UPDATE 2: Everything is better with Bacon

UPDATE 2: Rick's obit. HYSTERICAL. Read it here, or below.

NORTON!

The best boss I ever had, has died.
One of the best friends I ever had, has died.
A man who took to mentoring me and sometimes treated me like a stupid son, has died.
And one of the funniest human beings on the planet has died.
Rick Bacon.
A lot of time, people look around and say, "I owe him everything."
It's often just that. Something people say.
He plucked me out of one rural corner of South Carolina where I was just a reporter, asked me to come to his papers in Barnwell and Allendale and to do what I do best. Kick ass, in a journalistic sense.
He gave me generally free rein, and he always backed me up. Except for a couple of times, including the time he brought me into his office, told me to close the doors and then asked "Who the f--- I thought I was."
He was the last person to pay me a fair wage straight up, though not the last person to try to do so. So I have a toy or two, thanks to him.
But he had previously hired as an editor a woman named Patricia Larson. Transferred her to be a publisher in Winnsboro before I moved to Barnwell. But she came to Barnwell once a week for production work.
The guy who, inadvertantly, arranged for me to meet my wife, has died.
Without Rick, I guess I don't have Patricia. Without Rick, I guess I don't have our son as well.
He was always there for me, with a joke to cheer me up, with advice about a job that maybe wasn't going so well, to offer a reference for a new job, whatever kind I'd like. The truth, if that would help. A hedge, if it would not.
His lessons were very quick and deadly.
I don't remember when I talked to him after 9/11, but I was going on about the attack, about the Twin Towers, about how my cousins were nowhere near and of course safe.
Then he said, "Candy's sister and brother-in-law are OK."
Brought it quickly home. Candy's sister and brother-in-law lived in or around Washington DC. He was in the military and had, I think, a job at the Pentagon.
9/11 wasn't just about the attacks on New York, but being a native New Yorker, I see the attacks that way.
He would ask a question, you'd start talking and when he could get a word in edgewise, he'd say, "Let me ask that question in a different way." Then he'd ask that question the exact same way. to drive home the point. Listen.
I was remembering some of his stories. Many true. There was the radio host on the religious station in Burnsville, NC, where he worked, who, when reading the Bible and came across a word he did not know, would simply say, "Big word."
His BBQ hog call he used to do.
Sometimes he just got great moments out of pure luck. His last day on the job, when he left Barnwell to go to Lake City, Fla., he was just about to leave when a song came on the radio.
This song --

He came back for the first verse, than twirled and danced his way out the door. Even some of my co-workers who were cursing his name a month before were crying.
And laughing, at his timing and his little spin move.
Rick told me once that he sometimes stopped calling people who said they were friends, just to see how long it took for them to call with something other than a request for him to be a reference. It was a test.
I think that was part of the reason behind his abandonment of Facebook a while back. We have "friends" on Facebook. Friends we don't talk to in the real world anymore. It's too easy to count your friends and not be a friend you can count on.
I did my best to stay in touch. Usually we would have email exchanges, and that would prompt him to send me a message, in which he asked, always, for my wife's phone number.
I think he wanted to hear her voice.
In February, he asked me about my other favorite boss of all time, Mardy Jackson. Asked me if she had died of cancer. I am wondering now if that was a roundabout way of preparing me for what came in April.
April 14.
I have some work to do.

I received word a couple of weeks ago that I have lung cancer.

Met with the radiation oncologist Friday to decide on a regiment.
Meeting with chemo oncologist this Wednesday.

I’ve had several tests, but we are going to do another c/t scan, a pet scan, a brain scan and another biopsy to see if there has been any ‘spread.’

If not we have a curative plan. If so, it’s just a treatment plan.

I have a good attitude and am going to do everything they ask me to do to whoop it’s ass.

Fighting with cancer jokes of the week.

This weeks:

Why did the cancer patient cross the road?

So he could be hit by a truck.

Keep smiling.

You may call me:

Chemo-Sabe

I responded, rambling as a jerk, but trying to make him smile. I said we'd pray, of course, but I would do anything to help, particularly anything that would get me named his heir.

Little chance of that, though.

Ten more days passed, and he started a little column, for friends, that he would NOT post on the Internet as a blog, but just send to those he wanted to send it to. The title was based on a movie we both loved. From Miracle Max in the Princess Bride, he called it, "Have Fun Storming the Cancer."

There were to be multiple installments in which he detailed his attempts to kill cancer with humor.

There was just one more.

My sister was doing Relay for Life, because Dad died from his breast cancer returning last year. And we got a luminary for Rick. I emailed him a picture of it, and we talked back and forth via email a bit.

He sent me back a picture of that luminary posted above his desk at work. I also saw a picture of a county highway sign, that said, Yancey County, Shallow Gene Pool, No Diving.

He said someone made it up based on one of his jokes.

I sent him an email about a friend who got a job in the same building where he worked. As I expected he would, he told me to tell her to drop by.

But I also told him about these episodes of The People's Pharmacy on NPR devoted to cancer that he should probably check out.

He told me he had some unexpected pain.

"I think you are too worried about me," he wrote. That was July 21.

Not enough, apparently.

There was one more email, but it was totally nondescript.

Since he knew her first, it's only fitting that his last words to us went to Patricia, albeit to her voicemail.

"Mrs. Guilfoyle, this is Rick Bacon," he says, his voice sounding a little weak, a little shaky. "And I just wanted to tell you that's a heck of a Pope you've got now. He gives me faith that ... maybe all religion isn't all totally crap. Just wanted you to know that. Have a good day."

That was July 30. I get a kick out him calling her Mrs. Guilfoyle, for one thing. The pause after "He gives me faith that ..." makes me wonder. Was he, as normal, just going for the joke that followed? Or was he thinking about something else, but reverted to type because he wasn't quite ready to admit it to others.

Patricia told me she played phone tag trying to get back with him a bit.
That was, we learned, the day he learned that the treatment plan wasn't working. On Friday, Patricia got a few messages, one on Facebeook and one from Rick's son Jon, calling on Rick's cell phone, missing her, of course, but letting her know what happened the night of Aug. 7.
She called me, around 1:30, 2 on Aug. 8 to see if I had heard on my own. As I was just waking up to go to my night-time job, I had not.
Everything is better with Bacon. The afterlife, therefore, is better.

I was, and remain, stunned.

From the second linked story below. "A “Celebration to Remember” that Bacon planned before his death is scheduled from 1-3 p.m. Aug. 23 at Pier 41 Seafood in Lumberton. Bacon asked people not to waste money by sending flowers. Instead, he suggests those who want to remember him do a random act of kindness or donate to their favorite charity."

Story on Rick's death in the Richmond County Daily Journal.

County mourns the loss of Rick Bacon, from the Richmond County Daily Journal.

His obituary, in case the link doesn't work.

Richard Norton (Rick) Bacon 

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LUMBERTON — Richard Norton Bacon (Rick) of Lumberton has left the building. His friends will tell you he's in a better place. The rest will say they can smell the Bacon burning. He is stress-free and at peace.

The curtain came down on Thursday night at Southeastern Regional Medical Center.

He is survived by his loving wife of 29 years, Candace Smith Bacon. He is also survived by his son Jonathan Bacon and wife Beth of High Point; daughter Melody Kearse of Rock Hill, S.C., and son Bryan Kearse and wife Liz of Raleigh. Five grandchildren made his life better with their visits.

Rick loved dogs. Trixie, Richie, James Brown Beans and Mr. Woo were the last in a long line of hairy hogs that shared his bed and his affection.

He was born in Auburn, N.Y., July 16, 1947, the son of the late Elizabeth Dunster Bacon and Frederick Neil Bacon. He was also predeceased by a brother, Ted.

He drifted south from upstate New York in 1962 to the mountains of North Carolina, where he graduated without honors in the class of '65 at East Yancey High School. After one undistinguished year at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Rick enlisted in the United States Air Force. He became a Morse intercept operator and spent two and a half years overseas in Turkey and Italy.

After another failed college attempt at Mars Hill College, Rick got his start in media at WKYK radio in Burnsville, N.C. From radio it was on to newspaper, where Rick spent 26 years publishing newspapers, moving from state-to-state looking for a town that would keep him. From Spruce Pine, N.C. to Barnwell, S.C. to Lake City, Fla., he survived buying a Buick LeSabre (the official car of geezers) and a heart attack that convinced him it was time to leave Florida unless he wanted to die young. He headed back to North Carolina to live and work in Rockingham and Lumberton, where he had a good life.

Rick was a Rotarian for over 25 years. He served as president of the Rockingham Rotary Club in 2012-13 and was proud of the work that Rotary did in the community and around the world. He was a two-time Paul Harris Fellow.

In March of 2014, Rick was diagnosed with lung cancer. He celebrated with yet another trip to a Cincinnati Reds game. If you knew Rick, you knew that he was a loyal Reds fan since the late '50s without ever living a day in Ohio. He often said, "There's no explaining taste."

Cremation will take place at the family's convenience and his ashes will be kept in an urn, passed from family member to family member until no one can remember what's in the jar.

Everyone who remembers Rick is asked to celebrate his life in their own way; telling a 'He wasn't so bad' or 'What an ass' story of their choosing. Boiled shrimp and a beverage of your choice should be part of any celebration.

Instead of flowers, Rick would hope that you will do an unexpected act of kindness for some less fortunate soul. Rick liked to buy food for the car behind him in the drive-thru lane, or a meal for a military couple (if he could do it without them knowing who paid). That's a lot cheaper than flowers.

A memorial luncheon in Rick's honor will be held at Pier 41 in Lumberton on Saturday, Aug. 23, 2014 from 1 to 3 p.m. at Pier 41 Seafood. Adult beverages will follow at widow Candy's house on Camellia Lane. To the crooks reading this: We left an armed guard and the four killer dogs home from the luncheon. If you come to steal, they will hurt you.​