I’ve been in mourning this week about the Packers’ loss to the Seahawks. I’ll get over that. Maybe not by Super Bowl Sunday, but someday.

What I’m not over, and never will be, is the loss of Deborah Howell, my fiercest editor-foe-fan-believer. She died five years ago in New Zealand, when she popped out of a car to take a photograph and was hit by an oncoming car. It was mere weeks after she finally retired and was exploring the rest of life with her husband, C. Peter MaGrath. Barely two months since she had been at the Missouri School of Journalism to receive a coveted Honor Medal.

I don’t know why I’m thinking of her more than usual today, except that I’m back at Mizzou, for the start of the semester, presuming to guide the next generation of journalists and, I hope, humans. A grad student from Shanghai came to my office, wanting to talk about writing; her voice quaked with anxiety. A junior introduced herself when I was at a business lunch at the University Club, where she waitresses to help pay tuition; her voice also quaked with nervousness, and when I asked why, she said she had been to a guest lecture of mine and was awed and intimidated.

Those young women never see the part of me that hears my younger self in the echo of their quake. Or the quakes that still shake me, daily. What they see is tall and confident and brash and blue jeans and boots and black sweaters and intensity and, God forbid, intimidation. (They probably also see “old,” but that’s a musing for another time.) But I was them not so long ago, wondering what the hell I was doing, and if I was good enough, and bracing for the moment someone would tap me on the shoulder and call me out as the impostor I felt I was.

I have worked with some really stupid-bad editors. But I have worked with many more who are stupidly good and challenging and the right kind of tough and the right kind of kind. Editors who knew me. Editors who grew me. Editors who tapped me on the shoulder and said: “You’re better than you think you are. So be that. And don’t fuck up.”

Editors like Deborah Howell. She was no saint. Far from. I was awed by her, and intimidated. Most of the time I was pissed at her. She could be rude and crude and blunt and blustery. She could hatchet beautiful copy with her purple pen. She could be preemptive and presumptive and preachy.

And yet, and yet, and yet…

She believed. In what we did. And in me. And she helped me believe in me. Which is what all the best editors ~ mentors, teachers, parents, friends ~ I’ve known have done.

At my age, I sometimes get asked what I want my “legacy” to be. I have trouble wrapping my head around that question. It feels like being asked what I want sung at my funeral. (Though I have given that some thought, and the Dixie Chicks “Wide Open Spaces” ranks high.)

But the longer Deborah is gone, the more she embeds in me. When I quake or am insecure, the more she provides a guide forward. A kick in my ass. And my hand held.

And the more I want to find what it takes to do the same, in my way, for others.

So for this post (if you’ve gotten this far), I offer the eulogy I did at her memorial service, at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. five years ago. And again today, as I miss her.

http://www.rjionline.org/news/tribute-deborah-howell