Jeff Cohen, editor of the Houston Chronicle, said what so many of us felt a few weeks ago:
“God must have been in the mood to have people telling him stories this week because he took two great ones, Mike Levine and Art Buchwald.”
I didn’t know Mr. Buchwald, other than from the years of joy I received from reading him. But I knew Mike Levine and I, like countless others, was blessed by knowing him.
Mike, executive editor of the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y., died on a Sunday morning at the age of 54. His death left us poorer, but his life left his newspaper and his community and his friends richer.
Mike was an editor who never stopped being a reporter and a writer. He was an editor who never stopped being a teacher. He was an editor who understood how you could go directly to the heart of a story.
Physically, he wasn’t big. But the footprints he left at his paper and in his community, as a columnist and as a leader, were huge. If there is any doubt about that, take time to read Mike’s Legacy Guest Book. There are dozens of pages, many of them filled by readers, some who knew him personally, most who knew him only by his work and by his gift to bring the newspaper and the community together.
Listen to just a few readers speak of him:
“I remember saying to someone, ‘You mean that this guy actually walks amongst us?’ Mike Levine was one of the good guys. That he no longer walks in our midst is too depressing to even contemplate.”
“Mike, you left us a better place to live. You touched us with your warm heart every day.”
“Mike Levine could always touch a topic and turn a phrase in such a way that so warmly encouraged me. He inspired me to forever strive toward perfect expression in the written word by showing me how gorgeous an achievement it could be.”
“He captured humanity at its best and worst. He had heart. So much heart.”
“So many of us never met Mike Levine and yet he seemed to be so much a part of our lives. He had the ability to stir emotions in us and make us more aware of the world around us. A man with such caring and great wit — what a loss for us all.”
Or from colleagues:
“His sportswriters had to find the heat of the story every time. ‘Where’s the buzz?’ he would ask. Or maybe he would tell a writer to ‘make me care about one jock or another.’ “
“Know that this is Mike Levine’s newspaper. And this is a little bit of what I’ve learned from him over the past decade: Here, the voices of regular people are welcomed and respected. Here, the arrogance of power will be challenged. Always ask the extra question, the one that makes you uncomfortable. Always listen to the answer — really listen. Be fair. Be true.”
“Working with Mike was like sitting at the keyboard with Beethoven. Only there would be chicken wings all over the room and grease on the keyboard.”
Or from his sons, Ben and Sam:
“From the moment we were born, you taught us to do the right thing. To you, Dad, the ‘right thing’ was repairing this tattered world into which you brought us.
“We grew up knowing this: It doesn’t matter if you are born a Vanderbilt or a vagrant, you better help someone. This world needs it. Dad, you instilled a goodness in our hearts that will last for generations.”
The first time I met Mike, my initial impression was that this guy is a fighter, someone you would want at your back. A fighter with the soul of an old-school newspaperman. And that’s what drove him as an advocate of watchdog journalism. “It feels right in my bones,” he would say.
Why should we be the watchdogs?
Listen to Mike in a piece on Poynter Online:
“Because we get to take readers seriously again, not as marketing targets to be pandered to, but as citizens to be engaged.
“Because there are crooks out there with smiles and suits and PR machines.
“Because while newspapers are knocking their brains out trying to be slick, we discovered a new breed of journalists begging us to be noble and a new generation of Americans turning to us for justice.
“Because government doesn’t want us to. Because the people do.
“Because on some days, when we read yet another obituary of newspapers, watchdog reporting is all that saves us from the sin of despair.
“And, finally, because watchdog reporting is an act of faith.”
Once Mike called me to discuss a piece he had written for The American Editor about sports columnists and their multimedia pursuits. We were just two former sports guys reminiscing about Jimmy Cannon and Red Smith, Roger Angell and Gary Smith, John McPhee and Frank Deford, William Nack and Richard Ben Cramer, and many others who thrilled us with the beauty of their stories, who created art with words.
It was fun, as it always was when you talked with Mike. You knew there would always be moments of laughter.
In the paper’s coverage of Mike’s life and death, his wife, Ellen, was quoted on how he had taught her to tell jokes. “G’s and K’s are always funny,” Mike told her. “R’s are not.”
She also talked about their last hours together. “We danced. We talked. We loved each other. And then this giant of a man fell down and his big heart stopped.”
His heart stopped much too soon, but his legacy will live on in the hearts of those he loved, those he taught, those he inspired.
Thanks, Mike.
