By the Dashboard Lights

03/29/2007

by David Friedli

Looking Aside

I know you have just begun reading this article, but I would like you to pause after the next line and do exactly as I describe.

Look up at the photograph of the dashboard of my hand on the steering wheel of my 1986 Pontiac 6000 LE, and scan your view four inches to the left. Concentrate.

See the man’s picture there? See the smiling face of Dewaine Gahan, the owner and publisher of the Lyons Mirror-Sun newspaper?

Look at that photograph and repeat these words: Dewaine Gahan is a good man.

If you have a conscience, say what is really on your mind: Dewaine Gahan is a great person.

Now, consider very carefully what I am writing next, and know that it comes deeply from my heart: Dewaine Gahan does not deserve to be stricken with cancer. It is not fair, and it certainly is not right.

It hurts me and it pains me to see my friend gradually being taken over by cancer.

Last week, I wrote about the insignificant but annoying knee injury I sustained from falling on the ice, and I compared it to a broken bone from my high school sports days.

In the column to my left, Dewaine last week told his readers he had made the decision to live life fully by avoiding the side effects of further chemotherapy treatment.

After reading Dewaine’s column, I felt like a man with an ingrown toenail complaining to a man with no legs.

My burden is easy, and the load I’ve been asked to carry is light.

Dewaine is up against a battle the likes of which I have never known. In his fight, Dewaine has powerful weapons of faith, family and a positive outlook on life.

Don’t doubt that those three things have overwhelming superiority over hopelessness, loneliness and negativity. And, if some researchers are correct, they have superiority over illness. Even cancer.

Dewaine Gahan is a good man and a great person.

The small-town newspaper business is not an easy one. It is a complex mix of politics, journalism and economics.

I’ve read great newspapers in the towns I’ve lived in and I’ve seen some poor ones, the type of papers you don’t really read but instead you simply look through them. Most often the success of a weekly is the work of one person: the editor.

Dewaine Gahan is a tireless promoter of the communities he serves. He is an advocate for the quality of life that exists in a healthy town, regardless of its population.

When one person gives so much—to their church, to their town, to local festivals, to sporting events, to families (nearly every Lyons Mirror-Sun reader has clipped an article or photograph from the paper and bragged about it to friends and relatives)—that person is worthy of our admiration. And he is deserving of our thanks.

And while proud of his accomplishments, Dewaine Gahan is a person who ranks the gathering of things far below achieving a quality life.

A life well lived is not necessarily one based on longevity.

So please, take another look at that smiling face of Dewaine Gahan to the left of my dashboard. And say a prayer.

On second thought, say two prayers. One for Dewaine, and then one for yourself.