Photo © 1996 Robert Altman

Herb Caen outside the San Francisco Chronicle
on Herb Caen Day

There are few people who have been alive during my lifetime I would consider personal heroes.

Some have fallen from grace; some have passed on to their greater reward. I am fortunate to have rubbed elbows with these paladins and one of them is San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen.

Among the qualities I admire most about Mr. C are his great wit, joie de vie; his genius at word smithery; his sense of style and class sometimes coupled with sheepish self effacement ; his democratic ethics and his willingness to take a stand; his contemporariness and eternal youth. Yes he has a dark side and God help you if you are on the other side of it. You do not want his pen turned a mephitic dart aimed your way.

This has been quite a year for Herb.

• He turned 80.
• He got married.
• He won the Pulitzer Prize.
• He contracted inoperable lung cancer.

Oy.

As Carole Burnett has said..."I finally get my head together and now my ass is falling apart."

We are lucky to have had Herb around so long, 60 years clacking away at his loyal Royal typewriter...massaging the beginning of another "God knows what" day with his inside scoops, juicy gossip and knee slappers aplenty. Like Astaire and Sinatra...the likes of such a man will not walk this way again.

I hoist one high to you dear Herb...

"Happy Day!"