This came to me in the middle of the night last night as I failed to make sleep come hours after learning that my friend and long-time colleague Bob Simon had lost his life. Death took him in a car crash in New York City.
Bob and I had drunk from the same canteen more than once during the 48 years we had known each other, 38 of those working together at CBS News. Once, in South Africa I think it was, we were talking over an adult beverage or two in the shank of an evening about dangerous assignments, a subject about which Bob was experienced and expert. With a piercing look and a hint of that slightly off-center smile he sometimes had, he said something along the lines of, “More correspondents are injured getting out of the shower and more are killed in automobile accidents than probably anywhere else.” The irony of that memory mixed with how death took him is painful and lingers.
I’ve been trying for a long while to come up with an adequate way to describe how devastating Bob’s loss is to those of us who knew him, to CBS News and to quality journalism. But words are failing me. They never failed Bob. He was one of the best writers ever to work in television journalism. He was a master of expressing so much with so few words, perfectly chosen and ordered.
–
Join us on Facebook.com/CNNOpinion.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Dan Rather.
