Professionalism... - 28/04/07

It was sad to hear that David Halberstam died this week. I drove him around a writers' conference in Idaho the summer of 1999 when I finsihed my first year of art school. He'd written a book most American rowers have read called "the Amateurs"--about four men, two from Yale, one from Harvard and a fourth Dark Horse out of California, competing against one another to represent America in the 1980 Olympics. Ultimately, a futile struggle for all of them because of the boycott against the Russians.

Anyway, dork that I am, when I found out he was going to be in Idaho for this conference, I put my name forward to drive him around. He was a very erudite man with a voice that rumbled like well-oiled machinery. I remember him being very kind when, idiot that I was, I actually locked us both out of the car I was driving while the engine was running.... Forgive me, life's harder when you're blond.

Anyway, in the obit they ran on him in the New York Times--for whom he reported from Vietnam in his late 20s and where he first earned his journalistic credentials--they ran a quote he loved from Dr. J. It was about professionalism; namely that: "Being a professional is doing what you want to do even when you don't want to do it."

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