This isn’t the Father’s Day story I had planned on sharing, prior to learning of Tim Russert’s death on Friday, June 13, after suffering a heart attack, at the age of 58, according to Mataea Gold’s report in today’s, Saturday’s issue of the Chicago Tribune.

However, in the light of Tim’s legendary love of family, we can be sure we’re on safe ground here, especially since it involves children.

It was going to be an auspicious day for the celebration of two little sisters’ birthdays, and I was going to miss it for unavoidable reasons. No shopping for books, or wrapping paper, or ribbon. How about cards and gifts of money? Not my first choice, but the only one at hand, which eventually became the best one at hand, for their daddy said he would take them shopping to Toys R Us on his day off, which sent his adoring children straight to the moon! Tim would have laughed and understood.

For he was first and foremost a family man, like his father before him, unflagging as well in his devotion to his job at MSNBC. After having taken time to deliver his son’s graduation gifts back home in Buffalo from Boston, Tim returned to Washington to prepare for Sunday’s Meet the Press, where he held an unusually lengthy contract of twelve years.

In a few words, Tim had revealed what journalism meant in his life to USA Today in 2000: “If there ‘s such a thing as a non-religious vocation, this is it.”

From scrolling through the condolences on the Internet this morning, it is obvious that the entire nation is in a state of mourning. Year after year, by the thousands, they had trusted him to chase down the smallest details, to be as well prepared as possible to face his guest and audience on Sunday morning.

He explained that he felt deeply the journalist’s calling to ferret out the truth and to summon the courage to present it to his congregation as clearly as possible. Russert was energized by their hunger for the unvarnished facts, and he wore himself out in his determination not to let them down.

Katharine Q. Seeye contributed to a report for today’s New York Times, and quotes Al Hunt as saying, “ He really was the best political journalist in America. He absolutely set the standard for moving from politics to journalism. He proved it could be done with extraordinary skill and integrity.”

The chief executive of NBC Universal, then an up-and-coming producer, Jeff Zucker, invited Tim at some point in the late 1980's to be the Washington bureau chief, and decided to name him the moderator of “Meet the Press,” as well.

Zucker said, “ This is a guy who had no-camara experience. Forget that he had never hosted a program. He had never appeared on television.”

Eight years later, Bill Carter wrote in The New York Times that “Mr. Russert had reinvented ‘Meet the Press,’ which first appeared on television in 1948, changing it from a sleepy encounter between reporters and Washington newsmakers into an issue-dense program, with Mr. Russert taking on the week’s newsmaker.”

Between his devotion to his wife, Maureen, writer for Vanity Fair, and son, Luke, dedication to work left scant time for Saturday evening socializing, but when Tim did attend an affair, politics were off the agenda. Mary Matalin, wife of James Carville, recalled that in those social settings, family life and life in Washington were topics of conversation.

“Our collective best times were talking about our kids or somebody’s mother or garbagemen.” Ms. Matalin said, using the latter as a reference to Mr. Russert’s insistence that broken glass be wrapped in paper so as not to pierce a sanitation worker, his father’s one-time occupation. “He didn’t lose who he was, never,” she said.

No wonder we loved and trusted him so. He was one of us.

May You grant him rest, Lord, and may his family be comforted in the difficult times ahead, softened by the celebration of this man’s great, generous and faith-filled life.

Many thanks, dear Tim. Blessings of peace and joy. Amen.

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