A time to reflect

House Speaker Tip O'Neill once observed that "all politics is local politics."

Since then, a good many newspaper editors have paraphrased O'Neill's remark: "All news is local."

That is never more true than when the news involves one of our own.

How many of us have changed the way we regard someone else's problems, woes, misfortunes, sorrows when those same circumstances become a part of our own lives?

There was a sense of personal loss last week when word arrived in the Southeast Missourian newsroom that another soldier from Southeast Missouri had died in Iraq. Each such report brings a time of mourning, but daily life goes on.

When the news came last week, there was the feeling that one of our own family had been lost.

The soldier this time was Camden Bock, son of the managing editor Jill Bock at our sister newspaper in Sikeston, the Standard-Democrat. Jill and her husband, Riley Bock, had just been informed by the U.S. Army that their son, a West Point graduate, had died.

The loss of life during wartime is tragic, and it is the stern price of a strong nation. Others from Southeast Missouri have already made such a sacrifice, and the honor those soldiers have been shown is a demonstration of our collective sense of respect.

Camden Bock was, by all accounts from those who grew up with him and knew him so well in New Madrid, Mo., an exemplary man and soldier.

Most of all, he was a son loved and adored by his parents.

If all news is local, Camden was, in a way, our son too. And we share both the grief of his loss and the joy of his vibrant and well-lived life.