The Academy Awards show is in progress right now on another TV station. I chose tonight to watch the encore PBS Hawaii broadcasts of my 2007 conversation with former Hawaii news anchor Bob Sevey, at his home in Washington State.
I'm still coming to grips with Bob's death Friday, more than two years after he was diagnosed with cancer (lymphona).
CV, or Captain, as we members of his old KGMB (Honolulu) newsroom called him, taught me by example about television news. Over the last couple of years, he also taught me by example about facing a terminal disease in a straightforward and even-keeled manner.
First he did everything to inform himself about his illness. He found an outstanding doctor. He asked the doctor a lot of questions. The doc presented analysis and choices; the Cap made his choices and followed a regimen.
CV didn't spend time in self-pity, even when his friends offered sympathy and opportunities to vent, rail and cry. He didn't bring up his condition-- unless asked.
When friends did ask--and they always did--he knew they cared, and he conveyed a great deal without using a lot of words.
And he did so without much emotion. After all, he would say, most of the time the cancer didn't bother him. He was lucky that way, he said. He'd driven himself home after most of his chemo sessions.
He was interested in talking about other things. He wanted to ask questions---about people and places, about opinions and predictions. He was staying connected.
CV had a life to live and he was going to live it, whether it was going to last a long while or a short while.
Cap said he never wondered, why him. After all, he pointed out, he'd already beaten the average life expectancy.
He kept enjoying life. He played golf (just as badly as ever, he pointed out), shared meals with friends, explored the wide world of the web, had a spot of whisky, traveled with his sister, looked forward to his sons' visits.
One day last year he decided to stop chemotherapy. The latest "cocktail" formulation was terribly powerful and caused debilitating side effects. CV knew that the disease had grown stronger than the potent drugs.
While continuing to live in the present, he planned for the future. He tweaked already careful plans to ensure that if he died before his wife Rosalie, who requires 24-hour care for Alzheimers, she would continue to receive the best of care.
When two of his favorite hires and close friends, Linda Coble and Kirk Matthews, flew into town to see him, they spent the weekend sharing memories and laughing. And off they went, with CV using a walker, to gamble the night away at a nearby casino.
It was tough for me, in that TV conversation, to ask CV how he'd like his obituary to read. He wasn't the least bit fazed by the question--he'd reported many deaths and he'd written obits of some people he loved.
He decided he'd want the obit to say that he did the best he could.
Yet another answer, from this consummate communicator and exceptional person, conveying a great deal without using a lot of words.
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