For the past few years, I have shared this particular editorial page with a former college professor who was nothing short of a guru in the Mass Communication department where I happened to be a student over three decades ago.
As big in stature that Walter Brasch was in the department and throughout the campus, I never indulged myself in any of his classes or bothered reading any of his books that were always an integral and required part of his courses.
There’s nothing like capitalism – academia style.
After all, academics must write and write some more. Otherwise, tenure is just a mere fantasy.
Shortly after declaring a major, I was informed by another student who was in the same course of study that, if possible, it would be in my best interests to evade all of professor Brasch’s classes.
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Given I was in the electronic journalism track and not the print one, there was little chance I would have Brasch as my academic advisor. Since many of the classes I needed were lectured by other professors within the department, I took heed and made sure that I never scheduled a class with the brash one.
Perhaps it is one of the decade’s great losses as I am sure News-Item Editor Andy Heintzelman might suggest, as Brasch was his mentor during the same fateful epoch. I, on the other hand, was not going to take on an ideological fight with the head of the department who was dug-in on his home turf’s high ground and where only his rules of engagement applied. That eventual verbal onslaught, if you could label two such divergent editorial columns that, would arrive much later in the page you now hold in your hands. However, that ideological matchup came to a close last Wednesday with his passing out of time and into eternity at the age of