Thanks for reading

SOUL FOOD

Friday, April 18, was National Columnists Day, though I didn’t

mention it last week for a couple of reasons.

For one, this is, on the whole, a religion column and National

Columnists Day is not, except by the greatest stretch of imagination,

a religious holiday.

For another, it was Holy Week. April 18, this year was also Good

Friday and National Columnists Day hardly seemed like a match.

National Columnists Day was instituted, in the words of its

instigators, former president of the National Society of Newspaper

Columnists, Bill Tammeus, and member Dave Lieber (yup, columnists,

not readers), to be “a time to reflect on the way newspaper

columnists connect, educate, comfort, encourage, celebrate, outrage

and occasionally even amuse readers and a time to express

appreciation for them for their hard work.”

How can that complete with the Crucifixion, the death of the Lamb

and Son of God on a cross to atone for the sins of mankind?

The date of National Columnists Day commemorates the death of

columnist Ernie Pyle, the Pulitzer Prize-winning chronicler of World

War II who was killed by a Japanese sniper on April 18, 1945.

This year, on the heels of war and the deaths of so many

journalists reporting it, the date of National Columnists Day seemed

especially fitting.

To Lieber, who chose the date of Pyle’s death for National

Columnists Day, and to many other columnists, Pyle is the greatest

columnist of all time.

During most of my early reading years, I never much read

newspapers or any other periodicals for that matter. I think I was

like a lot of kids, too wrapped up in what was next to care much for

current events. I read books: novels for escape and vision,

biographies for role models.

Then in high school I had a teacher who introduced me to The Los

Angeles Times, by way of Robert Kirsch, its literary critic and in

doing so introduced me to newspaper reading in general.

It was in the Times that I found Jack Smith and for the first time

I fell in happy thrall to a columnist. Delivered to my doorstep and

brought into my home, he helped me, a Southerner transplanted to

Southern California, understand this strange new land in which I now

lived.

I learned things about the world and things about myself, things I

never knew, or things I never knew I knew, until I recognized them in

the words of Smith’s columns.

That’s what great columnists, columnists like Jack Smith and Herb

Caen and Mike Royko, do. They help us make sense of the world. They

help us make sense of ourselves.

And they make it look oh-so-much easier than it is. Their vision

is keen but their words seem to roll off their pens as effortlessly

as a conversation rolls off the cuff.

Ernie Pyle helped a whole generation make sense of a war, if war

ever can make sense. Lieber is right: in this business of columnizing

Pyle set a standard and he set it high.

For all my years as a column-reading junkie, I never aspired to be

one. I don’t think it ever seemed to me like something I could do.

Even Jack Smith, when he started to write his column for the Times

in 1958, did so with some reluctance, fearing he would fail. Then he

wrote five columns a week for most of his career.

When I hung up the phone after saying I’d write this column --

just once a week -- I told my husband I must be crazy.

So, in honor of National Columnist Day, I’d like to say this:

Thank you for sticking with me.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for writing to let me know what’s

in your hearts and on your minds. Thank you for your confidence.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].