February 15, 2004 Failure To Take The Time Cost Life Of Friendt
The morning ice on your windshield. Scrape it off before you start to drive. Richard was the sports editor at the West Virginia newspaper where I worked. Never mind that he was the king of the comma splice. Never mind that he would lose a spelling bee to a fourth-grader. Richard was the nicest person in the world. Nothing fancy for this guy. Loved his two little girls. Loved listening to Dave Dudley records. Loved talking with coaches, even the ones who whined. We only had a three-man sports staff, but Richard tried to make up for it by working 60 hours a week. The joke was that if Richard wasn’t at his desk, the managing editor should put out an APB. The rest of us complained about the lack of the news space in the paper, and the piddling six-cents-a-mile expense policy that had to be filled out on letterhead stationery that didn’t exist, and the multimillionaire publisher who drove a Bentley while we tooled around in vehicles more suited for the demolition derby. Not Richard. He just typed away on his 15th game story of the night, doing what he loved. Mercer County’s smaller high schools often played doubleheader basketball games at the Brushfork Armory. Sometimes I volunteered to help Richard cover them. I enjoyed basketball and was glad to take some of the load off our hard-working sports man. But there was another reason why I was willing to donate my Saturday nights. Something always happened. And it usually involved Richard’s car. One night his ancient Rambler wouldn’t start unless we rolled it off a hill. Another time it wouldn’t stop until he pulled the emergency Garret Mathews
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