By Jim
Killam
Communications Coordinator
You'll find Marx Gibson's footprints all over my career.
In the wake of Marx's early and tragic death from cancer last summer, I
thought about the impact he'd had on me.
There was the time he spoke to one of my college journalism classes and
encouraged me to finish my degree, when I wondered if I was wasting my time
because I already worked for a daily newspaper.
Seven years later, he persuaded me to leave my job as managing editor of
that same, small daily and become his assistant city editor in Joliet. There,
he taught me to be an idea person. We'd take drives some afternoons with
young reporters, where the reporter and I would fight car sickness and hurriedly
scribble long lists of story ideas as Marx drove and rattled them off.
And, a few months after I'd resigned from the Herald-News to pursue a free-lance
career, Marx called to tell me about a potential opportunity at NIU. He'd
just heard that Jerry Thompson was retiring as adviser of the Northern Star,
and that they might need a fill-in for a year.
I still wonder how my family's life would be different today if Marx hadn't
thought of me that morning.
The thing is, Marx probably didn't even remember the times he impacted me
the most, because he did the same thing for everybody. At his funeral, I
lost count of the stories of how he helped so-and-so in a career decision,
or helped his community through compassionate journalism or public service.
He touched hundreds of lives, inside and outside journalism.
In June, Marx was awarded the Illinois Press Association's James C. Craven
Freedom of the Press Award. Too ill to attend the ceremony in his honor,
he wrote this in his acceptance letter:
"When you get to the juncture in life at which I now find myself, you
desperately want to feel like your life's work made a difference; that it
counted for something; that somehow what you did made the world a bit better."
That's the understatement of a lifetime.