Chet Currier (1945-2007)
I often wonder what Chet
Currier would think of Donald trump. He’d first probably scold me for not
capitalizing the name of the president. But after that, I want to believe the
gloves were off.
I can imagine him
thinking thus: Lies? Sure. Every politician lies. But this guy is king of
the whoppers.
We worked together at
both the Associated Press and Bloomberg News. And he was, indeed, a
conservative of principle. That is to
say minimally doctrinaire and maximally interested in people carrying their own
weight and making their own fortunes, but not unfairly.
Chet’s been gone for 12
years. Happened right around this time of years. He was 62. By today’s
longevity standards he was middle aged. But prostate cancer didn’t get
the memo.
There once were a lot of
guys like Chet. They didn’t pay much attention to conspiracy theories,
believed that we should be civil, treat our allies like allies and our enemies
like enemies. He was no big fan of what today’s Conservatives call
“entitlements” and which the rest of us call common sense social programs. But
neither did he rail against them.
One morning, we were
preparing to record our weekly look at mutual funds, not exactly a
scintillating subject, and Chet was in studio studying a filled out crossword
puzzle with no list of clues.
What’s that about?
“Oh, I wrote the puzzle
and now I’m trying to figure out what clues to give for each word.” You
don’t keep the New York Times waiting.
Chet was on deadline.
You did what?
At the time of his
death, he had sold about 1,000 full size puzzles. He said it came to him
easily. So did his columnist. Almost everyone printed his stuff. An
English major in college with a keen interest in the markets. A big guy with a
big brain.
While the puzzles were a
surprise, it wasn’t the only one. He once said “Karl Marx was right.”
This was followed by a long pause. And THAT was followed by “the workers should
own the means of production and now they can” -- with mutual funds.
Chet covered his New
York roots and the Kansas City beginnings of his career in news by combining
“aw shucks” country boy shuffling with more than a dash of the Connecticut
upper crust among whom he lived. Somehow he made all three of the ingredients
in that recipe work. Not easy.
He didn’t live to see
the onset of social media. Would he have used it? Probably Twitter. Not likely Facebook. But who knows?
Today’s right wing pales
next to this fella. He was principled. He was kind. And he could teach
today’s crowd a thing or two about business, about markets, about small-c
conservatism and the preciousness of an unfairly shortened life.
I’m Wes Richards. My
opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Comments? Send ‘em here:
wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2019
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