Manly Monday #6 – A Tribute to A Great Reporter and Devoted Father

I thought I would use today to focus on Tim Russert. As all of you probably know, Tim passed away last Friday at the age of 58. This seems so young when I think about it, and makes me really think about the fragility of life, especially with my parents and other family members that are now older than that.

Anyway, I have always respected the work that Mr. Russert did. He brought a human factor to reporting and to politics and made people really come to better understand the important issues that surrounded politics in an era when people continually were becoming turned off to the dad-to-day BS that politics has somewhat become.

Mr. Russert was hard hitting and he was always willing to ask the hard questions. People said that if someone wanted to be elected, they had to be on Tim’s Meet The Press show on Sunday Morning…it was just that simple. Tim was beginning to be known as a political force in his own right, and he took this all by stride and at least from the outside looking in, seemed to do it always with a smile on his face.

From the viewers perspective, Tim looked like he would be the type of person that you would simply want to get to know. Someone that would go out of their way to help you. Seeing that I have never met him in person, I don’t specifically know that this is true, but it is the image that he portrayed.

I will miss his political commentary, especially this election year. As I mentioned earlier he was able to demystify the most complex of topics. I can still remember the white dry erase board he had in the 2004 election when they were trying to make sense of Florida – Low tech all the way, but very effective.

Outside of his public persona, much has been said of Tim as a father. Tim was a devoted husband and father and this at times will be the lasting that any of us Dads will ever have. I once heard that the testament that a person leaves is not in wealth or in fame, but instead in what they instill in their children. It seems from everything that I have heard that Tim, learned well from his own father and passed on this knowledge to is son…which is all that could ever be asked of a man.

My and my family’s hearts go out to the Russert family.