THOUGHTS OF MORTALITY AND THEIR ODD HALF-LIFE

For the dozen or so years I've written a personal column, my aim has been to write what's on my mind. Notwithstanding the tedium this has inflicted on countless readers, I've used the opportunities to try to cleanse myself of confounding or intriguing thoughts.

Not always are these writings cathartic. Many times I finish them more ponderous than before.

I sense this is going to be one of those times.

On my mind recently has been mortality ... my own, that of friends and loved ones, and generally. It strikes me that our minds put a peculiar and mercuric half-life on such thoughts, because we recognize them so clearly and deeply once they expose themselves, yet they fade suddenly.

Unless you're Woody Allen and make a living with that brand of nihilism, your instinct is to lament life's cruel progress at the necessary times and then put it out of your mind. That's probably a good thing.

But lamentation is where I am of late, with the half-life drift now into rumination.

A good friend and co-worker was laid low recently by a heart attack and faces bypass surgery in the coming week. Another friend in Nashville was at the doctor last week with an irregular heart beat, something to do with cardiac electrical impulses and their caprice.

These incidents make me wonder about my own lifestyle, my own habits. I worry too much, don't sleep as much as I should, exercise about as often as an eclipse comes around and count french fries as part of my daily vegetable intake. It would surprise me if the inside of my body knows my chronological age.

Still, the real source of my musings is Mike Sturm.

If for no other reason, Mike Sturm's death Sunday should upset me, as an editor, because I've lost one of the best readers of this newspaper.

As circulation manager of the Southeast Missourian, he did more than just the difficult job of making sure the product got to its appointed and far-flung destinations. He was an avid reader who took a great interest in our daily coverage. In crossing paths in the hallways of this building, Mike would often share his thoughts with me about certain news items and suggest some story ideas.

In a way, this news interest was expressed to me the first day I worked in Cape Girardeau. It was June 1980 and I pulled into the parking lot of the Bulletin-Journal building to begin my new job as sports editor.

Having just left the teaching profession, my stomach was in knots at this prospect, and as I got out of my car and began a nervous walk toward the building, a voice called to me from a second floor window that overlooked the parking lot.

My greeting to the company went like this: "Hey, you can't park there!"

I slinked back to my car and relocated it to a spot so far away I thought I'd need a tram to get back. Within minutes of getting in the building, dry-mouthed and shaken, Mike Sturm appeared before me, a big smile on his face, and said, "Welcome to the Bulletin-Journal."

The shouted warning, I learned, had come from Ray Knoll, the circulation manager at the time, but Mike admitted to sharing a laugh at my reaction. Mike also told me he was a former teacher and coach who read the sports pages religiously. He said he looked forward to seeing my work.

I told him I'd try not to disappoint him with my writing or my parking. The important thing to me that day, though, was that he instantly made me feel part of the team.

It was always that way with him. Over the years, as my duties and his duties changed, Mike and I engaged in a classic industry battle between those in the food chain of newspaper production: I wanted later deadlines to create the news product, he wanted earlier news deadlines to satisfy the demands of delivery.

Yet whenever we came away from these fights, I had never lost respect for him, and I hope he never lost respect for me.

In fact, the trait I most admired in Mike was his even-handed style. And, to use a phrase fancied by my parents, it was obvious he was "raised right." In a usually thankless job where customer feedback is restricted to those occasions where something goes awry, Mike had the capacity to handle complaints graciously. Here's a lesson I would have been glad for him to teach my children: there's no telling how much mileage you can get from a "please" and "thank you."

In short, he was a gentleman.

In Mike's memorial service Wednesday, a colleague observed the number of people in attendance whom we couldn't exactly place, and we wondered how Mike had affected their lives. Left unsaid, we probably extended these reflections to wonder how we ourselves affect the lives of others.

If lucky, maybe we do that in a positive way. If lucky, maybe we'll do it as well as Mike.

Ken Newton is editor of the Southeast Missourian.