Justice B. Hill

I hadn’t seen Greg Gilligan and Jim Schaefer in a while. Both were friends from my days as a grad assistant at Ohio State oh-so-many years ago. Now, we were eating lunch together at Manuel’s Tavern, a burger-and-beer joint in midtown Atlanta.

We were in the city for a journalism convention. Greg and I came to the convention because we always attended this annual gathering of journalists. Schaefer came for a decidedly different purpose: He was picking up a award for his superb use of the Michigan FOIA laws, work that led to the downfall of Detroit’s mayor and to a Pulitzer Prize.

As we ate, we reminisced about our yesteryears – about the people we’d known and what had happened to them since college. We also talked about a tie that bound so many of us. It was the connection to a professor.

The wave of journalists who flowed through The Lantern and the OSU J-school in the 1970s, ’80s and early ’90s shared that link. For they likely owed any success they had to one man: Dr. John Clarke. The three of us did.

Dr. Clarke opened doors for me during my undergrad days, even though I never took a class from him. Neither had Greg.

And Schaefer, well … he couldn’t remember if he did or didn’t. That shouldn’t surprise anybody who knows Jim Schaefer. He’d been clogging his mind the past 20 years with information he’s used to send corrupt politicians to prison.

One after another, we searched for memories of a man we revered. Greg then told us that he’d heard Dr. Clarke had been in poor health, a thought that saddened me. I asked when was the last time any of us had been in touch with Dr. Clarke. It had been awhile.

So Greg pulled out his cell phone and dialed 411. He decided we owed more to Dr. Clarke than a conversation about him. Greg got the phone number, and he called Dr. Clarke.

He spoke first to Greg and then to Schaefer. I heard the laughter in their voices as they talked, although I could only hear one end of their conversations. Finally, Greg’s cell phone came to me.

I took it and tried to catch Dr. Clarke up on what I’d been doing since I had e-mailed him shortly after Christmas. He knew I’d gone to Buenos Aires, the Paris of South America, to learn Spanish. He asked how that went.

That’s a question I’d heard often from people. My answer to Dr. Clarke was the same one I’d given everybody else: I learned so little Spanish that I didn’t know why I bothered to go. I did, however, have a wonderful time, which made my trip to Buenos Aires worth every peso I spent.

He and I chatted a bit, eager to hold on to the conversation as long as we could. I thanked Dr. Clarke for all his help in my life – for all the things he’d done for me, for Greg, for Schaefer and for many of our friends.

But I owed Dr. Clarke plenty more than thanks. I knew that. I got my grounding in daily journalism because of talks he and I had outside the classroom; I got my summer internship at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution because of him; I got my first full-time job as a copy editor at The Cincinnati Enquirer because of him.

As we wound down our conversation, he told me something that still haunts me.

“Don’t get old,” Dr. Clarke said.

His words had a sadness wrapped around them. His words were unforgettable, echoing in my mind long after he’d uttered them: “Don’t get old.”

I knew what he meant. Dr. Clarke was too wise to think that any of us can keep age at an arm’s length. We all will confront it – face to face. But it’s how we get to old age that matters.

Dr. Clarke got there with grace and class. He’d lived a full, rich life, infusing a love of writing and journalism into hundreds of students. He’d been my friend; he’d been my mentor. I owed him more than I could ever repay him. My words can’t possibly be thanks enough.

Upon hearing my thanks, Dr. Clarke said something that surprised me.

“No,” he told me, “I thank you.”

Years ago, I might have misunderstood what was behind those four words. As a former journalism professor, I know well what Dr. Clarke meant. For just as fledgling journalists benefit from the mentoring of a trusted professor, the professor benefits as well.

What those benefits are grow clearer and clearer as the old professor starts to measure life in days and not in years. He can survey the horizon and see men and women who have prospered under his guidance. They are carrying on his spirit, fighting with the journalistic weapons he’s armed them to use.

At the burger joint, the two men who shared lunch with me — all of us closer to the end of our journalism careers than to the beginning — have used those weapons well.

I’d like to think I have, too. But that would be for others and for Dr. Clarke to decide.

I hope that’s why he thanked me.