It’s another anniversary of the passing of friend and co-worker at the old Honolulu Star-Bulletin, George Steele.

What a loss. He was found dead on March 13, 2003 at age 56. He was just a year older than I was.

What follows was first posted the following day, March 14, 2003:

I received the first message at 3:42 p.m. yesterday that my friend George Steele was dead. It came in the form of an email to all Star-Bulletin staff and forwarded over to me from another friend in the newsroom.

It was like a punch. I was scheduled to have lunch with George in the next few days. We had been friends in the old Star-Bulletin newsroom and he was one of the select few who didn’t have any problem remaining a good friend after the Star-Bulletin and I parted company.

I sat in silence for several minutes. Then I dug through my addresses and sent off an email to his former wife in West Virginia, who George had remained very close to. Then I sat a while longer.

Last summer, just before his birthday, George shared this thought.

i love my life and i cringe as i see it drawing to an inevitiable close. but i got a nice card from mary in west virginia. it’s a quote from the talmud:

"every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, ‘grow, grow.’"

Back on March 7, 2000, George reminisced about his grandfather, Obediah.

I mention this hesitantly.

My grandfather was in great part, Cherokee, strong with the energy of that culture. So much so, that by comparison, I am reluctant to lay claim to the label myself.

He learned the Old Ways.

Made his own medicine from herbs. Had his own view of the cosmos. He carried a gun all of his life, a 45 semiautomatic in the waistband of his trousers. He never left home without it. Didn’t believe in banks or other institutions.

Did believe in omens.

He tried to teach me, but I was very young and he was very old, and I missed a lot of what he said. And he was the kind of man you didn’t ask second questions of.

But I came away from my experience with him with a definite belief in "signs," as he called them.

Sometimes I am accurate in emulating him.

It’s just a feeling, not something that can be put into words.

And once George commented briefly on his hillbilly roots.

my father was never jailed (for long), but he was often on the edge.

when i was a child, my family lived on the edge of poverty. i remember when a constable came to our house and nailed notices on our doors that our family goods would be sold at public auction.

i remember not only the fear of what is going to happen to us, but the shame.

finally, my father left. i loved him, but it was a relief to have him gone.

and then the real hard times set in. my mother’s salary from working at penney’s was pennies. we ate beans and potatoes every day. we brushed our teeth with salt instead of toothpaste.

But George went on to be a good reporter.

One of the things about growing up in and covering the news in Appalachia is that it’s a poor part of the country and things are done poorly. Literally. The Silver Bridge across the Ohio River fell during rush hour. Hundreds died. I covered it. An earthen dam at the head of Buffalo Creek collapsed, sending a wall of water down an 18-mile valley, killing hundreds. I covered it.

George was good with words. He’s been working as a copy editor, but he was a writer. I hope that his computer at home is full of his words that will somehow survive.

And George responded to something I wrote with this thought:

"it takes courage to acknowledge that you miss another living being. i admire your courage."

I don’t feel courageous now. Just sadder and a bit lonelier.

George was buried on July 5, 2003 on his cousin Kathy Hull’s farm on the edge of Hightown, Virginia, in a lovely spot overlooking the countryside he loved.