THE PUBLIC MIND: LIMBAUGH RECALLED AS `GREAT CHARACTER'

Dear Editor:

Your editorial Monday, Dec. 10, 1990, on Rush Limbaugh Jr. moved me to tears. I truly liked what was written but the tears came because of what was not said.

Rush's accomplishments were many, but the most important thing left to those who were fortunate to have known him was a view of a magnificent personality. Rush was one of Cape Girardeau's great characters of all time!

Rush was not a man of moderation. He had phenomenal abilities and wasted more God-given gifts than most of us will ever receive. But with the gifts he utilized, he was able to teach many of us a lot about the world. Many people were afraid of Rush because he was so big and so loud and so opinionated, but who could not value a man who really told you how he felt, who wore his heart on his shirt sleeve, and when he told you you were beautiful or brilliant, you knew he really meant it deep down in his soul?

I think of Rush as carrying an invisible magnifying glass around with him all of his life. Any time he looked at anything, he saw it a hundred times larger and more important than the rest of us did. That way he was able to be an incredible advocate for his clients and a most despicable adversary for his opponents. Also in that way, if someone hurt his feelings, it caused him enormous emotional trauma, and when someone made him happy, his joy knew no bounds. Rush was a man of superlatives and extremes. His charisma sent my emotions swirling every time I sat down to talk to him.

As I sat at the funeral Monday, I wondered how many people sitting there could say as I could, that some of the most terrible battles of their lives had been fought with Rush. And yet, for those of us who were there, our friendship survived those battles and we loved him for caring enough to fight them with us.

I understand full-well why some people overcame great distances and infirmities to come to say farewell to him, and why others who knew him well did not make the effort. Some of us just stacked up a different number of good experiences versus bad experiences with Rush. That's the way Rush wanted it. As for me, I am just glad for the time I knew him, for the examples he set for me - both good and bad - from which I learned.

Your editorial was fine and much appreciated, but in my opinion the most important legacies for those of us who knew him was that he taught us how to live and how not to live, and many of us are better people for having had his instruction and example.

Name withheld

by request.