Happy birthday to me and mentor who also chronicled his death - AL.com

This is an opinion column by Mike Oliver who writes about living with Lewy body dementia among other life issues.

Two important birthdays are coming soon.

Oct. 29 and Nov. 9.

I guess they are important. To me they are.

On Nov. 9, I’ll be 60. It’s only important in light of circumstances.

I’m happy to enter another decade of my life. (I wonder when I started thinking of my life in decades anyway?)

The bigger deal birthday, next week on Oct. 29, is of a friend and colleague.

Sean Holton would have been 60 just like I will be in November. Eleven days separated our birth dates in 1959.

Like me, Sean Holton was a lifelong news reporter and editor.

Like me, Sean Holton started a blog to chronicle his death.

Another date: Nov. 29, the 10-year anniversary of Sean’s death at 52

Sean was also a colleague and a friend. He died too early. He was killed by an extremely aggressive brain cancer –a Glioblastoma-multiorme brain tumor which is almost always fatal -- usually in under two years.

As those who have followed My Vinyl Countdown columns, I have been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. It, too, is almost always fatal. On average, LBD patients die 4 to 8 years after diagnosis. I’m at the end of three years now and doing better than I expected (knock on wood).

Ah the synchronicity of it all

Sean and I came to the Orlando Sentinel newspaper about the same time, on the cusp of pre-Internet days in 1986-87. A Northwestern graduate, Holton previously had worked at the Kansas City Star. An Auburn graduate, I had previously worked at the Birmingham News.

After 12-plus years, I left Orlando in 2000, and our family moved to San Francisco where I worked at Bay Area News Group (Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, San Jose Mercury News.)

In the early 2000’s (maybe 2002), Sean came to visit me in San Francisco where he was attending an Investigative Reporters and Editors conference. That was one aspect of journalism we shared – a love of the investigative pieces. Sean was a master of stripping away the pretense that surrounded politics and elections for spot-on political analysis pieces. He eventually went to Washington DC for the Sentinel, and I took over his beat for awhile in Orlando covering the shenanigans of local politicians party, skirmishes and the like.

I was not passionate about politics, and Sean was a tough act to follow. I do remember one time, I believe unintentionally, being criticized by an editor who said let’s cover this GOP ‘Lincoln Day’ dinner (or somesuch event) like Sean would have. In saying this, the editor was basically saying, ‘ahem, don’t use Oliver as a model on this one.’

True that, but gosh.

I did help put a former Speaker of the House in prison down there in Florida, thank you very much. The truth is, I could never write like Sean Holton and few people could. Here’s a sample of his writing. He’s described the ongoing battle in his head, first equating it with the War on Terror and then, as he said, moving to the World War I model.

“Entrenched on the opposite side of the battlefield, are the invisible molecules of my own little French Irinotecan Army, waiting around in their red pants and Foreign Legion style caps for the bi-weekly whistle of the IV monitor. That sound is their signal to swarm over the top of the trench wall for another direct, frontal attack on the enemy. My little Frenchies will fight and die for ground a millimeter at a time, between long bouts of boredom and thinking (wistfully, in French*) about all the women they’ve left behind in Paris. -- From Sean’s blog Same Time Tomorrow

I’ve mostly stayed away from war metaphors to describe the attack on my brain because I feared that framing was too easy and a cliché’. But as you can see, it’s not when Holton does it.

So Sean and I got together in the early 2000s when the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference was in San Francisco. He called up a buddy of his who was working as a correspondent in San Francisco for the Los Angeles Times. We had a taxi-driver-good time, meaning we all needed designated drivers as we went to every restaurant, alley bar, live music venue before finally ending it with coffee. Irish coffee at that place where all they sell is Irish coffees. Great concept. “What you got” I asked. “Irish coffee,” the server said. “I’ll have one of those,” I said, making my order at the Buena Vista Cafe.

That was the last time I ever saw him. Sean died Nov. 29, 2011. I had just moved back to Birmingham and attended his memorial service in December in Orando.

With his visit to the SF Bay Area, I had come to realize how much I had learned from him.

He was a great writer and patient manager. I went from being primarily a reporter in Orlando to being an editor, managing at one peak time a dozen reporters, a couple of editors and and correspondents in Washington DC and one at the State House in Sacramento. We were winning national awards for things like the Chauncy Bailey Project, 'Separate but Unequal’ on school disparities, 'A Body’s Burden’ examining toxins in our bloodstream, and ‘Missing the Target,’ an examination of how the state was spending its Homeland Security money.

Those were glory days. And I attribute some of that success to having known Sean, admiring his composure when faced with hard deadlines and the last minute arguments that go alongside this atmosphere.

Following the Sean Holton way

Coming to the Bay Area having experience only intermittently at editing and managing, I leaned on Sean’s model. I tried to treat my fellow workers with respect and develop a zen-like approach to the occasional newsroom blowups. We had our glory days at the Dean Singleton-clutch of papers and after a decade, yes decade, I came back to where it all started with me, the Birmingham News, where I remain at Advance Local’s AL.com. (Utilizing squatter’s rights.)

But alas, all things pass. Especially in the field of news gathering and distribution.

Sean subtitled his blog: “How Sean Holton Learned To Stop Worrying And Just Have Brain Cancer Instead.”

“Thousands of people were following him,” Ann Hellmuth told reporter Jeff Kunerth for a obituary profile on Sean.

Hellmuth was a Sentinel colleague who met Holton when they worked for the Kansas City Star in the mid-1980s.

“He was always such an original thinker, even as a young reporter," said Helmuth, another in a list of my favorite editors.

I urge you readers of My Vinyl Countdown blog, www.myvinylcountdown.com to read his blog Same Time Tomorrow, https://seanholton.wordpress.com/ .

In one of his last entries, he wrote this which inspires me today. Hopefully I can continue to follow the Sean Holton way. Hopefully there are some words I have written that will be an inspiration to someone now and when I’m gone.

Here’s what Sean wrote in one of his last posts:

I am not afraid. I still refuse to be afraid. That would be a fate much worse than just curling up to die. If there is any single thing anyone has learned from following my journey on this blog for these past two years, it is that. Do not be afraid. Fear is a waste of time, and a waste of life.

RIP Sean.

I am trying hard to not be afraid.

Reach Mike Oliver at moliver@al.com. See his blog at https://ift.tt/2qQLoab .

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Happy birthday to me and mentor who also chronicled his death - AL.com
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