For years, this space belonged to Rich O’Brian.
He filled it with his memories, his convictions, his faith, his humor and the stories collected over 89 years of living.
Today, for one final time, “As Time Goes By” belongs to Rich. Only this time, the words must come from his protégé. I wish they didn’t.
I could tell you Rich was a pastor, journalist, news anchor, husband, father and grandfather. I could tell you about Alabama, baseball, football and his unwavering Roll Tide ways. I could tell you about his love for this country, his faith in the Constitution or the countless stories he shared with me.
But if I am going to write Rich’s final “As Time Goes By,” I have to begin where Rich always seemed to find his way back to: Christ.
Rich once wrote about being a nine-year-old boy whose family had moved to a new town. A neighbor, Mr. Patrick, invited him to Sunday school. After the lesson, young Richard stayed behind with a question.
“Who is Jesus, Mr. Patrick?”
Mr. Patrick sat down with that little boy and told him about Jesus. Rich wrote decades later that what happened that day changed his life. It did.
For the next 80 years, Rich never really stopped learning, teaching and telling others about Christ. He was supposed to preach in Sheridan Lake just last Sunday. Even as his body was failing him, it was a commitment he was determined to keep. That should surprise absolutely no one who knew him.
Not long ago, when Rich and Dianne moved from their beloved cottage into Prairie Pines, Rich made something clear to his readers: His address had changed. His ministry had not. As long as the Lord continued opening doors, Rich intended to keep answering the call.
He meant it.
Rich taught me plenty about journalism, but some of the most important things he taught me had nothing to do with a newspaper. He taught me that conviction and compassion can exist together.
Rich knew what he believed. You were unlikely to change his mind about God, his country, the Constitution or, Heaven help you, Alabama football. But he also believed in love, forgiveness, understanding and acceptance.
In one of his columns, this lifelong pastor wrote that it wasn’t his job to dictate the plan for another person’s life. He acknowledged his own imperfections and said all he could do was offer assistance where he could. That was Rich.
Strong convictions. Stronger faith. And enough years behind him to understand that none of us has earned the right to stop learning. He certainly never did.
At an advanced age, Rich climbed aboard a combine because he wanted to understand farming. He came away writing not about himself, but about what a younger farmer had taught him and how much there still was for an “inquisitive elder student” to learn.
That curiosity was part of what made him a journalist. It was also part of what made him my mentor.
Rich came to the Independent carrying a lifetime of media experience. He had worked in print, radio and television, including time as a news anchor, and had published weekly newspapers in Big Sky, Montana before he and Dianne eventually made their way to Eads. In his own telling, he simply walked into the Independent and offered what he knew.
Somewhere along the way, he offered some of it to me. I took it. I listened. And I am a better journalist because he did.
But the stories Rich told most proudly weren’t about journalism. They were about family. He talked about his childhood in Alabama and often about his mother, who was young when he was born.
“We grew up together,” he would tell me.
He talked about the brother who came along 11 years later and the many chapters of life that followed.
Then came the family he and Dianne built together—the “his, mine and ours” of it all.
His children. His grandchildren. The stories were endless. And sometimes repeated. I didn’t care. I have never known a prouder parent. If you wanted to see Rich light up, ask him about the people he loved.
And then there was Dianne.
Earlier this year, while thanking those who had cared for him through illness, Rich came to his wife of more than five decades and wrote, “I can’t say enough about her!” He said Dianne had been beside him through every twist and turn in the road.
On Saturday, I witnessed the final turn.
I had the profound honor of sitting with Rich and Dianne as his soul left this world and entered the next.
I watched Dianne love her husband through the final moments of his earthly life.
Her strength, their love and the sacredness of those moments have imprinted on me. I will never look at the people I love quite the same way again.
There are deadlines that suddenly don’t seem so important. Arguments that aren’t worth winning. Words that shouldn’t wait until tomorrow. And people we should probably hold a little tighter while we still can.
After decades of traveling, ministry, moving and changing, Rich and Dianne eventually found Eads. However, Rich gave this sleepy little town another name.
The Garden of Eads.
It wasn’t just a clever phrase. It became his refrain. Whether Rich was writing about faith, aging, farming or places halfway around the world, somehow, he could find his way home to the Garden.
In one column he wished his readers a wonderful year “here in The Garden of Eads, or wherever you are.”
In another, after writing about Venezuela and a trip there many years earlier, Rich closed with a simple wish for its people:
“I hope they have what we have in The Garden of Eads.”
After a lifetime of moving, traveling, preaching, broadcasting, writing and telling stories, Rich and Dianne found home.
So perhaps that is where his protégé should leave him.
Rich, you spent 89 years collecting stories and several of them teaching me how to tell them.
You taught me about journalism, but more importantly, you taught me something about being human.
You showed me that faith can be unwavering without withholding compassion. That we are never too old to learn something new. That family stories are worth telling again. That home is worth being grateful for. And that when God opens a door, you walk through it for as long as you possibly can.
At nine years old, a little boy named Richard asked a Sunday school teacher who Jesus was.
Eighty years later, I sat beside my friend as he went to meet Him.
“The memory of the just is blessed.”
— Proverbs 10:7
Thank you for the stories. Thank you for the lessons. Thank you for trusting me with some of your words. And thank you, Rich, for helping me find mine.
As time goes by, you will be missed.
Right here in your beloved Garden of Eads.
Thank you, Dianne, for entrusting me with the honor of writing the final words in a space that belonged to Rich for so many years.
And thank you for allowing me to finish what Rich started here at the Independent.
It has been my profound honor.
