Remembering Tim Russert

And Why We Need a Tim Russert Now

May 13, 2024

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“The best exercise for the human heart is reaching down to lift someone else up.”

--Tim Russert

Considering our backgrounds, I should have known Tim Russert better. In the 1950s we both grew up working-class in a South Buffalo, an Irish Catholic neighborhood praised by Tim in Big Russ & Me. Like Tim’s father, mine worked two jobs, sometimes three, to put me and my brother through Catholic grammar school and Canisius High School, where we were taught by the Jesuits. Tim’s father was a sanitation worker; mine was a mailman, who also rode the crane in the steel plant at night. Tim grew up on Woodside Avenue, which was a few blocks from my house on Cantwell Drive. Thus, we shared the same physical and emotional geography of South Buffalo—the smell of ore dust, the local ballparks with their rusty backstops, and the fear that when, on a weekly basis, we stepped into a suffocating wooden booth at St. Ambrose Church to confess our sins, an ancient wine-soaked priest might leap out of the confessional, and yell, “You did what?”

Tim was a year ahead of me at Canisius, whose entrance exam was more difficult than those of the other Catholic schools, and the criteria for acceptance was more stringent—high grades and solid recommendations from grammar school were a must. It was also the “magnet” Catholic high school, supposedly searching for the best and the brightest from all of western New York. Consequently, my classmates ended up being from every part of the city, every suburb within a fifty-mile radius, and from every socio-economic background. In spite of being considered the so-called “elite” students of the region, we were consistently humbled by the Jesuits, who insisted that we embrace a sense of responsibility for others, often mentioning the passage from the Gospel of St. Luke: “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.” It’s no coincidence, as I have mentioned in a previous essay, that Luke’s call to action was partly why my wife and I named our youngest son Lucas, and why, I’m guessing, Tim named his only son Luke.

But Tim and I didn’t hang out much in high school, probably because of our age difference. A year in high school is like five years in the real world. Or maybe we were both caught up in the hormonal confusion of male adolescence to notice each other. I remember being on a committee with Tim to nominate the most accomplished seniors for the Mr. Canisius Award, and because we were both class officers at different times, we were often on other similar committees. Tim ran track for a while. I was in Greek Honors and played basketball and baseball until I got caught up in the late 60s and was happy to graduate and escape to California. Although we all had a “special relationship” with our Prefect of Discipline, appropriately named Father Sturm, I probably spent more time in detention than Tim did, and my friends were probably more “problematic” than his.

But it was fun to see Tim develop on Meet the Press. He was vintage South Buffalo—an in-your-face, no bullshit kind of guy, equally at home with princes and paupers. Still, I was surprised when I had to pull off the road with my wife and youngest son in 2008 when I heard on NPR that Tim had suddenly died. I was even more surprised when friends and strangers in my adopted home state of Rhode Island confessed that they had broken down and cried when they heard the news. For weeks I found myself pouring over old yearbooks and having very strange dreams. It was clear that Tim’s death had resonated with me and others as deeply as the deaths of the Kennedys, and I’m sure people can remember where they were when they got the news of his death.

Having recently reread Big Russ and Me, as well as Luke Russert’s Look for Me There, I’ve asked myself what there was about Tim that made him a lightning rod for so many different generations. Certainly, there are more talking heads today than cockroaches. I’ve come to believe that it was the level of Tim’s authenticity that touched people—his, by all accounts, unlimited generosity, open-mindedness, and idealism. I experienced this generosity myself when the former president of my high school sent Tim a copy of my first young adult novel narrated by a junior at Canisius and published in 2007. I was a bit stunned when I received a handwritten letter from Tim congratulating me on the book, promising to read it, and offering to help promote it, which he never had the chance to. I’m sure you could create a line of people crisscrossing the country with stories similar to mine, probably complete strangers whom Tim went out of his way to aid.

Today, April 30, 2024, I am thinking of Tim yet again, knowing I will be forced to listen to all the lies and counter lies that will culminate in what will probably be one of the weirdest and most sickening presidential campaigns in recent memory. What if Tim were alive? I think. Certainly, he would have asked the hard questions, and he would have demanded the “truth,” whatever that is nowadays. I almost laugh when I consider what he would have made of a phrase like “alternative facts.” I like to think (hope) he would have been tougher on the Republicans than the Democrats, not letting the Republicans evade simple questions with memorized soundbites, but, true to his nature, he probably would have cast his scrutiny equally on both parties.

I don’t know what made Tim Russert be Tim Russert. But I hope we all embrace his memory when listening to the empty-headed sloganeering of this year’s election cycle, and that we force ourselves to ask the difficult questions Tim would have demanded of the candidates.

Certainly, that would be one way to honor his legacy.

The other, as I’m sure Tim would agree, would be to pray for his and my beloved Buffalo Bills to win the Super Bowl this year.

I mean, man, it’s about time!

Old Man Still Howling at the Moon

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