[img]1|left|||no_popup[/img]The most dedicated, and knowledgeable, newspaperman I ever have met, Mitch Chortkoff, my friend for more than 40 years, is grieving this morning over the death last week of his practically lifetime girlfriend.
Remember the editor of the Culver City Observer the next several days when you are praying or meditating or soloing.
He has suffered a crop of tragedy in the last eight years, the kind that snooty, ivory tower sociologists like to say muscularizes your character. If they don’t mind, I would prefer flabbiness to soul-crushing hardships.
Beyond his beloved Barbara, two other hallmarks distinguish Mr. Chortkoff’s life:
Sporting events have been his permanent bride .
In about 45 years of covering big-time athletics, he never — I believe his record is flawless — issued one public word of criticism about an athlete or a coach.
If I had been gifted with this magnificent natural disposition, I would be flying somewhere above the Eiffel Tower every day, bellowing out cherubically, “Look at me.”
Mr. Chortkoff is to modesty what salt is to pepper. The only person who would be easier to get along with would be an invisible fellow who breathes internally not externally.
A few years ago when he was enduring the worst tragedy that can befall a gentleman of a certain age, a loss that would have driven me screaming into the woods, Mr. Chortkoff bore his burden with unutterable courage. He folded his hands together and wordlessly accepted, almost embraced, his fate.
A Threat to Perfection
I never have met anyone who has heard him complain or raise his voice. Spies say he never even has frowned. We have worked together on three newspapers, one for nine years, and I will testify to his pristine character.
Journalists, even young ones, are not known for their unsullied character. But he is.
He sees mainly, or only, the good in people and in athletic events.
There is, of course, at least one logical explanation.
My friend has not roared through the wife lottery that I have and lived with imperfect women who believed someone needed to be punished because they were born to a perceived runnerup gender, and I was the most convenient target.
For obsessively touchy social historians, I fail to see the necessity of listing the number of weddings I rang up during Mr. Chortkoff’s decades of courtship of his beloved Barbara.
When a single sister and I were consoling each other Sunday evening over the steep recent slippage of my father, she said, “At least you have Diane.”
Between marital gigs, I always felt unemployed, which is why I never understood bachelors such as Mr. Chortkoff.
But I have come to praise him not analyze him.
Depends on Whose Wife
Fortunately for Mr. Chortkoff, in sports coverage, a reporter is allowed to have multiple wives. There is no doubt the Lakers are his choicest wife, with USC, the Dodgers and high school sports trailing.
Longtime Lakers owner Jerry Buss relies on Mr. Chortkoff’s encyclopaedic knowledge of team history, and every NBA analyst in the country values him.
For Mr. Chortkoff, covering the Lakers is like you and me sitting on the couch at home, writing about what our wives said and did today.
May you find lasting comfort, my friend.
Sleep the sleep of the meritorious tonight.
