Singing a Song of Ourselves

Years ago, when I was a hotshot young reporter, I was faced with the prospect of telling a mother her only son had been killed in an automobile accident.

I had beaten the police to her home and, at the behest of the city desk, was to get a picture of the young man who had died in the crash.

The moment floats on the edge of memory like a bad dream. Her name was Evelyn Casey. She was a small woman with the kind of open smile that greets the world without judging it, waiting for the man on her porch to sell his wares or to pitch his religion, and then to go away.

Her manner was extraordinarily polite, which made it worse, for in a terrible moment I would introduce tragedy into her life and tear her serenity to shreds. Forced by the unsettling silence to speak, I finally said simply: “There’s been an accident.”

Before I could elaborate, a patrol car rolled up and two policemen took her inside. A wail of anguish I can still hear pierced through the screen door, and I could visualize her open smile dissolving like wax in a furnace.

I left without the picture and a few days later, disturbed by the moment, stopped by her house to tell her how sorry I was. Her smile was gone and her grief was deep, but she could still write a letter to the editor praising the humanity of a reporter who, beyond duty, had paused to bring her comfort.

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This isn’t so much a song to myself as it is a metaphor about the kind of people who pursue the news and the level of humanity they can bring to a job. I’m not talking about the thuggish, star-chasing paparazzi, for whom I have little or no respect.

I’m talking about the journalists who, on an unpleasant assignment, went after the story of a young athlete killed in a freak accident during a high school track meet and understood in the course of their effort that this was more than just a news item.

The boy was 16-year-old Craig Kelford III. He was fatally injured when struck in the head by a flying discus at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School.

The young man’s family, trying to resolve their grief, also braced for a media assault that the father, Craig Kelford II, suspected would be “intrusive and uncomfortable.” What they found instead were people with a deep awareness of what the Kelfords were enduring and who, in some cases, even cried at the family’s loss.

Kelford later wrote a letter that appeared in The Times, acknowledging their humanity and adding, “The media often takes a bad hit from the public, but I must say that during our time of grief it was wonderful to be with such caring people.”

I spoke with Kelford later. He wrote the letter, he said, in gratitude to those who had come to his house and also so that others in the business “can see that it’s all right to be gentle.”

He added: “I was told to expect pushy, get-the-story people. Instead, I got people who cared.”

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Any negative image of today’s journalist is partially shaped by assaults from those public figures whose enmity is based on the kind of intrusiveness that upholds the very spirit of the 1st Amendment.

Richard Nixon hated us because he had much to hide, and Spiro Agnew for the same reason. I remember interviewing Agnew in his room at the Beverly Hills Hotel after his one and only novel, “The Canfield Decision,” was published.

His dislike of me, as a reporter, was palpable, but his quest to publicize his book overcame the loathing long enough for him to celebrate himself.

I realize that we often contribute to our own bad image as members of salivating herds chasing a Heidi Fleiss or an O.J. Simpson for scraps of information that, in the end, are meaningless.

I am also aware that depictions of us as mindless, gun-toting wackos on the big screen and as shouting, insensitive louts on the small screen are true in some cases, but not on our staff, and not on most other staffs.

I glance around the city room to see the kinds of people Craig Kelford II was talking about, a good number of whom weren’t even born when I tried to tell Evelyn Casey her son was dead.

They understand both the parameters of their job and their responsibilities to the human race. More than a century ago, Walt Whitman wrote, “Of one’s-self I sing, a simple, separate person/Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse...”

We’re part of a mass and we know that, but occasionally we honor ourselves by the way individuals cover breaking news, in this case the Craig Kelford story. “I’m proud of them,” Kelford said of those reporters. So am I.

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com