When people die, it’s the living who write the obituaries. What they say about you a lot to do with what you did when you were alive. Here’s an obituary headline from today’s NYT that anyone would be proud of:
Tom Gish, Tenacious Kentucky Newsman, Dies at 82
Mr. Gish and his wife, Pat, overcame floods, threats, arson and attempted suppression to deliver news in the weekly publication with the slogan, “It Screams!”
The Gishes took on previously untouched issues, including strip mining and police corruption. They endured advertising boycotts, faced violent threats and had their newspaper offices firebombed in 1974. The Gishes churned out another issue a week after the episode, with the masthead stating, “It Still Screams!”
*
“It’s hard to run a weekly paper and be aggressive and know that every time you go to the grocery store, you’re going to bump into someone who may not think you’re the greatest guy at that time,” said a longtime journalist, Bill Bishop, who worked at the newspaper from 1975 to 1977. “But they were just fearless and knew their job and did it.”
Let’s scream today.