The Closest I'll Ever Get to Immortality in this Lifetime

You probably don't know who these two people are: Jack O'Brien and Larie Pintea.

Jack O'Brien was a radio personality in Erie when I was a boy. My mom was his grandfather's private geriatric nurse for many years. Jack's aunts were Dorothy Jacobsen and Marilyn Jeffries Armstrong, sisters who attended Bethel Baptist Church with their families. Mrs Jeffries taught one of my Sunday School classes. Dorothy Jacobson directed the choir.

I listened to Jack O'Brien on this radio, which sat on top of our refrigerator, it's a Kmart Model 30-62:

Larie Pintea was the managing editor of the Erie Morning News. He wrote a Saturday column called "Always Look Back." It was about the Erie from his childhood, which to me was ancient history, but it was warm and nostalgic, and tinged occasionally by an unflattering comparison with the Erie we were both living in at the time.

I remember one story in particular in which he recalled circa WWII watching soldiers march down a street in Erie; he called out "Sodjers, sodjers!" and other children would come flocking to watch. That story appeared not long after Vietnam, and I suspect, based on my memory, that he was saddened by the conspicuous disrespect that period displayed for military service.

These two men were once among the Erie voices that filled homes and newspapers.

Jack O'Brien is now president of LarsonObrien Marketing Group in Bethel Park, PA.

Search for "Larie Pintea" and you'll find some information on his connection with Mercyhurst College and the Erie Morning Times, and reflections by others who met him or were influenced by him, but none of his writing that I could find, or a book he collaborated on that chronicled Erie's history.

I don't recall if Pintea was a great writer; I was too young to know what good writing was, but I liked reading his column, and that is enough for a writer.

And that's why I write, and why I write here. Because my journal and emails and nightly backups may not survive me. But the thoughts I distill here will. (What goes online, stays online.) Someone I don't know and not yet born will one day read what I wrote, and in that moment we will embrace.

It'll happen, and I'll be there, because these words are here.

It's the closest I'll ever get to immortality in this lifetime. For you it's the closest thing you'll get to time travel.

Stop slouching. Pay attention.

Started: 2012-05-02