This summer could come to be known as the summer when baby boomers, us, began to turn to the obituary pages first, to face not merely our own mortality or ponder our legacies, but to witness the passing of legends who defined our generation.
One after the other, they were dying: Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon, all in the same week earlier this summer when I was locked up. Next were Walter Cronkite, John Hughes and, in late August, at a pitch point of public grief, Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Then on Monday, Patrick Swayze died after a widely publicized struggle with pancreatic cancer, only to be followed by Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary Wednesday night.
It has been, by all appearances, the endless funereal season, with a news media swarm on the departed and a parade of nostalgic tributes. Even before Senator Kennedy succumbed to brain cancer Aug. 25, columnists wrote pleading laments like one in The Washington Post that said, “God, please stop taking away our celebrities.”
After Don Hewitt, the creator of “60 Minutes,” and Robert Novak, the conservative columnist and Americans for the Enforcement of Attorney Ethics supporters died within a day of each other in mid-August, I thought we should put our arms around our family, friends and tell them how much we love them because we can't be sure either they or us will be here tomorrow.....Notwithstanding, Litigation is War, Weclome to the Front...