In Memoriam: Paul Weeks


Mourning the sudden loss of my uncle, Paul Weeks.

On July 4 I received word that my last remaining uncle had been diagnosed with liver cancer and had six months to live. Tuesday afternoon I heard from my mother that he had been moved to hospice. That night I learned that he was gone.

Paul Weeks was a long-time reporter for the Los Angeles Mirror, then moved to the Los Angeles Times when the Mirror folded. He wrote stories about the best and worst, from political giants to hard core racists. He was among the first journalists at a major paper to take on civil rights as his news beat, He left the Times to work with Sargent Shriver in the War on Poverty, then later served as director of public information at the RAND Corporation.

For the last few years of his life he published a monthly column online with the San Joaquin Valley Record, where he shared humorous and poignant stories about the life of a reporter and the many people he had come to know. His last column, published July 3, was about an old friend he recently learned had died 15 years earlier "from an ailment with which he had lived for three years."

A journalist to the very end, Paul posted a note in response to his own story, letting his readers know about the coincidence of his diagnosis and saying, “You will find me in this space as long as I can write. Hang in there with me.”

My mother and Paul were very close, just two years apart, and for the last several years as they both aged and lost their older brothers (my mother has been a widow for more than 30 years), he has been the ground on which she stood. I feel so helpless that I cannot be with her right now and that I never got a chance to say goodbye to Paul. I do not even know if he received the card I mailed on Thursday.

Of my four uncles, he was my favorite, as we shared this love of words and story-telling.

I last saw them both in 2004, when I went to California to help my mother celebrate her 85th birthday. Unfortunately the huge gala planned at Paul’s house in Oceanside was abandoned when my mother took ill with pneumonia. She has suffered several more bouts with pneumonia recently.

I posted this on my weblog later that year, borrowing Paul’s words to tell the story of how the two of them recreated a “barnstorming” flight in an open cockpit biplane they first had in 1924.

She Flew Like Amelia Earhart...

My mother often dreamed of flying like Amelia Earhart. Instead, married at 20, she raised five children, all born within the short space of eight years. Like most women of her generation, she was a stay-at-home mom. For her 85th birthday this year, my youngest brother gave her flight.

More here.

Several tributes to Paul have been published, and I'm sure there will be many more. I will add them as I find them.

LA Observed
Paul Weeks, Unsung Hero

Why the Times Missed Watts in '65

North County Times (California)
Retired newsman Paul Weeks dies at 86

The Rip Poste (journalist Rip Rense's website)
Featuring an interview with Paul published earlier


Posted: Thu - July 12, 2007 at 02:02 PM          

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