Michael Kelly, RIP
"Christ is shorter in Ireland." So wrote the 12-year-old Michael Kelly in his diary in response to the crucifixes gracing the walls of the farmhouse where he stayed with his Irish relatives, far from his native Washington, DC. The observant eye closed forever on Thursday night when Kelly was killed in Iraq at the age of 46.
His was a brilliant career. First came television. He quickly established his credentials as a producer with ABC, and fame and fortune seemed assured. But he quit after a reporter told him that "in television news a hair dryer is every bit as important as a notebook and pencil."
So he left the big city, took a huge pay cut and started at the bottom in newspapers. He learned the trade as a junior reporter in Cincinnati and was noticed by the Baltimore Sun. After that, it was onward and upward: he covered the White House for the New York Times, became Washington editor for the New Yorker and served as a columnist and then as editor of the New Republic. And all this before he was 38 years old.
Not content with the success that would crown most journalistic careers, he contributed a column for the Washington Post, become a senior writer at the National Journal, then its editor, and finally served as editor-at-large of the venerable Atlantic Monthly. The magazine's tribute yesterday reflected the immense sadness felt by all who knew Kelly personally. Those, like myself, who knew the man only by way of his writing, are grieved by his death. His prose was provocative, informed and ironic, but never apologetic. He loved language and understood the immense power of the printed word.
Ken Ringle's appreciation in today's Washington Post is comprehensive and moving. Kelly's last column from the front, Across the Euphrates, appeared in the Washington Post on Thursday, 3 April. Meanwhile, The Atlantic has put up this page with a list of Kelly's articles.
"Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves And Immortality."
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
