Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

The world is a little bit poorer now, just a little less interesting. We’ve lost a good writer and a good man.
Richard Lipez passed away on March 16. Richard grew up locally, and became a writer. He wrote quite a few novels, which impresses me, but you can get all that career stuff from his obituary. I knew him because his family ran the Record, and he was a regular reader of my column for some reason.

Richard was the brother of John Lipez, who writes the column next door to mine. For over a decade, I’ve been writing this bit in the Record, and sometime around 2012, I was pleasantly surprised to receive an e-mail from Richard.

I don’t remember what specific column he was commenting on—It was a long time ago—But I remember him saying he liked my writing. This was something of a shock to me; even after all these years, I still sometimes have the feeling that nobody reads this stuff. Richard was very complimentary and very encouraging to me. I remember him saying that he always read my column, and always enjoyed it.

Not too long after, he came back to Lock Haven for a visit. I got to meet him on the sidewalk outside the Ross Library, where we shook hands and chatted for a while.

Great guy. I can’t say it enough. He was a very encouraging individual. He wrote a series of excellent mystery novels, and I write a weekly newspaper column about history and paranormal humor, a genre I’m pretty sure I invented. But he never treated me as anything less than an equal; that’s the kind of wonderful guy Richard was.

I’m going to miss his e-mails. Every now and again, especially after he read one of my columns that he especially liked, he would send me an e-mail and tell me he’d enjoyed it. Sometimes he had suggestions or questions, which could be fun. He inspired me to write once about the Human Fly who climbed up a Lock Haven building in the 1950s, and I interviewed him in 2013, on the anniversary of John Kennedy’s death. Richard had met Kennedy, and he was willing to tell me all about it, thus giving me another interesting column topic.

A couple of years ago, I got myself into some literary hot water—I’d written a column I thought was lighthearted and harmless, and a reader took issue with it. This reader acted as if I’d publicly confessed to beating up Mother Theresa. Richard dropped me an e-mail to reassure me and tell me everything was going to be okay. (It eventually was.) He didn’t have to do that. He owed me exactly zero time out of his day to make me feel better, and yet, there he was, helping out and offering support.

That was the kind of guy Richard was—-Always encouraging, always helpful and kind.

Most recently, he dropped me an e-mail with a question about a local doctor. I’d mentioned the doctor in one of my columns, and talked about him throwing people out of his office. Richard, who remembered the doctor from his childhood, e-mailed me to ask about that. I told him the story, and we talked and laughed for a while about that. Like me, he saw a lot of humor in Clinton County’s history.

My deepest condolences go out to Richard’s family. I’m sure they miss him terribly. I will, too. For the first time, I’m writing a column knowing he won’t be reading it, and that’s sad. I’ll miss his witty e-mails, and I’ll miss him.