Last Updated: March 23, 1997
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My professional career never intersected with that of William Woo, but since I moved to Missouri a decade ago I have grown fond of his writings in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Bill's easy grace, buttressed by an observant mind and a wise and tolerant outlook on life, strengthened his pen while fortifying my spirit.
His essay in the September issue of The American Editor - the same one he read to Asian American journalists - was a learned lesson on why many of us view the practice of newspapering as a noble calling.
In a few months I will be heading to Eastern Europe to lend a hand to aspiring journalists in Hungary and the Czech Republic. And I shall share Bill's message with them: "We measure ourselves in terms of success and failure exactly as everyone else is measured: by the qualities of decency, honesty, courage, compassion and humility - by how hard, how faithfully, we have given ourselves to these values."
I fear that papers in St. Louis and Milwaukee, where I once labored, will find the quest for "new leadership" for their newsrooms to be an elusive - and illusionary - search.
George J. Lockwood
St. Joseph, Mo.
