JOHN TRIPP

Some people are just part of our landscape. We don't think about doing without them, because they just ARE. John was that way. He was so solid and engaged that those blessed to be acquainted with him probably didn't consider his mortality.

Short of saying I've been with John in the best of times and some tough times and he always made the best of whatever was on the table, I am not the right guy to eulogize him. But I can tell two stories that partly illustrate who he was.

The first was 1991. John was hosting a radio show and the hot topic in the United States was, thanks to Anita Hill (or, depending on your bias, Clarence Thomas) sexual harassment in the workplace. The show was to be on air for about 45 minutes and the purpose was a serious discussion about the legal process and implications of S.H. About a minute before we were to go on the air, something hilarious with lascivious sexual overtones happened. Laughter was not optional, tears and spasms filled the studio and, indeed, the whole downstairs of the radio station. We did the whole interview with a straightfaced voice but, invisible to the listening public, cracking up, red-faced and teary-eyed. Every commercial break, John would make some remark or gesture to revive the funny happening and we'd all go to pieces again. He knew he was making things worse but he just couldn't leave it alone. It was, at once, the most fun I've had in a media interview and the most difficult. For all in the tri-states who know the serious interviewer-moderator, John Tripp, this was his evil twin! A lot of people didn't get to see the silly almost over-the-top side of John Tripp. Believe me, it was there!

The second was during the great flood of 1993. John did extended duty in FLOODWATCH on WGEM and he was great. He was moved by the generosity of so many area businesses and talked about it with great respect and reverence but there was one local business that just got his goat. This vendor would call frequently and piecemeal to donate relatively small numbers of its product and then try to turn the phone call into extended commercial play for its product and company. John turned into an art form graciously accepting the gift while trying to cut off the infomercial philibuster. He took it as a challenge. I was doing the Public Information Officer role for the city so I was at the station a lot. The vendor called. I already knew how John felt about the infomercial attempts. He said, "Watch this...I'm going to cut this short and confuse him into not calling back!" Sure enough, John picked up and they guy donated another 5000 units of his product and began his informercial, which John had already heard about 20 times. John interrupted him and started off giving the vendor's very own infomercial rap, praising him effusively> This went on for about 25 seconds. While John was till talking about the wonders of this guy's product and the wonderful generosity of the gift, he deftly HUNG UP ON HIMSELF, ending his own well-presented, complimentary ad for the guy's product.

Later, I asked him why he felt so strongly about this guy's self-promotion and John said, nobody else asked to get anything out of their generosity and it just offended his sense of charity that this one business sought a commercial advantage from a natural disaster. So John used his best weapon to right or at least mitigate what he thought was an injustice, his deft speaking skill and bottomless wit.

John was a fantastic resource for baseball, the recovery movement, marketing, health care models and a poster boy for (pardon the horriblly trite term) "family values". The Basin is better for his having shared the journey with us all.

Barb, Sara and Meredith should know that their grief is shared by many. Unbelievable loss to a great family and a whole, extended community.