A good eulogy remembers a person's life, well lived

It may seem a little strange that a eulogy can be used as the basis for an article, but this is an unusual eulogy. It was written by James Reston, a journalist, as he remembered his good friend, Orvil Dryfoos, a newspaper publisher.

Dryfoos wrote, "The death of Orvil Dryfoos was blamed on 'heart failure' but that obviously could not have been the reason. Orv Dryfoos' heart never failed him or anybody else - ask the reporter on The Times. It was as steady as the stars - ask anybody in the company of his friends. It was as faithful as the tides - ask his beloved wife and family. No matter what the doctors say, they cannot blame his heart. In the spiritual sense, his heart was not a failure, but his greatest success. He had room in it for every joy and everybody else's joy. This was the thing that set him apart - this warmness and purity of spirit, this considerateness of his mother, whom he telephoned everyday, of his wife and children, of his colleagues and competitors. And this uncorrupted heart, broken or no, is what is likely to be remembered about him ...

"He had his weaknesses, like all of us, but usually they sprang from the more amiable qualities of the human spirit. To hurt a colleague was an agony for him, and in this savage generation, when (some) decide, (others) often get hurt. But he could make up his mind. He suffered, but he acted. Perhaps the simplest thing to say about him .... is that the more we knew him, the more we respected him. He was a gentleman. He was faithful to a noble tradition, to the family from which he came, and to the great family he joined and loved ... Let us then honor Orvil Dryfoos with remembrance rather than with tears. For his children will never be able to cry as much as he has made them laugh."

I hope many of these sentiments had been expressed to Orvil Dryfoos while he lived and not just after he died. There's a great lesson in there for all of us.