His work will not go gentle into the good night.

Ralph Wiley died Sunday night. He is my writing role model. I can’t say he always had a memorable way of saying things; I can’t quote him verbatim very much. But I can remember some of his lessons, mostly from the last year.

1. The shut down line to end all shut down lines is “Do you think you can kick my ass?”
2. A rising tide lifts all ships. Talent, ruthless talent, is a necessary but insufficient condition for reaching the top, to be that rising tide is necessary too.
3. The Lessons of Jackie Robinson are to take your place as a human, in rights, responsibilities and privileges.
4. Personnel makes the tick marks closer together on the yardstick that measures success. Don’t ever overlook the yardstick.
5. As an outsider, utter preparation will give you a chance at defending yourself.

The one phrase I can remember in entirety is “All a man’s got is the integrity of his work.” That is the opening line from the last piece published from when R-Dub was alive. It is a fitting epithet. Everything ephemeral can be Hollywooded (and maybe that’s what’s happening with dead President Reagan), and damn near anything that isn’t work is ephemeral. Work is the indelible things a man does, because those things can’t be Hollywooded. Emotions are a little tricky. A word or a look can change everything, so sometimes they are work, and sometimes they are not.

R’s work stands out because it was not only indelible to him and upon him, but upon others. That transitivity is natural because R wrote the indelible stories. About Jackie Robinson, and what Jackie would do today. Why the crunch of football was needed that Sunday after 9/11 and why it just wasn’t about the crunch all the other weeks. Why Yao Ming was going to shift the power away from Shaq, why the power was going to be sucked into him like a blackhole. About the birth and nova of stars in the jazziest of sports, basketball.

Race was important part of Ralph, too. He knew he was black man and did not live in black man’s country. Understanding where Ralph came from, what he saw, is important to understanding how to live with and know anything. His story of being held up in a loan office, maybe .357 death just about four inches from his medulla oblongata, then being fired when he wouldn’t lie (either to say more was stolen to get more incurrence money for the owner or falsely admit to being a part of the robbery), brought it home to me. After penalty of death, he was being cast aside, because the white owner couldn’t believe black employee wouldn’t steal. “Why Black People Tend to Shout” is an education, the best education on where I am as white and what I don’t know about being black (I am suffering as to know whether R capitalized this word, black. I don’t know what’s right, but R does. … My impulse was right.)

Ralph had so much more to teach.