As Time Goes By

 Play it, Sam. Play...As Time Goes By. Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), Casablanca, (1942)

Our phone rang, twenty five years ago. I want to recall I was sitting in our dining room, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. In the great scheme of things... Right?

The caller was Sue O'Brien, at the time the editorial page editor for The Denver Post. Okay - "Oh...hello?"

There are several ways to tell this story. Start from the very beginning - a mild temper tantrum, a published letter to the editor of rival Rocky Mountain News? A stray comment from my wife - "There's a writing contest The Denver Post does every year. You should enter." Defying all previous life experience and actually sitting down, reading the list of entry requirements, writing something... No, this is the best way.

Daughter Katy and I are at a Rockies game, back when they actually might contest the outcome for more than an inning or two. We're wandering the lower level, probably getting a hot dog, and my cell phone rings. It's Sue. There is a problem with the column I've written as a Colorado Voices essayist, one scheduled to appear in a few days on the editorial section of the paper. It has been OTBE'd - overtaken by events.

Timothy McVeigh (The Oklahoma City bomber) was set for execution, but there was some sort of procedural wrangling involving (shocking, I know) discovery foul-ups by the FBI. My column was a review of the record - he did it and everyone knew it - and WTF was the justice system waiting for? In a sane world there was only the sentence of death to carry out. Etc.

Except, between the time I'd submitted the column for publication and...then, the procedural niceties had been addressed and the sentence was going to be carried out. The writing was stale.

Not to worry, she said. Together, we re-wrote sections that expressed surprise things had taken so long, that even the defense's submissions seemed muted because he'd obviously confessed to his attorneys, and that the sooner he was no longer with us the better for everyone. Satisfied that the writing was once again meaningful she wished Katy and I a pleasant day at the ball game and we hung up.

That's when it hit me. Sue O'Brien was a whirlwind, a force in public Colorado halls, a woman pioneer in jobs usually filled by men. She'd been in TV, had been a tenured CU professor, had important jobs for governors Dick Lamm and Roy Romer (his campaign manager) and now oversaw the editorial page of an established major American newspaper. And... We'd just worked together to rehabilitate something I'd written so it would appear under my byline. Me, a patrol sergeant at a modest police department with an entirely normal family life.

Sue was also the kind of gruff and straightforward that any cop would admire. During the initial phone call, to tell me I was one of twelve (I think) successful applicants who would write six columns each in the 2001 Voices cycle, my expression of glee was apparently insufficient. "This is an honor," I said, somewhat blandly.

"You're goddamned right it is," she snorted. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

As an alum I had a chance to do a guest column from time to time. I wrote one questioning the conduct of the Tattered Cover book store and the sanity of the Colorado Supreme Court. "You aren't being fair," Sue said. Then she printed it. Two weeks later, a card appeared in my work mailbox - Colorado Governor Bill Owens had liked my opinion piece. "Keep writing," the note said. 

Sue passed away two years later, the victim of cancer. At her funeral Dottie Lamm, former First Lady of Colorado, told the story of Sue bringing a "dime bag" - marijuana - to the Governor's mansion, to help with Dottie's nausea during chemotherapy. At the time, depending on the amount, that was a serious act. Apparently, Sue was just brassy enough not to care. Even the priest conducting the service broke into unrestrained laughter.

On the wall of my study hangs a framed example of the column Sue said was her favorite of mine, presented to each of us at a luncheon after our gigs were over. It is a celebration of the Colorado Avalanche Stanley Cup win in 2001, the great Joe Sakic to Ray Bourque Cup pass. I glance at it from time to time, to remember.

I've written millions of words since my last work for The Denver Post. But that phone call, that voice... An assurance from one of the tough people who made up Colorado journalism at the turn of the 21st Century, that I was a good writer who deserved whatever success I enjoyed.

Twenty-five years on, I wish I could send her one of my books and tell her what that all meant to me.