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You will be missed, Wiley Hilburn. That much goes without saying, though. When we met, I told you I was more than my fear of responsibility and my troubles — an editor, a far-seer. Your feet were up on the desk, as they always are. Your lopsided grin was matter-of-fact, but it said more than your desire to keep the cards in your favor by being stoic. You knew something would come of me, that much I could see in your eyes. The moment dissolved into shop talk, as it is prone. Engineering hadn’t suited me, but journalism was going to just fine. We talked about your column. It wasn’t your son’s penchant for stealing your clothes you were really talking about. O captain, my captain. There is a grand symbol to you, Wiley; an aura glows around you that carries with it the ripples of a thousand thousand stones tossed into the waters of your lifetime. You carry the humble wisdom of a life lived in complete openness to its rushing waters, a wisdom passed down through an unspoken language that lives deep in the mind. Your example has fueled fires of liberal crusaders and conservative zealots alike, because you lead from a universal truth. That is love, God and self altogether. It. O captain, my captain. Jack Kerouac would have loved you, back when you still held a bottle. Even afterward, probably. Dig it. You are the kind that would hold our hands while we destroyed ourselves, then walk us down the right path. A man could only hope to achieve the connection to generation after generation you have fostered. Somewhere, a man just like you needs to know someone else like him exists. Someone else who gives your life meaning; never stop reaching out for them. You are a poet outside of bohemia. A man of red clay and muddy Louisiana waterways, dusty backroads, and the meditation of your Choudrant-to-Ruston-and-back commute. O captain, my captain. Every day, you touch the lives of your devotees, the sons and daughters you have raised on the blue chicken-scratch of your stringbook critiques and absentminded, honest generosity. You have lead me in my callous youth through the hell that is understanding my inner talents and how my eyes are a part of them. One day, we will walk barefoot together in the clouds of the afterlife journalists go to, laughing at how young we still feel and how we knew it would come to that. Thank you, Old Man. Nick Todaro is a senior journalism major from Shreveport and serves as editor of The Tech Talk. E-mail comments to nst005@latech.edu |
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