If I have learned one thing in this past week, it is this: When someone stays on your mind, give them a call, or stop by to see them. Just reach out to them.
Because, you just don’t know…
I’m feeling this way because of the recent death of my dear friend and colleague Nancy Ancrum . Nancy died in her sleep, on the night of Feb. 9, “with a smile on her lips,” her grieving husband George Fishman told me the day after she died.
It was so like Nancy to die smiling. When I tell you that she had the kind of smile that reached out and pulled you in, believe me.
I, along with many of her other colleagues, first met the tall, slim beautiful Black young woman when she first came to work at the Miami Herald. I was old enough to be her mom (my late son, Rick was only several months younger than Nancy). Yet, I respected her leadership. As a young editor, she often had to edit my copy when she worked in the Northwest Neighbors section in the early 1980s.
There is nothing that I can say about her dynamic career at the paper that our dear Howard Cohen hasn’t already written about in his obituary of Feb. 10. My thoughts about Nancy are personal.