Saturday, March 6, 2004 | 2:28 a.m.
Bad news never comes at a good time, that much we know. And, as if we needed a reminder, it happened again when we got the phone call early Friday morning telling us that Mike O'Callaghan had been rushed to the hospital from church. Without knowing any more, I knew what the next call would bring.
I am trying to write this while I am in the same kind of shock I felt when my father passed away 15 years ago and that all families experience when a loved one dies. All kinds of conflicting emotions -- all of them sad -- and hundreds of stories -- all of them incredible -- keep fighting for dominance in a brain barely capable of comprehending life without Mike.
It is hard watching a grieving family, however strong they are because of Mike, trying to pull themselves together to deal with the shock and sadness of such a loss. It is harder still to witness an entire newsroom of young and veteran reporters and editors, each of whom owes so much to the mentoring they got from Nevada's most capable and decent former governor. And it was practically impossible to share this bad news with my mother, who has known Mike forever and considered the Las Vegas Sun and Mike as one. As much as this newspaper took on the personality of Hank Greenspun when he was alive and in charge so, too, did the Sun become an extension of all the good that was Gov. Mike.
As I write this I am trying to contemplate life in this newsroom without him. Mike already handled that issue because he taught all of us how to not only be better newspeople but also better citizens of this community at the same time. It was a bit old fashioned, I know, but Mike believed that newspeople who live and work in this community have a responsibility to the rest of the city to not only do their jobs well but also to do good while doing them.
The story of Mike's most incredible adventure called life will fill news pages, television news time and every other manner of news distribution across this state, around the nation and overseas because his life was that full.
Whether as this state's chief executive at a time when Nevada could have gone either way -- and the odds weren't long that we would make the right choice; or as a Volunteer for Israel -- where Mike would take the place of an Israeli soldier so that person could have some leave time with his or her family and Mike could fix battle tanks; or deep in the jungles of Nicaragua -- tending to the orphans left alone because of war in that country; or in northern Iraq -- overseeing Kurdish democracy in action when not too many other Americans gave a darn; Mike was a man of the people and for all people.
He hobnobbed once in awhile with the rich and famous, but only because his job required it from time to time. But he was far more at home in his middle-class neighborhood, walking his German shepherd, Wesley, and visiting with his neighbors.
They are the people from whom he learned the most about what was on people's minds. But it wasn't only the people in his neighborhood who taught him about life's struggles. If ever there were an open door policy at work, it was the door to Mike's office. All day, every day, there was a steady stream of people. Some of them had stories to tell and all of them had needs that were not being fulfilled. Mike satisfied them all. Except for the nuts, and there were plenty of them.They couldn't be helped, but Mike tried just the same.
When the news of Mike's death spread like wildfire, the reactions across the state were very much the same. "He was my mentor. He was my friend. He was the best governor we ever had. I owe my entire career to Mike O'Callaghan." And on and on and on. Not to the point of repetition but to the point that it is more than self-evident that Gov. Mike was the giant among the other men in this state.
He was a softy, too. The same guy who could walk into a bar, even at his age, looking for a fight just because he hadn't had one in a while, was a sucker for young people. Whether it was the steady stream of high school kids that came through our offices on a daily basis or the younger ones just starting out, Mike was mush as he either played gently with the little ones or questioned patiently the older ones. And, once he met them, he knew them forever.
There are so many stories I and others could tell about him and I suppose many of them will be told over the coming weeks. One I will always remember, though, was on a car trip he and I were taking from Reno to Elko.
For those of you who have never made that trip, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, between those two cities. I had to drive the car at 54 miles per hour so that I would not violate the speed limit.
Mike even set the little buzzer to alert him when I tried to creep up to a greater than crawl speed.
I was thrilled when I saw a sign, I think it was for Battle Mountain, and Mike said, "Let's stop here, there's a great bakery around the corner." The town was only one street and one corner and Mike knew every bit of it. When we came to the only stop sign in town, a fellow looked into the car and waved at Mike, who was still governor at the time. Mike got out of the car and spent the next 20 minutes questioning this man about each of his five kids, the colleges they were attending and the grades they were earning. And he knew each kid by name!
That's who Mike O'Callaghan was. He knew people by name, by who they were and by what made them tick. He never cared much for what they did or how successful they were, only that they were good parents or good children. And he didn't judge. He just understood. There are hundreds of reasons why thousands of Nevadans and hundreds of thousands of Americans and others will miss Mike. They all begin with his goodness, his decency, his honesty and his commitment to friends and family.
If I had to think about a place to start in talking about Mike O'Callaghan, this is where it would begin. As for where it will end? It will never end because people like Mike, as rare as they are in this world, don't ever make us think about the end. Just where we should go from here.
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