An inquisitor with the common touch
Tim Russert was just a face on the television to me back in 1996, when I gave my elderly mother the thrill of her life by bringing her to the White House for a Christmas party.
It was there that I met Russert, and it was there that I came to know him.
A few minutes after arriving, I told my mother to wait for a moment while I went to get us some wine. That left this daughter of a coal miner and widow of a tannery worker standing awkwardly alone in the middle of an ornate White House parlor … and that was obviously too much for Tim Russert to take.
I saw him quickly work his way out of another conversation and rush over to my mother and extend his hand. By the time I returned with my wine and introduced myself, my mother and Tim Russert were chatting like old friends.
And the next time I saw Russert, at a party three months later, his first words to me were: "How's your mother?"
The world knows Tim Russert through questions much tougher than that one, but to me, that question he asked me, and the act of kindness he showed us months earlier, told me everything I ever needed to know about him.
Russert died suddenly on Friday, leaving all of official Washington in shock and deep mourning, and leaving me struggling for words, with a lump in my throat, as I wrote his obituary.
It goes without saying that American journalism and American politics won't be the same without him. But it must be said that the lives of countless people, whom he touched with his infinite kindness, won't be the same, either.
… Jerry Zremski
