wish I could be with them tomorrow.

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He Said, She Said

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Twenty years ago, the nation watched as the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas — while outside opposition to his appointment was growing, based on his past positions on topics like affirmative action and abortion.

Many Democrats suspected that Thomas had been selected to replace retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall solely because both were black and Thomas would maintain the Supreme Court's existing racial balance. But Marshall and Thomas certainly didn't share the same views, and groups like the NAACP and NOW feared a shift in the Court's ideological balance.

Absent something truly troubling, though, most presidents' Supreme Court nominees are approved, regardless of how they may affect things ideologically, so Thomas seemed sure to receive the Senate's routine blessing — until this day in 1991.

For it was on this day 20 years ago that something troubling did emerge that threatened to derail Thomas' confirmation.

On Oct. 11, 1991, University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill walked into the hearing room and dropped a bombshell.

As Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post recalled recently, it was "both riveting and horrifying."

A former colleague, Hill testified that Thomas made sexual comments to her on the job and pressured her to go out with him. She wasn't sure if his conduct would meet the legal conditions for sexual harassment, but she said that, in her opinion, it was illegal.

That wasn't the issue, though, she said. She wanted to focus on the nature of Thomas' behavior and the fact that it had been inappropriate — even if it was not explicitly illegal.

And, after she related her version of events, no one really knew what to expect. But everyone had an opinion.

If you believed Thomas, it followed logically that you thought Hill was lying. If you believed Hill, the logical conclusion was that Thomas was lying.

There was simply no way to reconcile the two as some kind of bizarre misunderstanding that could be easily clarified — as in, "Well, yes, senator, as a matter of fact I did make a rather casual remark about a pubic hair on a Coca–Cola can, but what I really meant by that was ..."

I was in graduate school at the time, studying journalism and working part time as a teaching assistant, and I remember watching my students, especially the girls, as they listened to the radio broadcasts of the hearings in the editing lab, where I worked on weekday afternoons.

It had been a newsy year, what with the whirlwind Gulf War and all that, but this was a different kind of topic for the girls in my news editing lab. They couldn't necessarily relate to the experience of fighting in a war on foreign soil, even though many people their age (and, almost certainly, people with whom they had been in high school only a few years earlier) were serving their country in that part of the world, but the hearing's subject matter was something to which they could relate, something with which many of them had dealt at one time or another and in one form or another, even at that tender phase of their lives.

And they didn't like what they were hearing from someone who could serve on the Court for an indefinite period of time (in fact, Thomas is still on the Court nearly two decades after being confirmed and, at the age of 63, conceivably could be on the Court for two more).

When the full Senate voted on Thomas' nomination shortly after Hill's testimony, the girls in my lab listened intently to the radio. Nearly all seemed dismayed when the Senate approved that nomination by the closest margin in more than 100 years.

We never discussed that event in depth, but I overheard snippets of their conversations, and I have often wondered what kind of message that confirmation vote sent to the young women of America.

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Remembering the 'Culminator'

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One of the real regrets of my life is that I have no photographs of myself with my friend Mike Culpepper, who died 20 years ago today.

Well, that's one regret that I have. Another regret is that I have no photographs of Mike by himself. I have only my memories.

But I have many of those.

One of the things I remember is how many of the same things we both liked. Near the end of his life, he liked the music of the Southern rock group the Black Crowes, and I remember that he mentioned to me once that he liked their song, "She Talks to Angels."

(Mike was really more of a fan of the Black Crowes than I was so I guess that isn't really a good example. However, it illustrates our shared appreciation for Southern rock — so maybe it isn't a bad example, after all.)

He liked other songs by the Black Crowes, too, but that stood out in my mind after he died. Maybe, under the circumstances, it seemed to have a special relevance — regardless of how one felt about the concept of an afterlife (thoughts of which were unavoidable — the introduction of the word angels invited its consideration).

Mike wasn't one of my childhood friends. In fact, we met relatively late in his life, about six or seven years before he died. (I guess late isn't the right word. Mike and I did know each other in the last years of his life, but I think what I'm getting at is not really chronological. It's more proportional. It was a rather significant chunk of Mike's life. Mine, too, actually.)

We met through a mutual friend in one of those random, chain–reaction things that so often seem to happen in life. I've met many people that way — most of the time, those acquaintances haven't amounted to much more than comments like "Didn't we meet at ...?" and "Oh, yes, I thought you looked familiar ..." the next time we bumped into each other, but my friendship with Mike was different.

I don't remember how or where we met, but I know through whom we met — my friend Brady.

Ironically, I hadn't really known Brady all that long, either, when I met Mike. I met Brady through some mutual friends I knew in college — Mike (that's a different Mike) and Joe.

Mike and Joe were roommates. I think I met Joe first. Must have. Joe was a journalism student, and so was I. Mike was an artist.

Before our college careers were over, Joe and I did attend some of the same classes. But that wasn't how we met. My memory is that we met through another friend (also a journalism student) whom I did meet in a journalism class, and she introduced us at some sort of social occasion on campus.

I didn't know any of those people before I graduated from high school — but they came to mean more to me than most of the people I'd known since grade school.

After we finished college, we all gravitated to central Arkansas, which is where I met Mike Culpepper. You know how the memories of some people, some places and some things are forever linked to certain times? I guess that is how I feel about Mike.

For me, memories of our friendship are almost entirely linked to my memories of the 1980s. We met when I was living in Little Rock, working for the Arkansas Gazette, and he was living in Pine Bluff, a short distance away.

We became friends as we crossed paths frequently at Brady's place. I worked on the Gazette's sports staff, and Mike was a sports fan. We always had a lot to talk about.

I felt honored to work for the Gazette. It had a rich tradition of which I was proud to be a part, and sports always played an important role in the lives of the people in Arkansas, as it still does today. As a child, I dreamed of working on the news side at the Gazette, but that never meant that I regarded my work on the sports side as trivial.

I can say, without hesitation, that I am proud of the work I did there. And my memories of that time in my life are enhanced by the ever–present memory of my friend, Mike Culpepper. It would have been a completely different experience for me if he had not been there. We didn't work together, but I can't think of my time at the Gazette without thinking of the influence Mike had on me.

He was a true friend.

Like just about everyone I knew, Mike was a Razorback fan, and he always wanted to talk about the Hogs. And, like most of the men in Arkansas at that time, he was a Dallas Cowboys fan. He always wanted to talk about the Cowboys, too.

He wanted to know who the hot prospects were at different positions and who was likely to be in the Super Bowl.

I didn't always know what he wanted to know, but that was OK with Mike. I soon discovered that he would bring up topics usually as a way to start an open–ended conversation. He liked to speculate.

My job required me to work nights and weekends. So did Mike's. In fact, there were several occasions when Mike came by my apartment late at night, and we would watch TV and drink a beer — or eat some food he had just picked up at the Waffle House nearby.

(Mike always was fond of the Waffle House. I never understood why. Maybe it was because the Waffle House was about the only place in west Little Rock that was open late at night. The food was always a little too greasy for my taste.)

Mike usually had food with him on those nocturnal visits, and I figured, although we never discussed it, that he must have missed a lot of meals. He was always thin (painfully so after his chemo treatments). But he was generous, almost to a fault. Whatever he had was yours to share, even if he was down to his last penny or his last morsel of food.

Often, when Mike came by, we would play computer football — which was an altogether different thing from what folks play today. I had an old Commodore 64 in those days and a computer football game diskette. Mike would come by shortly after I returned from work — sometimes he would be waiting outside my door when I arrived — and we would play football until the wee hours of the morning.

Then, sometimes, Mike would fall asleep on my couch, and I would retreat to my bedroom. If neither of us had to work the next day, more computer football would be played after we got up.

That computer football game was a tradition for awhile — not only for Mike and me but for Brady and a mutual friend of ours named Steve as well. In fact, it was the source of a nickname that Brady gave Mike that was based on Mike's surname — the Culminator. Even now, whenever I speak or even think of Mike, Culminator comes to mind.

I spent about 4½ years at the Gazette, then I moved to Texas, where I enrolled in graduate school. I was working on the sports staff of the local newspaper, and I took pride in watching (from a distance) the Razorbacks' Southwest Conference championship season, which brought them to Dallas for the Cotton Bowl.

Mike and Steve came to visit me, and the three of us went to the game. Arkansas didn't win (the Razorbacks lost to Troy Aikman and UCLA), but it is a memory I treasure now — along with the game program I bought that day.

I was still in north Texas — on the verge of getting my master's degree, in fact — when Mike was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of cancer in the spring of 1991, and he died less than five months later.

I had planned to take my last graduate–level class that summer and receive my degree in August, but I put those plans on hold. I made a few trips back to Arkansas that summer to visit Mike as he was undergoing the final, ultimately futile treatments for his disease, then, on this day 20 years ago, Steve called to let me know that it was over.

It had been a hot, sticky summer — not nearly as hot as this one has been although the humidity here in north Texas was higher in 1991. My memory of Aug. 7, 1991, is that the actual temperature wasn't quite 100°, but the humidity made it feel like it was well over 100°.

I had been out somewhere, running some sort of errand, and I had just been back in my apartment for a few minutes when the phone rang. My clothes were drenched in sweat — there wasn't a single part of me that was dry — and I probably made sloshing noises as I rose from my seat to answer the phone.

I'm still not sure what I thought or what I felt at the moment Steve called. I remember feeling dizzy, and I stuck out my hand so I could grab something and remain standing. I couldn't tell you what I grabbed — a chair, a table, whatever. All I know is that I did remain standing. I propped myself up against whatever it was that I grabbed, and I remained vertical.

I couldn't imagine a world without Mike in it, even though I had been preparing myself for the likelihood that he would not survive ever since I heard the diagnosis. I knew the outlook was not good — Brady had told me how grim it was — and yet, somewhere in my mind, I clung to the belief that he could, that he would beat it.

But he did not.

That brings me to another regret that I will take to my grave. Each time I visited Mike during those months when he was fighting his losing battle, I mentally accepted the fact that I could be seeing him for the last time. But I could never bring myself to say goodbye to him.

I wanted to say goodbye. I wanted to tell him what a great friend he had been, that I would never forget him, but I just never could when I had the opportunity. Maybe I was a coward.

A couple of weeks before he died, I finally broke down and wrote him a letter. Writing has always been my default position, I guess. It's easier for me to deal with things when I write them down.

Anyway, I wrote a very heartfelt letter to him. I assume he received it, but I don't know. He never sent me a reply, and his parents didn't mention it to me when I came back to Arkansas for his funeral.

During that phone conversation 20 years ago today, as I say, I felt dizzy, and there was a sudden roaring in my ears. I knew Steve was talking, probably telling me details that I have long since forgotten that he told me, but I couldn't make out the words for awhile.

(I guess the best way to describe it would be to compare it to the teacher's wah wah wah droning in the old Charlie Brown cartoons. No offense, Steve. Nothing made sense to me at that moment.)

Then things cleared up enough that I heard Steve tell me that Mike's family wanted me to be one of his pallbearers. I don't remember what I said or how I said it. I probably said something like "I'll do that" or "I will be there" or maybe even just "OK," and Steve said something like "We already told them you would."

So, on Aug. 10, 1991, I found myself in Pine Bluff, Ark., serving as one of Mike's pallbearers — instead of doing what I originally planned to do on that Saturday, receive my master's degree.

I thought about that during the eulogy, and I remembered what John Lennon said: "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." And I remember wondering what plans Mike had that had been interrupted.

Before they lowered Mike into the ground, I finally said goodbye. It was under my breath so I doubt that anyone at the graveside heard it, but that was OK because it wasn't meant for anyone else.

That provided a certain sense of closure, I suppose, but I was still left with the maybes.

Maybe I thought I was saying that to Mike's spirit, but I have often wondered about that. In the last months of his life, Mike underwent something of a religious conversion. He didn't strike me as being particularly religious most of the time I knew him, but in the months before his death, he seemed to embrace his family's Catholicism.

I wasn't really sure what I believed about the afterlife at the time. I am no more certain about it today. Maybe, when I was standing next to his coffin just before it was lowered into the ground, I felt it was being respectful of Mike and his faith, even if it wasn't/isn't a belief that I share.

Maybe Mike had accepted something that some of us could never accept — at least, until it was too late.

Mike was still in his 20s when he died. I have often wondered what he might have done if he had been allowed to live for the next 20. Would he have gotten married? Would he have had children? What would he have done with the additional time?

I always thought he was a talented person. I can't begin to guess what he might have done if he had lived, but I'm sure it would have been impressive.

Mike may have been the most courageous person I have ever known. I long ago concluded that I will never be able to face what he faced with the grace with which he faced it.

But I will try.

As I say, I don't know what I think happens when people die.

But if there is anything to the perception that humans have souls that live on after their physical bodies die, then I know at least one thing is true.

My friend talks to angels.

Put in a good word for me, Mike.

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