Forcing a smile through the tears
We laugh to keep from crying.
In this business, we deal with a lot of sad stories. Gut-wrenching, depressing, incredibly sad tales - day in and day out. We often see people at their worst - and report on the heartache left in their wake.
It doesn’t take long to find out who can do it. Not everyone can.
Most of us build up a defense mechanism, a hardened exterior, a snicker or a laugh that masks the pain. Some people call it a hardboiled, cynical way of looking at life. We call it survival.
We, the people who toil in this business every day – yes, there are still a few of us left – have a tendency to be emotionless.
That’s on the outside. On the inside, we feel the same gut-punches as everyone else. We just try not to let it show, either in our faces or in our coverage.
Either that or you get out of the business.
Some weeks than others.
All of which is a way of saying last week was pretty miserable.
It started with a fond farewell for a coworker who I have spent a lifetime are easier with. My wife and I joke that I have probably spent more time over the past 36 years with Rose Quinn than I have with her.
I think she is joking. Rose opted to take a buyout and leave the Daily Times last week. These are not easy decisions that more and more people in journalism are making these days. I know for her it was heartwrenching.
Just like her final story, another gem of a profile on Jennifer Helton, on the 20th anniversary of one of the most notorious murder cases in Delaware County history, the abduction and murder of her 1-year-old daughter Katelyn. Her body has never been recovered.
I was in the process of reading her story last Saturday when I got an email from Darby Borough funeral director Chuck Marvil. I actually had to read it twice before it sunk in.
Monsignor Joe Corley, the beloved pastor of Blessed Virgin Mary Parish in Darby, had died.
“Father Joe,” as everyone referred to him, was not just an icon to the faithful in Darby. He was a friend.
Joe Corley never had much use for fancy titles.
He would always cringe when I referred to him as “Monsignor.”
He much preferred “Father Joe,” or just Joe. Make no mistake. This was not just another Joe.
Amazingly, I did not even know he was sick.
Father Joe apparently thought he was having issues with his gall bladder. It turned out to be much worse, a reoccurrence of the cancer he had beaten back once before.
It’s hard to explain just how important Monsignor Joe Corley was to Darby Borough.
It’s a tough town. It takes a tough man to tame it. Meet Joe Corley. A confession here, if you can handle the obvious pun.
I have seriously wavered in my faith in recent years. The truth is, I now doubt the mission of much of the church.
I still think I have a lot of faith; I’m just not sure I need the church as a conduit for those beliefs. Father Joe understood. We had many conversations about faith, its role in our lives - and in our communities.
Darby Borough is a diverse community - light years from the town where my mother grew up in the early part of this century.
Father Joe always delighted in the fact that my mom grew up there, and he would smile knowingly when I told him about her boasting of how she and her young friends would flout danger each summer by swimming in the roiling waters of Darby Creek behind their home on Chestnut Street.
Father Joe never looked away when it came to the diversity of his town. Instead he embraced it.
He once asked me to come to the school to speak to a group of young men from all parts of the world - who were taking part in a leadership program at Blessed Virgin Mary School. It’s one of my favorite moments, seeing him smiling broadly in the back of the room as I spoke.
It is hardly an understatement to say these are tough times for the Philadelphia archdiocese. Nowhere is that more evident than here in the eastern part of Delaware County. Parishes and schools have closed. Consolidations have become routine.
Father Joe and I used to commiserate on the fate of our duel life’s work. He would soothe my soul on the problems of the newspaper business; I would do whatever I could to be sure the good things being done at BVM got into the paper. He fought valiantly to keep the doors of his church and school open, serving what is now a largely immigrant community. We also had many discussion about the priesthood. For us, he was a trusted resource, someone we could always talk to when “bad” news arrived.
Father Joe always spoke from his heart.
He also often wrote from it. He penned numerous pieces for our op-ed page.
His most recent effort was emblematic of the kind of person Joe Corley was. In it he detailed how he once reached out to legendary Saint Joe’s basketball coach Phil Martelli to speak to a group. Not only did Martelli - who was unceremoniously dumped by the institution he devoted his life to - do so, he brought basketballs and T-shirts for the kids.
Corley was appreciative, just as he always appreciated the efforts of the newspaper to help his town and parish.
More than that, he would always drop me an email to let me know he appreciated one of my columns.
In a world dreadfully short on faith and needing rocks upon which to build our communities, Darby Borough and Delaware County have just lost a mountain.
He was a monsignor, a parish priest, and a good, decent man.
He was also my friend. He will be terribly
missed.
He’s not the only one I was missing last week – and ironically this last one took me again back to Darby.
Longtime Daily Times reporter and editor Brian Freeman, a proud U.S. Marine, Temple alum and the school’s No. 1 fan, longtime Eagles season ticket holder and Philly sports fantic, passed away.
Again, it was cancer. And again, it was Darby. After a stint in sports in which he cemented himself as an authority on Delco high school sports, Brian moved over to the news side. One of his “beats” was Darby Borough. He reveled in the political machinations of this gritty town and its outspoken former longtime Mayor Paula Brown.
It was the same kind of passion – bred by the Marine Corps – that exuded through every story Brian wrote. He eventually would join our news desk, serving as an assistant city editor, features and community news editor.
You just don’t replace people like Brian Freeman. Or Joe Corley. Or Rose Quinn.
Every day when I pull into the parking lot of our building, I open the door, put my foot on the blacktop and recite a prayer Father Joe gave me: “This is the day God has created for me, let me rejoice in it and be glad.”
It gets a little harder each day.